On a Boat on the River

We got up at our usual time but spent our whole morning packing for our boat trip.  We went back and forth between trying to be really, really prepared for anything and everything and wanting to reduce the loads we were carrying. We did okay at finding a middle ground. 

Our boat was supposed to be there at 11:30am, but it didn’t come by then.  We didn’t mind, as we did a world premiere of our video from two nights ago, and we also inducted our newest member into the Order of the Purple Bike: Maya.  Maya is our youngest student DIRTy and has had a bit of a cold for the last couple of days (which affects all of us, if she coughs in the night). She’s been chugging along anyway, but yesterday she turned the corner. And, wow!  She put it all behind her and just soared past all of us as we struggled to break palhas.  She was a natural, who could just watch Odila do her thing and copy it perfectly.  She was so quick on doing the palhas that she probably completed a measurable percentage of the ones we prepared.  

She has also helped us to pay attention to indigenous issues, as this subject is a particular passion of hers.  Because of her commitment, we rethought the itinerary on our boat trip to focus our visit in a couple of days on a local indigenous community.  

She and Gui have worked up this routine that her father taught her, in which Gui goes out of earshot, everyone in the room picks an object or word to focus on.  Then when Gui comes back, she asks him if several items are the object of focus and every single time, he identifies the right one.  We burned lots of time while waiting for the boat failing to figure out the “trick” (unless maybe it’s NOT a trick and they really ARE psychically connected . . .).

Maya is sweet and warm and also strong. She’s gutsy too, as she keeps braving the challenge of speaking Portuguese with our hosts, even when Jesse is right there to help.  We first saw her as a shy, quiet, little flower.  Maybe she is/was a flower, but she is also a force to be reckoned with and we are all honored to have her as our teammate. Yay, Maya!

The boat finally arrived and we got everything to it in one trip.  It’s a triple decker with five bathrooms, which is the most any DIRT group has ever had on this excursion.  We motored along the Arapiuns (the cleanest river among the regional tributaries) and found our way to a place that every one of the nine SMC groups that has come to the Amazon has visited: Ponta Grande. 

Ponta Grande is a huge sandbar peninsula that reaches far out into the river.  It is surrounded by mellow shallow waves so it is the perfect place to take a dip and just take in the amazing 360 degree views of this tropical paradise.  And at the moment, the water is so high that Ponta Grande is more like Ponta Pequenho (small instead of large).  It was awesome nonetheless, and we all wandered far out along the low point and floated together laughing and finding it hard to believe that 1) we are in the Amazon and 2) we are in class right now.  

We noticed as we pulled away from Anã that our hearts were already a little sad to leave.  We can’t even guess what it’s going to feel like in a couple of weeks, when our roots here are even stronger.  It’s hard for us not to spend a lot of our time together talking about how fortunate we feel (and ARE) that we are here and that we are immersed in a place that few people from our usual surroundings find their way to visit. We’ll have to be careful about fighting off the sun here, because it’s so beautiful and glorious, it’s hard to tear yourself away from the open sky with its wonderful clouds.  

We eventually motored on to our destination for the night: Atodí (pronounced ah-toe-JEE).  It is one of the communities that runs a small ecotourism project in collaboration with our community, Anã.  We met with a couple of the community leaders when we arrived and got the news that we will meet them again at 6am to begin our hike into the forest primeval.  

We’ll sleep in our hammocks on the open boat tonight, maybe using mosquito nets (though we’ve noticed that the constant breeze here is keeping even flies away).  It seems likely that we will remember this night for the rest of our lives, like so much of what we do and see here.  Again, we know that some of you were worried about us coming here.  We want to say again that we couldn’t be happier. We hope we can transfer some of our happiness to you here in our stories, videos, and pictures, and later in person when we get to tell you even more about what we are experiencing here.  Thanks again for trusting us to come and for following along with us.  We feel you out there pulling for us and it makes all the difference!

Just hanging out on the back deck of the boat we are embarking on for a three-34day trip down the Arapiuns River. 

Rylee and Jaron trying to see who can do the most pull-ups. 

 Boo hanging out on the upper deck.

The view of the sand bar that we stopped at for a quick three-hour swim.

A map of the Amazon and where we are on it!  

A photo showing the DIRTies view of the Brazilian flag as they embark on their boat trip for the next three days. 

 Jesse, one of our fine leaders, in his “PUM” shirt, which means “fart” in Portuguese. 

 Our first stop on the boat was a sand bank that the DIRTies never wanted to leave. 

 The ‘Commandante Siquiera,’ also known as the DIRT boat!   

Many DIRTies watched the beautiful sunset from the top deck of the boat after a nice long swim.