Hammocks and Fried Chicken

Our travel odyssey went on and on and made it so that we spent more time in Miami than we thought we were going to spend in Manaus when we hired transportation to hotel rooms.  By the time we got to Manaus, we could only spend about two hours at that hotel, so we purposely chose not to sleep and used the time to eat and shower.  Those showers made all the difference and we got our fourth or fifth wind to help us make our way to our first Amazon home.  

We got to Santarém at about 3:00pm local time, which gave us time to wrangle our massive loads of luggage into our big lovely bus (driven by our new friend Rossi, accompanied by his wife Katia and their daughter Sofilha) and hurry down to the outdoor market to pick out our own personal hammocks that we will use for the rest of trip.  In our eight previous trips to the Amazon, the ritual of buying our hammocks has always been a primary rite of passage (and means of keeping very tired travelers awake).  

The hammock market is not actually enormous but the range of options is mildly overwhelming.  That is, each of us kept seeing and touching another hammock and another hammock and finding ourselves unable to decide which one thrilled us the most.  A few people jumped right in, having seen the beautiful hammock of their dreams right before them.  But even they played it cool, so we could see if the prices would come down a bit, especially if we bought more than one hammock from the same vendor.  We saw some dramatic price changes and were happy we had figured out how to play the market game on our first day onsite.  

We had three criteria that Shawny encouraged us to try to meet: 1) get a “double” (large sized) hammock for maximum comfort, 2) get one with a “veranda,” which is the lacy/woven overhang that helps the edges of the hammock not to curl in on themselves, and 3) find one with a strong loop that holds it on its hook (or the rope that is tied to the hook). Most of us met all three marks, but a few of us were in love enough with a different type that we defied one or more of these guidelines. Once we got them home and started “learning” how to tie the knots that would keep them stable, we become more and more enamored of our new sleeping stations.  Some of us rigged our mosquito nets in very creative ways over them and all of us figured out ways to give ourselves some wiggle room as we lined up along the hooks along the wall and staked our claim in our respective room.  

On the subject of “learning” the knots, it really matters how you tie the thing to its anchors if you want to keep your hammock (and your own butt) off the ground. We didn’t exactly absorb all of the particulars because our dear friend (and current cook) Dona Maria jumped up on benches and chairs to tie nearly all of our hammocks up for us.  In our state of exhaustion, we might not have been primed to absorb the whole lesson, but we see that there are important details that we will need to attend to if we are ever to tie one these things properly on our own.  

We knew better than to get too comfortable in our hammocks, because we had resolved to stay awake until after dark to get our bodies attuned to our new timezone (five hours ahead of California).  So we hopped up and got some things organized and started our team chore rotation of video, camp/water, and kitchen duties (including meal prep backup and dishwashing).  The video team set up an editing station in the classroom on our hostel’s small courtyard, the camp team started cleaning and organizing (but not purifying water yet, as we bought enough to get us through at least tomorrow), and the kitchen crew got behind Dona Maria and got instructions for serving and cleaning up dinner.  

Dinner, by the way, was delicious fried chicken (with a promise that even greater and more glorious fried chicken was still ahead), beans, rice, pasta, salad, bananas, and bread.  We also had acerola juice and bottled water, and all seemed right with the world.  

We set up a shower rotation and agreed to meet as a group at 9pm to do a group reflection on our experience so far.  Malia had a book report still dangling from our meeting last Saturday so she led us off reviewing some of the economic, social, and political information that we’ve been covering for the last few months.  Then Team Girassol took up the question of what we are observing about the socioeconomics of Brazil in our first glimpses of it.  

Despite our diminished capacities, we had a full-on discussion of economic justice and the range of models we have seen in our lives and in the last 24 hours plus as we moved from San Francisco to Miami to Manaus to Santarém.  Shawny assured us that everything we touched on would come to new light when we get to our eventual destination in the remote(ish) community of Anã this Friday.  

After this long and exhilarating day, we found our way into our hammocks by about 10:30, so that we could each have at least eight hours of sleep before Dona Maria arrives to begin breakfast around 6:30am.  Hopefully we can sleep through the beginnings of breakfast prep and make up for all of the sleep we missed as we traveled.  

We are happy, healthy, curious, excited and perhaps best of all: together.  We can tell that something very special is about to happen for each of us and we can’t wait to tell you all about it through these pages (and the pictures and videos that will eventually accompany them) and when we see you after our return.  We know that some of you are anxious about what we’ve gotten ourselves into.  We’ll do our best to comfort you when we can, make good decisions when we are out on our own, and maximize the transformative experience that we have promised ourselves.  Thanks for coming along with us; watch this space as its content unfolds . . .

Hour number ten of waiting to actually travel to Brazil in the Miami airport. Mr. Worldwide was not present :( 

Here, we see students boarding the plane for Manaus… for the second time… they’re still in high spirits… little did they know… they’d be kicked off one more time… their spirits, were thus, crushed. 

ABSOLUTE CHAOS IN THE MANAUS AIRPORT (we hard a hard time figuring out the bag situation). 

At least American Airlines was nice enough to feed us  (with dry sandwiches)!!! 

Beautiful picture of our new home for the next month! 

It was super fun to pick out our new beds. Thankfully, we didn’t have to test out the mattresses, but we still can’t rip off the tags. 

Jaron and Sofilha sharing a super sweet moment while walking the streets of Santarém.