Tuesday, June 20th

I am on the slowest internet connection in the world. I am not able to upload any videos because the connection is slow. Pictures are taking forever to upload.

Waking up at the Nova Jerusalem was quite an experience. Last night was the first night I haven't been roommates with my good friend Chris. It was quite different because we know each other pretty well after traveling to Ecuador and Brazil. We have also hung out several times in addition to traveling together.

Awww, look how cute

Breakfast was quite interesting. On the way to breakfast I heard a noise in the trees and looked up and immediately started screaming like a little girl. Monkey, Monkey,Monkey is all I shouted. People rushed around to make sure I was okay. This is all normal for me. I love monkeys! We saw marmosets all around. I was a boy in wonder. Next thing you know one of our guides was feeding one of them. I later got to feed some bananas to one of the marmosets. It was pure heaven. They are so cute these marmosets. They look like little gremlins. I even got to pet one.

After breakfast we visited the caatanga. The caatanga is undisturbed and virtually untouched. A wealthy man owns the land that is why the land is so undisturbed. He is even thinking of making it a nature reserve. The area of the caatange and this area is twice the size of France. We traveled there by 4*4 vehicles. Chris, LaRissa, Bruno and I jumped on top of the vehicle. Talk about an adventure. The caatanga is full of cactai, thorn bushes and scrub trees. When we left the road and drove through the wilderness we had to duck, swerve and lay down to avoid the flying branches of thorns. It was so much fun. Luckily Chris was in front of me so I grabbed his shirt and moved him from side to side to help me avoid the huge thorns. What a great friend I know. Seriously though it was a lot of fun driving through the caatanga. We got of the trucks and began the hike through the preserve caatanga. On our way we saw all these rocks. However they looked very different. Our guide mentioned his broken English fossil. At first it didn't hit me because I have never seen fossils in nature. I didn't expect to see them in the middle of nowhere and not in a museum somewhere. The fossils have been dated and are from the PreCambrian era.  The bones were from 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. The fossils were wooly mammoths, giant sloths, armadillos. Armadillos were about the size of a VW bug. I will  be able to use all of this in my World History class. The way that they dated the fossils is by using radio carbon, luminiscent and calcium carbonate. They use the enamel in teeth to date the bones usinng the methods just mentioned. We then hiked to some huge granite rocks. We had an amazing panoramic view of the caatanga.

Jerusalem, getting ready for the caatanga.

On our way back from the caatanga our 4*4 vehicle got stuck. No it was not my fault :) We ended up getting out trying to push and pull the jeep out of the mud to no avail. We tried building a ramp to get out but this did not work as well. One vehicle had to make a couple of trips to get us out of the caatanga. Another cool experience. After getting back to Jerusalem we went swimming. Wow was that relaxing on a hot day in a semi arid climate.

After lunch we headed to where I am now Triunfo. On our way we stopped at basically a shopping mall. I finally bought my Brazilian soccer jersey that I had been searching for. It cost only 20 real which is basically 14 dollars. I am glad I waited to buy this jersey in Brazil rather than the states. We had a long bus ride to Triunfo. I listened to some much that one of our Brazilian grad students let me borrow. Clara played some different types of Brazilian music for me. Bosa Nova was one of them. It was enjoyable. We talked to Diogo, Clayton, Ronaldo and Jonas. We talked about soccer, travel, schools and crime. We got into Triunfo and were exhausted after our long ride.