Off and Rolling: 2021

Connection. It is such a simple word, but it holds so much inside it when you really think about it. We left our home and our country and we left so many of our connections with friends and family. Some of those connections stayed the same, some strengthened, and some faded, but they were all different. And new connections are hard, especially with a new language and a new job. They take time and so you really rely on the connections you bring with you. We knew that coming to Brazil would give us more time to connect as a family, but we had no idea just how much when we started. And then you throw in a global pandemic, and suddenly family time becomes your all the time. But despite the occasional fraying of those same connections, we more than survived and I am a little sad to be heading home knowing that I am going to have to share my family again. Yes I know that everyone needs their space, myself included, but it is going to be strange to shift gears again back to a world full of connections.

So as folks do when things are coming to a close, I have been pondering our first days here and remembering what those times were like, especially for Hannah and Lila. It seems a lifetime and several inches of height ago when those two landed here in Brazil, and they will not leave the same people, or the same sisters. A lot has happened for both of them. Struggles, successes, happiness, and sadness; usually in the same twenty minutes these days. All joking aside, deep down I hope that these two years are a source of connection that they never lose. I will be the first person to say that not every moment in their relationship is rainbows and unicorns, but that is part of what makes it amazing to watch. One moment they just need some alone time, and the next moment there is nothing but giggling coming from a pile of arms and legs and blankets. And I don’t know how their connection will change when we return home, and I don’t know how their connection will be in the future. But for now, in this moment, they are sisters who have been there for each other. My dream is that they will always be there for each other. So as part of the official record of our time here in Brazil, I present my pictorial homage to two pretty amazing young women who just happen to be sisters. May this moment be a connection for you always.

Well, it is July 4th and we are once again sitting in an airport awaiting our flight back to Brasilia. A strange way to celebrate the 4th of July for sure, but nothing about our time here has been normal. The big difference now is that we have officially entered the “doing everything for the last time” phase of our time here. We left our apartment for the last time. We took a trip in Brazil for the last time. We hiked to a waterfall for the last time. We saw macaws for the last time. I know that is a little melodramatic and that this is only the last time for these two years, but who knows when, or if, we will ever come back to Brazil. It is not because we don’t want to. We would come back in a heartbeat and would love to bring friends and family with us, but we also know that things don’t always go as planned, so we will be thankful for the time we have had here and hopeful to return some day.

This trip was to a new part of Brazil for us, and for the first time in almost a year and a half, we had someone from outside Brazil join us. My dad is fully vaccinated and so he accepted our invitation to join us on our last adventure. And it did not disappoint. He endured two days of crazy travel just to make it to Cuiaba where we met him, and then we dragged him to three different locations in ten days while enduring weather so hot our rental car air conditioning couldn’t keep up, and weather so cold that there was frost on the ground for the first time in at least fifty years. Side note, we are officially weather wimpy. I know one particular friend who is going to especially enjoy watching me wear a puffy coat and hat in sixty degree weather, but our bodies are going to need some acclimatizing when we return to Bend. Two years living in a place where the temps ranged from pleasantly cool to comfortably warm almost all year and checking the weather only meant deciding whether or not to carry an umbrella has changed us. How permanently? Only time will tell.

Back to our adventure. We left the city of Cuiaba and headed down towards the Transpantanal Highway and our first lodge. The Transpantanal Highway is a 120 kilometer long dirt road that leaves the small town of Pocone and literally ends in a river that divides the northern and southern sections of the Pantanal. There are 120 bridges on this road, of which about 100 feel comfortable and safe. I will share an example of the other twenty in the pictures. The speed limit is 25 MPH, which will give you an idea of how good the road is. Our first lodge was 40 kilometers down the dirt highway, and it took us over an hour and a half to arrive there. Thankfully, this was mainly because there was something amazing to see at almost every bridge. Animals, birds, caimans, and tapirs all congregate at the watering holes under the bridges and provide a roadside show about every kilometer. We spent five days at our first lodge horseback riding, hiking, safari jeeping, boating and generally being amazed at the northern section of the Pantanal. Every day was a new animal, bird, or plant, or all three at once. Because the lodge was built around water, we often had the best wildlife viewing from our porch. Groups of capybara would wander through eating the grass, hundreds of caiman lived in the pond and stream steps away from the buildings, and macaws and toucans were regular visitors overheard. We woke up one morning to find fresh jaguar tracks near the property fence. We were walking by at 7:30 and the jaguar tracks were on top of tire tracks from someone who had arrived at 6:00. Crazy to think there was a jaguar walking 100 meters away from our rooms that morning. And then not a kilometer later, we came across boa constrictor tracks that were fresh enough that we could see the pattern of the scales in the sand. We did not actually see a jaguar at our first lodge, but that was the reason that we booked two nights down at the end of the Transpantanal Highway specifically to look for jaguars. Unfortunately, this part of our trip coincided with record breaking low temperatures across the area, which meant that many animals were hunkering down and trying not to freeze their feathers off. Our second day in Porto Jofre was warmer and we were lucky enough to see one jaguar, a four year old female named Pollyana who was kind enough to hang out on the riverbank while we gaped and took pictures. We also saw even more birds than ever and got to enjoy the life on the river for a couple of days. Did we do that while wearing every layer of clothing we had packed? Yes! Was it worth it? Yes, now that we are warm again.

A long travel day took us north to the town of Chapada dos Guimaraes which is located at the top of a cliff band that creates an almost thousand kilometer long plateau reaching all the way back to Brasilia. Cliffs mean waterfalls, and in this case, caves too, and so we spent our last few days in and around the national park. Like I have explained before, national parks here are completely different from the US. We spent most of July 3rd, a Saturday, in the national park and were by ourselves at every stop. We did cross paths with one group on a hike to an overlook, and we also saw two women and their guide as were leaving our first stop on the river. But basically we had a national park to ourselves.

We have the next two days to do laundry, repack bags, get Covid tests and do a few more things “for the last time.” Finger crossed we find ourselves on a plane on Wednesday afternoon, and double fingers crossed that we can find our long underwear when we land in Redmond.

Be safe, be happy, and be well,

Adam, Sara, Lila and Hannah

These are caiman, a relative of the crocodile and slightly abundant in the Pantanal.

Kiskadee, very cute and also very willing to steal crumbs right off your plate if you weren’t paying attention at breakfast.

This is an aracari, which is a small toucan. I think of it as a toucan that you would get if you let five year olds do the coloring.

The emerald jacamar. This little bug catcher is not much bigger than a hummingbird and would sit in their spot and do a quick airborne loop to snag a bug and then return and wait for the next one.

This is Pollyanna, a four year old female.

This is about ten steps from the rooms. Caimans and capybara would share the sunshine and water. Capybaras are too big for caiman to eat, so they were often sitting right next to each other.

Pollyanna deciding she is done letting us admire her and thinking about moving off, or she is deciding whether she can get into the boat for a Lila snack.

This is a tiger heron, which is about the size of a goose and even more spectacular in person.

This is the national park in Guimaraes.

I want hair like this curucau.

This is a group of six hyacinth macaws in a tree at the lodge. They spent over an hour there playing, arguing, and generally making a ruckus.

The caverns of Guimaraes. The corridor behind the girls was about 100 feet tall.

Another hyacinth macaw picture. Daily visitors to the lodge, so lots of chances to see them.

River snorkeling in a freshwater river in the national park.

This is a kingfisher grabbing a bird as big as themself.

One of Sara’s favorites, the great black hawk.

This is a coati, which look kind of like a cross between a lemur and a raccoon.

This is a black collared hawk having a fish snack.

This is called the Blue Pool and was in the caverns near the national park.

This is Lila deciding that Grandpa needed more than just the waterfall in his picture.

Another view of the caverns.

Bridge #116. And no, that is not a funhouse mirror filter, that is the bridge. I am standing between two gaping holes and the slant to the left is even more pronounced in real life.