Into the Wild -- Entering the Enchanted Forest

The blog is back in business or we are back from business - or... I am not sure I know any more myself... it has been a busy last couple of days, we are getting into the meat of our project and are spending tons of time lost in big spreadsheets rather than lost in the big forest.

However, the past weekend - did give us chance to get our there and feel truely lost - in a good way - sort of like being at the end of the world in a magical landscape where everything is just quiet, beautiful and alive at the same time.

We sailed up river about an hour or two to get into the actual reserve - passing parts of the river that seemed to "bubble" with the presence of little fish, soon to be followed by hundreds of birds trying to catch said fish, followed by dolphins going in for the clean up.

We went to a little village, visiting some of the people the reserve is trying to help and witnessed a very different lifestyle (showers in the river, while cleaning fish at the same for example) and finally got the visit the EcoLodge for drinks and giggles, to canoe 3 kilometers in near complete silence through the Varzea (flooded forest -- the water level here varies by 12meters between wet & dry seasons!) and finally spend the night in a floating research station, waiting for the pet aligator Sophia to join us for breakfast...

Entering the Wild...

Ribeirinho ("river-dweller") housing - note how beautiful it is here when the sun comes out -- not to mention the resulting heat and scalp burn!.

























"Cell phone"???



















Never thought the Amazon could be like this - but it was in multiple places - just dead quiet and looking like a big beautiful (green) mirror.

























Brazil Nut tree.

























Passion Fruit flower.



















Our Canoe guide Geraldo about to take us into the the Varzea.









































Inside the flooded forest - the light is amazing in there, but unfortunately very hard to capture well.



















A beautiful day coming to an end.

Beautiful Bandaids

Frustrated with our project today: no-one wants to invest in making money and everyone wants to simply receive money - arg. I've named it the beautiful band-aid approach: refusing to look at the root causes of financial problems in favor of waiting for beautiful monetary presents that will make things work in the short run - double arg!!

Dolphin Video

Stevie Ray shot this nice little video of a jumping dolphin when we were out on the river the other day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIP4tHE1W_o

Coincidentally we have just gotten news that we will be going to the heart of the reserve this week - I am incredibly excited about this opportunity and you should be expecting many more great photos and videos after that...

Introducing my Partners in Crime

Figured I should take the time to introduce you to the people who are my "three best friends" over these next couple of weeks. First (pictured left) we have Stephan K. Stephan is our team's "Token Brazilian" - born in Rio and before coming to Haas living in Sao Paulo, he is obviously fluent not only in Portuguese but also in the little nuances of Brazilian office life, negotiations, communications and so forth - all of which has proven invaluable! Stephan also happens to be the President of the Haas Soccer Club and is a master of the "Brazilian way of life" in general -- he keeps the group together and in good spirits at all times, with frequent encouragements to "relax - this is brazil", excellent cocktails and skillful selection of best places to consume grilled meat. On a side note: Stephan has promised to appear on this blog as a ghost writer - stay tuned!!!

"River Princess" Moriah is a former Ohio native, turned San Francisco native, turned Hawaiian native and our team's "Kim Bassinger in Out of Africa" look-a-like (tropical humidity does magic things to curly hair!). Moriah also has the special honor(?!) of being my room mate as has provided extraordinary services when it comes to tugging in mosquito nets, sanitizing floors (with lavender scent), employing mid-night air condition management, not to mention much laughter and general entertainment. She insists on trying to teach the locals french and is currently stalking our local high school neighbors, not-so-secretly, coveting their cute school uniforms.

Last but not least we have Steven, aka Steve, aka Stevo, aka Stevie Ray, aka Stevao. Steve is our secret Illinois weapon, who with tricks and spanish learned from a three year peace corps stint in bolivia, continuously manages to outsmart the locals and cause the rest of the team to drop the chicken (see Moriah's blog for an explanation of this term). Steve will turn 30 (yes the big 3-0) during our trip and is in for a very local style hair-cut and a largish amount of Caipirinhas to celebrate the event. Steve is also married to the lovely Kenia who is currently partying it up in Berkeley with Stephan's wife Fabi...

Imagens (Pictures)

Flying in to Tefe - this is the Amazon!

View over the town, river and main square from our hotel

Port of Tefe

Port of Tefe

Girl in favela housing

Hitting the river, Maiken and Moriah, with our local boat driver / guide Eunilson

Maiken's favorite cloud...

Ribeirinho ("river dweller") housing

Amazon style pig farming

De-forestation


Local boaters

View from the Mamiraua institute (over Lake Tefe)

Sunset over lake Tefe

Bunking in Tefe style -- Princess Moriah under the mosquito net

Team Course still going strong after our first day of work (Stephan, Moriah, Maiken, Steve)

Our Work begins...

We made it to the Mamiraua Reserve offices yesterday afternoon and received our first massive information dump. The research center is very impressive: a series of brand new buildings, situated on a large compound, right by the Lago Tefe (see pictures). The have maybe 50 people working there and to be honest the run a pretty impressive operation, addressing issues everywhere from community development, sustainable agriculture, sustainable fishing, sustainable forest use, health care and education, communication and broadcasting of news (to and from the reserve), ecotourism and and and... The offices themselves are fully inline with any wired, high tech office space I have worked in before and the people working here are highly educated scientists who know their stuff. It was almost a bit of a reverse culture shock to all of a sudden run in to 50 super smart people, in a high tech office, in this very remote place where most of our conversations with the local population so far has revolved around where to get the best rice, beans and beer... I'm feeling quite humble and honored that they are looking to us for help in shaping their future -- however they, admittedly, are scientists and not business people/marketers, and they are currently clearly under selling themselves, so hopefully we can indeed add some value. It will be a tough challenge tough - we heard a lot of "been there, done thats" today - the list of cons seems for everything seems long, while the pro-list is short - alas, I guess that is why we are here!

Deep in the Amazon... Arriving in Tefé

We are here! We have arrived at our IBD (International Business Development) project destination in Tefé, Amazonas, Brazil [click here for google map...]. Tefé is quite literally in the middle of nowhere - situated about ~500 kilometers up river, west, of Manaus (capital of Brazil´s Amazon province) Tefé is home to about 50,000 people + a significant number of Urubu birds (large trash eating vultures), stray dogs and crazy motor-cyclists. It is also the gateway to the Mamiraua Reserve, the beneficiaries of our project, which consists in developing a plan for how they can become more financially self-sustaining (and thus reduce their dependency of government funding), through increased monitization of assets like locally produce handi crafts, eco tourism and a variety of fundraising intiatives.


While there is not much exciting to be said for the town of Tefé, being right on the Amazon in the middle of the rain forest is AMAZING. We chartered a boat yesterday afternoon (Sunday) to take us out on the river and it is simply incredible. The sheer size of the river (width + amount of water in it) and the fact that all you see until the end of the horizon is either water or endless, lush, green is just very, very cool -- made me want to immediately buy a hammock and pitch in in a hut or under a tree somewhere to just get closer to all of it. Hopefully we will get the chance to do something along those lines. While Tefé is the reserve gateway, and where its administration sits, there is a research station in the midst of the reserve (about another hour up river) that we will hopefully be spending some time at while we are here. We took a ton of pictures and movies yesterday, which I will try to post momentarily - currently we have not be able to access the admin office yet, so we are confined to internet cafe web access.


In other good news - we have been having a lot of fun as a team (I am here with three other Haas students: Moriah, Stephan & Steve). In order to maintain a civilized atmosphere, despite being "in the wild tropics", we have decided to follow the british colonial example and have instituted an end of day cocktail hour for example. And we are doing our utmost to make sure that we try and taste every possible brazilian food delicacy of which there are quite a few (beef and fried stuff being the stables).


Well - we are off to try to get some work done - we are still getting used to the Brazilian work customs, as such being asked to come to the office at 2.30 in the afternoon on our first day was a bit surprising, but hopefully we can start getting into the "meat" of things soon.


One last note: make sure to check our Moriah´s blog as well (link posted on the left) as she is also "reporting life from Tefé".

Até logo!

School Done

Latest Update: I an amazing tour de force I managed to also wrap up my last two exams with 72 hours of finishing the Tri - not bad eh? This means that I have officially survived my first year at Haas - yay!! Does it make me feel stress free for a change? well not entirely, we are leaving for our Brazil consulting project in a week and as always there are a million things to do before then, including a 2 major end of year parties, 2 days of rafting and a move (yes - another one!) to the house I will be living in starting fall semester. Alas, the one step at a time method seems to be working well - all will be good in the end!

Tri Done

I finished my very first triathlon this past Sunday! I was a "sprint" (1/2 mile swim, 15 miles bike, 4 mile run) taking place in Napa Valley along the lovely Lake Berryessa. As seen from the picture we had a whole Haas crew racing and some did quite well (coach Matt won the race!) I was just very happy to finish in 2 hours and 27 minutes...