Maiken's Blog

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Cold Showers

The little joys of being in Tefe: one of them is the challenge of the ice cold morning shower. Cold showers may sound like a good idea considering the tropical climate, but due to the fact that the air conditioner actually does work (80% of the time at least) our rooms are mostly cold in the morning, which makes jumping from the cold room into the cold shower rather grueling. As it turns out everyone of us has been working on developing the perfect technique for dealing with this problem over the last two weeks. In the video below (which unfortunately is rather dark, so it is really mostly a sound file) shot at Steve's birthday celebration yesterday night, Steve explains, after a few beers, how he developed the perfect approach...

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Never let Women Cook...

This weekend has been a bit on the dull side as we are essentially just working like crazy, cranking out what is on track to become a 60-100 page report with analysis and recommendations for our clients. We've come up with some good results and are now just trying to survive the tedious typing part - But since this is much too boring to talk about I figured I'd post some more photos from last weekend's reserve adventure instead.

More specifically the results of the little cooking adventure Moriah and I went on after the five of us (team course + our guide and new best friend Cesar) had throughly tested (and approved of) the EcoLodge's Caipirinha making abilities. After coming back to our little floating research station (no - we did not get to stay in the fancy lodge) we realized that we were practically out of food and decided to try to make an american classic: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

Easy enough, right? Let's just say that i think there is something different about how toast reacts to butter under certain levels of humidity, cleaness of the air, sei la. The boys were not impressed and as a result they have sworn to never let us cook again. Hooray!!!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

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.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

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!!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

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...