Poland was our favorite Baltic country. It is lively and modern and as it is part of the European Common Market it feels like it is growing; citizens are fully employed and college is free or low cost. WODSKI (Vodka) is the national drink and we had a dinner accompanied by a wodski tasting. Above you see Sally with her first two shots lined up on her way to tasting every European grapefruit vodka available. (Finlandia was the best and the Polish version the worst.) Steven did NOT find the horseradish vodka to his liking!

The Poles love their breads, and sausages and meats. This casual local restaurant, a short walk from our hostel, made you start at a huge meat counter to select your cuts, then seated you and started the wodski shots. Before you finish your first shot, perfectly cooked meats, salads, and fresh bread arrives…and the shots continue! I wish we had this restaurant in our Albany neighborhood.

Our first of many, many medieval town squares (yawn…) was in Poznan, about halfway between Berlin and Warsawa. Because we stayed on the town square we happened onto an international ukelele festival! An awesome musician from Australia played faster and faster versions of the William Tell Overture as the crowd yelled, “Faster, faster!”(below)

He was was followed by two local rockers pretending to be Mexicans dressed in big sombreros, tight pants, and …with limited Spanish. They performed a variety of big rock anthems…Move over, Boss! What a hoot with their electrified ukes, rock concert lighting and jumps out into the audience as though into a mosh pit. They got EVERYBODY dancing in spite of the rain.

Poland felt different from the other Baltic countries: friendlier, Catholic, more public art, way better food and less expensive.

Although during WW2, the Poles did their share of marching their Jewish countryman into the forest to shoot them, they also had the largest and most successful Jewish Uprising (Warsaw) of all the ghettos in the Baltics. The large Jewish populations in the Baltics have disappeared but each capital has one remaining synagogue that has been preserved.

You can see how stunned he is! This gorgeous candy display is rebuilt every Tuesday with all different candy and decorative theme…and is just one small niche in a German department store that dedicates 2 huge floors to food products. Approximately 5,000 square feet was dedicated to chocolate products alone…just in case you have a hankering for chocolate made with camel milk. There were gorgeous displays of breads, oils and vinegars, teas, spices, poultry and meats (wild and farmed), nuts, pastries, soups and stews, sausages, aspics, crustaceans and fish, and small restaurants with tasting menus specializing in each area. It was as big as an IKEA for gourmet international foods and contained food delicacies we’ve never seen before. I could live here!

I always thought of Germans as terse and professional, eg. lacking a sense of humor…but I was so wrong! Enjoy this brilliantly located ad using the bus’s exhaust system to advertise a drug to treat erectile dysfunction (above). Ha!

We asked our new friend Tomas (who generously squired us around Berlin’s newest bars and best donor kebab restaurants) if German men had a predilection to pee “free style”, like “Look Ma, no hands!”  He had no idea WTF we were talking about until we led him to the toilet in our apartment…then he laughed heartily at the LARGE graphic above.

Of course Germans still feel shame for allowing the Nazis to systematically murder their countrymen so there are historical reminders throughout the city. This marker (indicating a site for a former railroad station that shipped Jews, gypsies and homosexuals to the concentration camps listed) is right outside the high end department store shown at the top.

The public transportation system is easy, everyone speaks English, there is inexpensive and delicious Turkish food in every tiny space around town, and there is public art and murals everywhere. We loved Berlin for exploration on foot. The only problem was intense heat (95 degrees daily) and high humidity except at night and first thing in the morning. Still, five days was not enough for us, and we will return soon.

“TOE OF SATAN” was one of the ghost chili pepper sauces in the “over 18 tasting room”, warning it would “melt your face off” due to 9 million Scoville units of heat. Given the cold outside and all the brew pubs nearby in the Texas Hill Country, many people were not shy about “getting their sweat on” with some tasting. Llano TX also had some iconic dry rub BBQ brisket coming out of huge cookers alongside sausages, ribs, pork roasts…all by the pound and with lots of friendly, communal picnic tables and endless napkins.

Our continuing Southwest road trip, though now veering north and west toward home, continued to provide great federal access free camping as above, and strange local art installations like this concrete Stonehenge in a field in Texas Hill Country…

…and amazing sights like White Sands National Monument that is entirely gypsum based sand dunes so it looks like you are driving through a snowy landscape. Not so good for birding, however!

Snow flurries dogged us through New Mexico and gave us solitude at the VLA: “VERY LARGE ARRAY” (radio telescope facility) near Socorro, NM.  27 huge portable radio telescope dishes are set on rail lines up to 23 miles apart at the maximum array, and tilt their dishes all at once in the same direction every six hours to focus on a different area of the sky for research purposes. Moving the dishes on rail lines allows 6 different configurations for viewing. Brand new galaxies similar to our own are forming and can be seen with this massive tool capturing gamma ray and x-ray images. The images of the “burps” of flaming gas emitting from supernova black holes is dramatic! Set in a huge flat basin, the surrounding mountains block electric transmission so these dishes collect data 24 hours a day, not needing darkness and clear skies like an optical telescope. We appreciated this as we had to cancel both reservations for star viewing parties at both MacDonald and Lowell Observatories due to cloud cover.

Upon reaching the very touristy Sedona, AZ the back edge of the cold front finally reached us with blizzard conditions. We got to Flagstaff on the heels of a snowplow and hunkered down in a motel for 2 days to let the roads clear. It made our visits to Sunset Crater and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon just so pristine and beautiful in the snow. What a treat!

The trip west thereafter was pretty uneventful…which is a good thing after the challenges of federal facility closures, blizzards, being towed for repair, and leaving some of our portable home on the desert floor. Uneventful is good.

Winter is a wonderful time to explore the Southwest, thus the migratory birds linger, and the “Snowbirds” from Canada and the Northern US flock here in RVs and to seasonal second homes. We nestled in next to them on golf courses, in community hot springs, and in National Parks while we explored the Chihuahuan, Colorado, Sonoran, and Mojave Deserts during an 8 week road trip to the Southwest. Much of these deserts are managed by the Feds with free camping through the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service. You cannot imagine the glory of boondocking at Whitewater Wash Draw with 20,000 honking Sandhill Crane taking off and landing en masse at 5 AM and 5 PM within view of our camp.

Kicking off our trip with a return to the Blythe Bluegrass Festival near the Colorado River, as returnees and early arrivals we were placed as close to the main stage as you could get and not be in the sound tent or in the seated audience. A brief but furious dust storm drove us and our RV neighbors inside for a few minutes while most concert attenders had to flee quite a ways to a solid building as the wind leveled even the sound tent. As usual at these festivals, the jamming at night in the campground was extraordinary as many of the featured musicians sat in with very talented amateur musicians.

Crossing into Arizona brought us to the ugly town of Quartzite, with the rudest and most disorganized U.S. Post Office; it only exists to house mailboxes serving the seasonal visitors living all winter out in the open desert; there is NO MAIL DELIVERY in the town. Unfortunately, Steven was unable to pick up his new hearing aids that were located somewhere inside that post office for a week! Once you clear the town traffic to head south, KOFA, the King of Arizona National Monument has thousands of acres of free, open desert with lots of slot canyon hiking. Unfortunately, the dirt roads are graded to leave big mounds on each side that have to be crossed up and over to get off road to a level camp site. We misjudged our entry into one site and scraped off some bolts from the bottom of our rig. Some plumber’s metal strapping kept the car parts snug against the bottom of the vehicle for the rest of the trip but we had to eschew many of the free, off road/BLM and Forest Service sites we would normally have utilized for camping and hiking.

We skedaddled around Arizona and New Mexico’s bigger cities, favoring little mining towns and artsy towns like Bisbee, AZ and Silver City, NM (above). Of course the kitschy tourist towns like Tombstone, AZ called for some dress up formal portraiture…

Marfa, TX required roadside photos of the art installation Prada store set out in the desert in the middle of nowhere…

Our two major hiking destinations were Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona, and Big Bend National Park in West Texas. They did not disappoint.

Chiricahua had great hikes among the amazing rock formations and the prettiest campground. It also had large families of Coatimundi identified in the bush by their thick, long stripey upright tails.

Unfortunately, we were towed early one evening from a trailhead when we returned from a long hike to our immobilized motor home needing some emergency electrical work. That was a first, and we hope a ‘never again’.

Big Bend National Park is enormous and we were glad we had a week to hike four different areas in the park. The southern end had a “hike-in hot spring” on the edge of the Colorado River…Ah! Bliss! …especially as a cold front blew in (and dogged us for the rest of the trip). Smaller rock formations out in the flats made for fun, short hikes and “bouldering” (below).

We also booked a lot more campground time than we needed as the National Parks were possibly closing due to federal government shut down; campers with paid campground reservations MADE IN ADVANCE were allowed in. Below, gorgeous hiking at the north end in Santa Elena Canyon.

For Valentine’s Day, we bought into all the hype about the romantic RiverWalk in San Antonio, TX and stayed at a riverside hotel next to the Alamo with a 23rd story hot tub overlooking the city. The Tub at the top of the world was awesome, especially in the freezing fog, but…neither the TexMex food nor the touristy Riverwalk would ever draw us back to San Antonio again.

Austin, TX however was greatly enlivened by our fabulous host Sherry who dragged us to a great local dive music club after Sally quickly bailed from the crowded “iconic clubs” downtown. Instead we assuaged our disappointment with ice cream cooled with nitrogen gas…actually quite a perfect texture and it melts more slowly!

Off to Sherry’s local neighborhood dive in East Austin, we stayed and danced to the blues until 2 AM and then went to all night street tacos and all night donut shops. Not bad partying behavior for a trio of old farts!

DUBAI

A non-stop 17-hour flight and a 12-hour time difference brought us to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). As our main goal was to tackle our  jet lag before arriving in Sri Lanka, we had few expectations of our 3 days in Dubai. Good thing, as it is just a glitzy shopping Mecca, real estate enterprise, and business hub.  It certainly is no longer a small fishing village as UAE was prior to 1971. “Old Dubai” is best found riding  the small ferries along Dubai Creek with the locals.

Many yellow and orange cranes loomed over Dubai’s landscape like an army of gentle dinosaurs, the crane capital of the world.  Dubai is like many Las Vegases and Disneylands, all under construction at once. Thee tallest buildings on the planet. Fantastical projects. More than 900 cranes. Beautiful in its own way as you can see in the D. Rodrigo photo below.

Downtown Dubai at sunrise features the very dominant Burj Khalifa Tower(world’s tallest building since 2009 and now the world’s tallest man-made structure!).

SRI LANKA

Five hours north by air, Sri Lanka is a thoroughly Buddhist and agrarian, island culture. With a 96% literacy rate, and English taught in all levels of school, many young adults go to Dubai for jobs as nannies, in construction and sales, sending their salaries home to family. Sri Lanka, lush and green is known for three WHO sites, beaches, and wild elephants. In fact most farmers we spoke with wanted to discuss HEC, “human elephant conflict”. As homesteading to create a farm is how most Sri Lankins obtain their land, elephant migration patterns are disrupted by rice paddies and vegetable producing fields, meaning they are destroyed by elephant migration, leaving families impoverished until the next planting cycle 6 months later. Poisons, designed for other wild predators, is illegally used on elephants.

The highlight of our 9-day island tour was neither a world heritage site (although the temple of Buddha’s tooth was amazing as was the 42-story SIGIRIYA), nor birdwatching and millennials of wild elephants. It was a terrifying ride on a public bus, replete with a LOUD Bollywood video playing, disco lights flashing, and the driver’s use of a LOUD and long air horn melody as he passed on blind curves at top speed. We realized that drivers use their ears as much as their eyes to stay out of harm’s way.

In spite of their sweetness and dominant Buddhist culture, Sri Lanka was torn apart by armed civil war from 1982 until the defeat of the rebel Tamil Tigers in 2009. Sri Lankans celebrate their government’s victory and enjoy the prosperity of their now peaceful nation.

SOUTHERN INDIA

Across an 18-mile inlet from Sri Lanka lies the toe of India. We spent our next 16 days exploring two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. These States are predominantly represented by Hindu and Jain worshippers. They take their worship seriously with festivals on a daily basis requiring the fanciest saris, the holy men, temple elephants, cannon firings, fireworks, and lines of patient visitors spending hours in the sun to leave fresh flowers and fruit in the temples.

The intense need for more hydroelectric power has led the State of Tamil Nadu to sacrifice their fabulous Periyar National Park as the State will flood it to raise hydroelectric productivity. The birdwatching in Periyar NP was unparalleled (especially as we were once again paired with the best birder women from Wisconsin). Huge flying squirrels and varieties of monkeys also kept us company among the Tarzan yell inducing vines.

Kerala is reached by driving over the Western Gaats (coastal mountains dividing Kerala and Tamil Nadu) and revealed the growth of new houses …and sales outlets for kitchen and bathroom plumbing supplies, a sure sign of rising wealth. Kerala has a 90% literacy rate due to Catholic missionaries. It remains a predominantly Christian State. Like Sri Lanka, it exports its educated young work force to Dubai, who send money home to their families. Add a huge increase in tourism in the last 10 years with farmers moving into more lucrative work on the 1000 rice barges now converted to tourist houseboats, and their economy is booming.

The Kerala Backwaters is a huge delta of levees and islands, each serviced by passenger ferries supporting the island residents. Their houses sit on 20-ft deep levees with enough room for a tiny house and waterside walking path, sitting between the internal rice paddies and the waterways. All bathing and washing occurs waterside so local life is visible from the charming houseboats. We lucked out by being assigned to the most recently renovated houseboat with a spa tub and the best cook! It was a wonderful break from dense, noisy traffic throughout India and Sri Lanka, dodging motorbikes, three wheeled tuk-tuks, bikes, and those crazy public buses, all forms of transport blaring their horns.

The dance/art form unique to Kerala is KATHAKALI. The devotees leave their families to begin formal, full-time training before the age of nine as they are contortionists, training their bodies and their facial muscles. They must learn the facial painting and adhesive display for every character, their singing parts, hand and facial gestures, and costuming for hundreds of male/female, monster/deity, royalty/whore parts across hundreds of Hindu myths. It is so fantastic that we are printing a photo (feature image, and again below) of just one of many characters we saw in a performance in Kerala. I tried to raise my eyebrows quickly and repeatedly as they do…it is impossible without their training, much less moving tiny unique facial muscles we couldn’t even identify to make wiggle at all. We had fun grimacing like crazy just to try for a tiny wiggle!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Kerala, India

As committed travelers during 60% of any year, we spend a lot of time perusing travel articles, scoping out travel deals, and making reservations and plans for the next year. Most of the time, we proceed as planned, with minor adaptations for weather and RV repair; most of the time. Our plan for our predictable Oregon Coast Summer, and Autumn in British Columbia seemed unremarkable and easily achievable.

Massive wildfires in Oregon fowled the air everywhere except on the Coast. Our 2nd year as hosts in our Oregon Coast campground was welcome for the clean air and campfire time with our Portland Pals, Amy and Simon (woof!) and Rochelle and Chris (our BBQ chef extraordinaire).

Almost two year old Linus from the Netherlands and his mom (our Airbnb host from Jerusalem) joined us for the eclipse as we were 2% (30 miles) from the line of totality. Linus now has an expanded vocabulary, pronouncing it Eeeeeeeeeeeee-clipse with a huge grin!

We told our lovely City Hall staff that we would not be returning as campground hosts next year due to our peripatetic nature; we got a bad case of “itchy feet” way early this year. We left our RV at PDX to fly home to my niece Francesca’s wedding in San Francisco. After a huge Italian wedding mass and a joyous procession through North Beach, we celebrated at the San Francisco Art Institute on an outside terrace. Sally’s son Jacob and  girlfriend Shelley joined us on the windy ramparts for a family portrait (minus the bride and groom).

Upon our return by flight to the Pacific Northwest, we drove to Mt Baker outside Bellingham WA, camping on the banks of the Nooksak River under cloudless skies.

With no camp notice that there had been an unusual  summer infestation of field mice, we of course left our doors open in the evenings and ended up with 3 mice hiding in our rig until nightfall…when they came out and ate like giant beasts. Motorhomes have so many electric, plumbing, sewer, heating and lighting lines running behind the paneling that the inner walls are very “porous” leaving lots of hiding places for tiny critters! Sally caught two mice humanely with peanut butter in paper bags for outside release but the last one was too smart for Sal’s tricks. This one eluded us for days until we finally succeeded with a deadly mouse trap baited with a delicious casserole of bacon, cheese, peanut butter, and chocolate. Yummy!…and did the trick. Sorry little mouse; it was war, and we had to win it!

Although we didn’t sleep well at night until we cleared all mice, the daytime hiking was extraordinary with constant views of Mts. Baker and Shuksan, many lakes, and sweet plump mountain blueberries!

Mice free, we headed to British Columbia with our Bike Friday folding bikes hiding under the RV bed. Hot springs and hiking in rain forests were a great start to our relaxing plan for Autumn.

In Vancouver, which has numerous urban bike trails, Steven had a lovely ride through Stanley Park, Gastown and the West End of Vancouver…until the domino effect prevailed; a speedy cyclist clipped the two riders behind Steven who crashed, taking him down too. They were stretchered off with severe injuries and he was advised to get an elbow X-ray given the substantial swelling evident. His arm was loosely cast and placed in a sling to await a new cast after the swelling abated from his…fractured elbow. Unfortunately, the one winged man couldn’t help with driving and we were 17 hours from home (not including 7 hours of intense traffic in Vancouver BC, at the US Border Crossing, and from Seattle to Olympia….Grrr!)

However, heading home for future medical appointments, we enjoyed a sunset ferry ride on the last ferry that still crosses the mighty Columbia River, at Cathlamet, WA where we camped on the River. We found nearly empty campgrounds at lakes and rivers in Washington, Oregon and California on our way south. The only sour note was the enduring heavy smoke in Oregon due to new wildfires in the luscious Gorge on the Columbia River. Such a tragedy! Even though theatre season is still alive in Ashland, OR in late September, the streets were empty and the few headed out to activities sported face masks.

The great thing about taking a forced break from traveling is having more time with our friends at home. We timed it right for the 3 day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco with our friends Julia and Keith. We camped near the park in our RV, enjoying up to 8 stages of music, all free and very eclectic. The Blue Angels, providing acrobatic jet and contrail shows (courtesy of your tax dollars), clearly enjoyed performing for the crowds at the Festival.

We kept returning to the “Silent Disco” enclosure, where two DJs spin music on two radio frequencies to the free headphones provided to the dancers. Lotsa people dancing their brains out…in complete silence so there is no disruption of acts on local stages. This guy won the “Best T-shirt” prize for his very topical version of, “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching”, a phrase we love and embrace.

We left the Pantanal (see Brazil blog 2) by flying due north to Alta Floresta in the Southern Amazon Basin. Bumpy driving on dusty back roads brought us to the Teles Pires River where we would stay for the week in an off-grid riverside eco-resort. Two sixteen story bird towers allow views over the top of the dense Amazonian canopy. Listening silently to the jungle awaken at dawn is one of the most lovely and moving experiences we had on this trip. One cannot stay at the top for long as the sway is significant enough for some of us to get motion sickness. The featured image, shot from the top, (apparently not available for viewing on your handheld device) shows Sally paused about halfway up the tower climb, like a person penciled into an Escher drawing.

We also walked under the canopy following troops of red-handed howler monkeys, including babies on parent backs…

…and amazing Sochi Monkeys with the best noses ever! The monkeys seemed to be curious about us too as they stayed in the trees over the trail, rather than moving off trail where we could not follow.

We stopped and rafted up with some Brazilian Fish Biologists mid-river who were collecting fish as part of their research on the effect of damming the river 30 miles downstream. They explained that these piranhas can shred almost anything in minutes but attack humans only when there is no other food source.
Macaws are of course everywhere, flying and squawking exuberantly in breeding pairs. We even caught two Red-Headed Manikin birds doing their Michael Jackson “Moon Walk” moves to entice breeding females. That is worth watching on You Tube videos.

We caught sight of the very rare Crested Eagle…of course, too elusive for a good photo! Butterflies live in abundance under the canopy, and stop long enough for a photos.

What’s better than butterflies and yellow spotted turtles enjoying the sun on the river?

With hundreds of bird sightings, and pages of notes, of course, some just don’t get captured in the brain, only in the camera. Anyone know what this gorgeous bird is? Come on Judith…we know you’ve got this!

Seasonally, 80% of the land is a flooded plain covering 75,000 sq. miles. 99% is privately owned land used as Fazendas (cattle ranches) many of which have become eco resorts with fast boats for touring the rivers year round, and by horseback in dry season. Rain drops 55 inches a year but the rivers and tributaries can make 15 foot rises in the wet season. Julia, Mary, and Sally took their protection from mosquitos and the Zika Virus seriously.

3500 known plant species, 1000 bird species, 400 fish species, 300 mammalian critters, 480 reptiles, and 9000 invertebrates keep your eyes alight for new flora and fauna at every turn. With over 10 million Yacare Caiman in the Pantanal, they become road obstruction before long. They hang out peaceably with Capybaras…unless the food source gets too low.

Both are food for the numerous Jaguars that would be expanding if the local ranchers weren’t killing off 200-300 a year in retribution for livestock killings. At the Pouso Alegre cattle ranch we found 2 freshly killed cattle, the first ever on this ranch. However, the owner is committed to protecting the Jaguars, so these two we found again the following evening (mating, so making some noise in the dark) will remain safe. Three of us went horseback riding during the day without a thought until we realized how close and bold the big cats were!

Some of the rare finds were the Hyacinth Macaws…

Giant Tapirs…

…Giant River Otters…about 6 times the size of our Monterrey Sea Otters! This baby is captured looking pretty glum after minutes of loud demanding whining for a bite of catfish, that was ignored by the adult until he had eaten his fill.

…and Giant Anteaters, which we didn’t see but saw their cousins, arboreal anteaters called Southern Tananduas. We did not actually see this one below but include it because our cameras were incapable of capturing a meaningful image at night when we happened on one right next to the road. Cool looking beastie, no?

Only one road crosses the Pantanal. A dirt dike crossing 120 wooden bridges between Cuiaba and Port Jofre on the Cuiaba River, a tributary of the massive Paraguay River. The Military built this part first, realized the expense was enormous, and abandoned the project at this muddy bank, where Steven enjoys a brief rest waiting for our transportation up river to the houseboat. The fast boat in the background was our daily “ride” up the rivers for exploration.

Our stays on ranches and houseboats on the River, gave us access to over five separate, “up close and personal” jaguar viewings. This beefy male sipped for 5 minutes then swam the river 10 feet in front of our speed boat while we sidled below him swimming the river…and our biologist cried with joy at the unique viewing. The jaguar is the 3rd largest cat in the world. They are so powerful, they crush the skull of their prey with one massive bite rather than strangle them by the throat.

Immersion into the strangeness of a wetlands, accessible during the dry season, is something we cannot compare to any other safari, birding tour, or backcountry hike. This is the Big Mama of biological diversity using every exaggerated description you could apply. Truly mindblowing, over and over again. These Red-Legged Seriama gave us the strangest, loudest concert sounding like hyenas with a descending laughing call and response including harmonics…for 5 minutes! They almost swallow their necks like a compressed snake to generate that volume, choking out these drawn out calls.

The other oddity was watching humans standing in intensely hot sun waiting for some wild animal to leave its’ lair, then strolling by the ranch kitchen areas and seeing them up close getting fed leftovers from the kitchen staff. My only chance for great pictures on my I-phone as the animals were finally close enough,  I almost got creamed by two giant vultures who wanted the food in my hand for feeding the nine-banded armadillos. Unfortunately, without a thick armor, I had to throw the food and run!

Startling, awe-inspiring meetings with wild animals throughout the day and night, is really hard to describe. I have pages of names of fabulous birds, tons of photos, and I am overwhelmed looking at them; Karen Share, Jim and others on our trip have generously shared photos. From 5AM wake up calls by Howler Monkeys to Jaguar tracking late at night, the days have been full. Then there is the human cultural diversity, a traffic jam on the Pantaneira Highway as motorcyclists, horses, and cattle have to share the narrow road above the vast plain of wetlands extending out on both sides.

This Tegu Lizard is an example of a primitive beauty right at our feet at one of the ranches.

Birds, birds, birds. From the burrowing owl above, to the Jabiru Stork you’ll see as the featured image (if viewing on anything except a hand held device), our species list is exploding. Our i-phones were not up to bird photography, so we give buckets of photo credit to Karen Share, with gratitude for her telephoto lens and generous nature. Our guides had great scopes but pictures through them were less successful.

Pronounced, “sair-HA-doe”, this savanna covers between 20-25 % of Brazil; half of it has already been converted to agricultural use.  It is an area responsible for more than half of Brazil’s soybeans, 40% of its beef and 84% percent of its cotton; adding lime and phosphorus can make poor soil arable with sufficient water. So successful is production here, the Capital of Brazil was moved to Brazilia to accommodate agricultural needs. We flew about an hour from Sao Paulo to Cuiaba, and then drove two hours up into the highlands about 3,000 ft above to the Cerrado. At the horizon below, you can also see the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetlands in the world.

The Cerrado has an enormous diversity of plant life that offers pharmaceutical solutions we know of already (the Barbato plant here allegedly cures HPV), and endless untested possibilities. As a comparison, California has 6,000 species of flora and fauna, whereas this area of Brazil, including the Pantanal, boasts over 10,000 species!  We were fascinated by this plant that can self-imolate to start wildfires when the area needs to be refreshed…

…or this one where the fractured line at the bottom of the seed pod, drops away to dump a huge load of seeds, only in perfect conditions.

When the fires abate, this Pepalanto plant below is the first to come back. What a beauty!

There are also great escarpments of exposed granite, making sculpture gardens…

…and sheer cliffs for safe nesting for red and green macaw pairs. The waters that originate here flow either north into the Pantanal wetlands or south to the Atlantic. That means you can pee into the Amazon River here! Yippee!

What we noticed is that Brazilians will find and enjoy even the smallest tributaries…they love water!

We enjoyed the visual map of the early life of the Leaf Miner, who is laid as an egg on a leaf, embeds itself inside the leaf and eats its way around the leaf until it finally gets fat enough to pupate, and flies away.

So many beautiful floral displays that I fell for the biologist’s silly spiel on this delicate tropical flower…until I looked closely and realized he was teasing us, because it is a bundle of plastic fencing material! Ha! Got us!

“I am not lead, I lead”. A pretty apt motto for the 11th most populous city on Earth. Sao Paulo is the financial center of Brazil, with the biggest GNP and population in the Southern Hemisphere, making us think of Tokyo, Mexico City and Delhi. It should. It is huge. A massive display of skyscrapers and urban sprawl as you fly over it, a sea of commuters as you traverse the city on the subways, a seedy, unappealing downtown, and frightening crime against the person statistics, one could easily forget that quirky neighborhoods hide out in every direction.  The abundance of pocket parks and trees make it more serene than other cities of this size.

We had only two days to explore the city before we joined our adventure travel group in  Cuiaba, so we stayed in Vila Madralena, a hip and arty neighborhood with a high degree of safety… at least in the daytime. Also it is a very walkable neighborhood. We learned the importance of this on our first Uber ride that took way longer than using the subway and walking the same distance. 183 miles of backed up traffic is the historic worst in Sao Paulo history.

Every blank wall, offered a mural. Every business with a blank wall had a mural themed to the business. A favorite was at the local veterinarian’s office featuring dogs enjoying a standing pee together.

Trees, power poles, traffic signs sprouted painted plastic bottles recycled as plant containers, and often were wrapped with fabric sheaths, ribbons, and friendly messages.

We had extended conversations with warm and chatty Paulistas, all of whom spoke several languages besides Portugese. The Portugese spoken here sounds just like Italian by cadence and inflection because the earliest immigrants were primarily Italian. 60% of the city residents claim some Italian heritage! Founded by Jesuit priests in 1554, there is little feel of the sacred now, as big business, (including the systematic destruction of the Brazilian rain forests to support cattle grazing), is the driving force here. The city’s GNP is 24th in the world compared with all countries. Due to a later influx of immigrants after the Italians, Sao Paulo has the largest Arab and Jewish population in the Americas, and the largest Japanese population anywhere in the world outside of Japan! Such a melting pot makes for a foodie paradise including excellent sushi (only 43 miles from the Atlantic Ocean), Brazilian meats cooked on skewers for slicing at the table, “Churrasco”, and over a million pizzas a day, produced by six thousand pizzerias. Ciao, bem-vindo!