Brazil

I had an awesome opportunity to go to Brazil and knock out 5 masters degree credits while experiencing South America for the first time, or so I thought. Turned out to be quite the experience. The class was originally supposed to be about bio fuels, but was really more on water quality. Interesting class, and I learned quite a bit on the affects of human activity on the water quality, especially in the more rural areas of Brazil. I should be doing my last assignment for class rather than writing on this blog, but oh well. Apparently it takes 44hrs to get from my apartment in Utsunomiya to a rural city, Cuiaba in Brazil, who knew it was that far. After the travel I was a bit sleepy and ended up passing out around 9 that first night after class. The next day the intense work started we all went out and took water samples along the river, and I had to write an essay and go to a lab class. The third day we got on a bus that was supposed to take about an hour and a half to get to our ranch house or Pousada in Portuguese where we would be staying for the next 4 days, and we were going to stop by a gold mine to see how the run off was affecting the water quality. Conveniently when we got to the gold mine a "lab" truck came to the gates and all of the sudden the mine was undergoing a quality inspection so we couldnt see it. Felt like something right out of a movie where some fake truck went by just to keep up appearances that nothing wrong was going on. we all got back on the bus and eventually got to the ranch house later that afternoon... much more than 1.5 hours. The pousada was really cute and run by a family. There was a nice little area with about 12 hammocks to lay out in when we werent doing school work. The next few days at the pousada were pretty enjoyable. We had to write 2 lab reports and another essay, but by the end of the week we were done with a majority of the school work. Our tour guides took us out to a look out tower, that would definitely not have passed OSHA standards, but had a sweet view of the entire pantanal to watch the sunset. The next few days I went horseback riding, fished for piranha and went on a little row boat excursion. After the pousada we headed back to Cuiaba where we could catch an overnight bus to Campo Grande and then transfer to another bus to Corumba. This turned out to be about 36hrs of travel time, but we did stop at our first Rodizio where they serve the meat on a skewer, the pork was amazing. We got to Corumba on a Monday afternoon and met up with our new tour guides who turned out to be not so qualified. Tuesday we had free time to walk around this small town and didnt really do much, but we did discover this amazing sandwich/burger place where I had my first lanche (burger). Wednesday our tour guides picked us up on these two trucks and a VW bus and off we went to the Pantanal again. We didnt see much on the 12hr ride, but we did cross the Paraguay river by a small ferry. On the way back home we discovered that one of the trucks didnt really have brakes so the driver would just downshift and turn the engine to stop. Not the best when you are going over mountain passes to get to the Pantanal. The VW bus broke down 3 times on the drive and every time we stopped the younger "tour" guide would get out and work on the truck with no breaks. It was all a bit sketchy. Thursday was a bit intense as we had to finish off another lab report and essay, but afterwards Mike and I convinced a bunch of people to go to the rodeo. Corumba was a really small town so the rodeo turned out to be a very small carnival with about 4 rides, and the actual rodeo part was only bull riding. It started to get pretty cold so a few of the girls left before the bull riding finished. For those of us who stayed there was a free concert which was awesome!! Friday turned into a real interesting day, a few people went to Bolivia, but me and a couple guys stayed in town and walked around a little bit and went back to the awesome sandwich place. When we returned to the hostel the federal police were there and had picked up two of our TA's because of the water sampling. The police were pissed that 27 Americans had come to their town and were messing around with their water, and we didnt technically have approval. We all had to give up our passports and the police took our professors to the station for questioning. Our professors came back a few hours later with our passports, but were being investigated for some biological crime. The professors decided to leave Corumba a day early, and we were now fleeing the country very slowly by bus. As to not draw attention to ourselves we decided to walk to the bus station instead of taking cabs... turns out 27 Americans walking to the bus station with their luggage at 7 am is not inconspicuous. We took a long bus ride back to Campo Grande and now all our fun activities that were planned for Bointo (next destination) were cancelled. We stayed overnight in Campo Grande but left at 6:30 the next morning to go to Cascavel. Once in Cascavel everyone seemed to be a bit happier and we were back on track to eating the best burgers ever!!! Also met an Islamic dude who gave us a lecture in Spanish about how the only constitution is Islam and that eventually the whole world will be ruled under the one constitution. We were in Cascavel for almost a second night when all of the sudden our program coordinators told us we had to move to Iguassu Falls immediately because the people who were leaving had their flights at 9:30 am the next morning. Great planning struck once again! I couldnt get my flight changed and after drinking since the announcement that we were going to Iguassu Falls I decided to stay in Brazil. A bunch of us went out to the club that night to celebrate our last night together and had a blast, too bad we had to check out by 9:00 am the next morning. 15 of us were left and headed to Argentina, nervously we crossed the border, but everything was fine. Ended up seeing some amazing stuff in Argentina at the Iguassu Falls, went zip lining and repelled through a water fall. Went to Brazil to see the falls from that side, which again was very nerve wracking going across the boarder, ended up in Paraguay at a crappy open market where I got a few souvenirs. Our hostel in Argentina was awesome and the last four days were definitely the highlight of the trip. Had an awful veal steak and went to a free concert on the Argentina side of the town Iguassu Falls on the last night in Argentina. Made it back to Japan safe and sound after another 44hr journey. Now back to reality with work.

Brazil