Back From The West!

This trip turned out to be way more adventure than I ever expected it to be! Right off the bat the excitement began; but not in a nice kind of way. My bus was scheduled to leave the rodoviária (bus station for between states) downtown at 8:00pm and so I decided to get there with lots of time and leave the house at 7:00pm. The walk to the bus station by our house takes about 5 minutes and then there are 3 different buses I can take from there which would take about another 15 minutes. So I estimated arriving at around 7:30pm because of bus times and other things. As you can probably guess already that did not happen as planned. I had all my things ready to go and was about to leave the house when I was struck with a wicked stomache pain; I won't get into details but needless to say I didn't leave the house on time. It was about 7:30 when i got to our bus station and the next bus was not scheduled to leave until 7:39! I decided to take one of the buses that I wasn't familiar with but I knew would pass the bus station. I was told that if I took that bus I should get off at the stop before the final station and it would be right by the rodoviária. Since I had been downtown lots and had visited the rodoviária many times before as well I figured it would be fairly obvious when to get off the bus and didn't ask the cobrador to tell me when to get off... big mistake.

I ended up missing the stop that I was supposed to get off on and went to the terminal station. It wasn't a huge deal because I knew how to get to the rodoviária from there and it wasn't too far. Then I looked at the time and realized I had a total of about 4 minutes to get there before my bus was leaving; that is when I started to run. With a huge back pack, my purse full of things, and a plastic bag with my gum-boots I was making a pretty big scene running in between other people and their bags. I went straight to the door that my bus was to be leaving from and saw a bus sitting there about to leave. I yelled at them to wait and said that I thought that was my bus. One of the guys looked at my ticket and said "seu ônibus já saiu" - my bus had already left. He pointed me towards who I should talk to about my ticket and off I went. I walked passed a clock and it was 8:02pm - so close. All sweaty and out of breath I explained my situation to the guy behind the counter and asked if there were any other buses leaving that night for Guaraciaba. He informed me that there wasn't another bus leaving until the same time the next day. Not knowing what to do I told him to hold on a second so that I could phone João and see what words of advice he could give me. Two phone calls later and no answer I realized I'd have to figure this one out by myself. I walked back to the counter and told the man helping me that the next night wouldn't work. I was about to go ask some of the other companies if they had anything that night going to Guaraciaba - even though that would mean paying for two tickets - when one of the other employees started talking to the guy helping me. They were talking so fast and I had no idea what was going on but they were hurrying and writing a bunch of stuff on my ticket so I figured it was a good thing. One of them came around the counter and motioned for me to follow him. He explained to me that I was going to get onto a different bus that would take me to Lages where it would meet up with the bus I was originally supposed to get on and I could transfer there. After saying thank-you about a million times I got onto the bus. The rest went smoothly from there and I was pretty proud of myself and my portuguese to be able to make it through that situation successfully :)

I arrived in Guaraciaba at about 7:30am and met up with Rua at the apartment that they rent. Since I was nervous about missing my bus stop and didn't sleep too much or too well on the bus I went back to bed until about 12pm when João Lucas and Tracy all arrived. Tracy had been staying at a local families farm for the previous week and was just meeting up with the rest of the group that morning. Once we were all together we went out for some lunch and got some other things organized. Rua needed to come back to Florianopolis and so we got his bus ticket and dropped him off in São Miguel so he could get on his way. That afternoon they had another farm to go and visit and I got to tag along and see what they do when they are working in the west. We met up with the farmers and worked through a questionaire; this was a little bland because I didn't understand half of the questions or what they were talking about and it was a pretty large questionaire. After they observed the milking and tested each cow for mastitis and then measured the calves. On the way back to the apartment we stopped by the supermarket to pick up some meat and a few beers to have a bbq that night.

The next morning we jumped into the car and headed out for Foz do Iguaçu. During the ride it started raining so hard that cars were pulling over to wait it out and people were hydroplaning all over. At one point we could barely see  out of the windshield already and a car went speeding past us and splashed so much water on us that we couldn't see for what felt like forever. All João could do was slow down gradually and hope that going straight was a good direction for us. It was cool to see such a huge amount of water coming down but kind of scary to be driving in. We got to our hostel and unpacked all our things and then headed towards Paraguay! They have a friendly border agreement and so you can cross without showing documents unless they stop you. We parked on the Brazil side of the bridge and walked across to the street venders just on the other side of the bridge. After looking around for a while we went into an actual shopping centre to check it out. The prices there are so much cheaper than in Brazil that when you look at people driving or walking back across the bridge almost every single car is stuffed to the max and the poeple walking are carrying as much as physically possible. We ate sushi for lunch in the mall and it was absolutely delicious! Afterwards we went on a search for some costumes to wear later that evening at a party we were thinking of going to. We ended up buying some knock-off socker jerseys and some tall socks to look like socker players from team Vasco.

With our costumes and some other purchases in hand we went back to Brazil and went to buy our tickets to the show that night. We searched for some extra things that would really make our costumes more authentic but couldn't find what we wanted so we headed out for some dinner. There are a lot of different cultures in Foz do Iguaçu and we decided to check out one of the Arabic restaurants. Tracy and I tried kibe cru for the first time which is a raw beef dish mixed with a type of flour and spices. The fact that it was raw bothered me a bit but I tried it and it wasn't half bad. To me it just kind of tasted like the flour that was in it though and the conversation earlier was all about how you prepare tongue to cook it so I wasn't really in the mood for eating things like that. After dinner, all nice and full, we decided that a nap was what we needed before going to the party (we weren't planning on leaving the hostel until about midnight). After a power-nap we got into character, had a few drinks, and headed to the party. I was unbelievably excited to be going to a costume party! It completely made up for the loss of this years halloween. The party was absolutely awesome; it was outdoors, multiple stages, live music, dj's, one giant beer garden, and tons of people having a great time!

The next morning we went to a chinese food buffet for breakfast; a strange choice but it was tastey. After breakfast it was back in the car and off to see the waterfalls. They were massive! Such a beautiful landscape and a great way to spend our morning. After the waterfalls we went to Itaipu - the biggest hydro electric plant in the world! It was very interesting and we were pretty lucky with the time that we went; only a small part of the year is the water level high enough to see the gates open for the overflow and when we went they were open! After that it was back to the apartment in Guaraciaba.

Monday there were more farms to visit and so it was another early morning for us. There was only one farm in the morning and the family was extremely nice. After the milking and feeding we went to do the questionaire in their house. They brought out tons of oranges and magoes along with whole bunches of pastries and breads. We hadn't eaten breakfast yet so I was really excited to see them. After the questionaire was completed we hiked up the hill to where the cows were grazing and I watched as they collected the flight-distance information for each of the cows. One person would walk up to a cows front shoulder at a ninety degree angle and then say how many meters away they were from the cow when it started to move. Luckily the farmer knew all of his cows and they didn't need to try and read the ear tags at the same time as figuring out the flight distance.

After we were done at that farm we went for lunch at the mom of one of our friends, Grazy's, hotel restaurant. She probably fed us enough food to feed ten people and not just four, but it was delicious and we made a sizeable dent in what she had served us. We sat in the restaurant for a while talking with Grazy's mom and digesting before heading out again. Before going to the next farms of the day we visited a couple other places to ask if they would let them visit them later on in the week to do the same thing. We stopped by two farms before it was time for the next milkings. There were two farms in the afternoon so we split up into groups: João and Tracy, Lucas and I. Both these farms had about 44 cows and it went pretty fast. Again we were with extremely nice people and I enjoyed being there very much. I couldn't imagine waking up and visiting so many different farms every day the way that they do for their project but I'm glad I was able to see what they do.

That night I bought my bus ticket back to Florianopolis and I left the crew after dinner. Now it is back to work for a little bit and then off to Rio!