Blog entry: Third week

Blog entry: Third week

Brazil, Emas National Park, 10 - 16 December 2012

Another weekly update from the ENP and surroundings. Perhaps it is possible for me to update this blog every week after all, fingers cross! So, this week was the first week that we are left alone. As you may noted from last week Desiree is now already in Campinas / Sao Paulo and it is up to us now to fulfil the task here in ENP. Because every cameras are already placed at the appropriate places we only have to check and monitor the status of each cameras.

For our convenient we have divided our sampling areas into several sub-areas, which we can easily use you to plan our visits. Our priority is the area with high chance of harvesting (i.e. areas which the sugarcanes are quite tall). So at the first day we focused to check these areas. On average we can check around 8 cameras a day. which is ideal, because we have around 50+ active cameras to check. Hence it will take us about a week to finish checking all of the cameras.

The weather around ENP is a little bit unpredictable now, with a high chance for precipitation. Rain is  good because it will erase the old tracks from the paths where we will practice to conduct the track census. The downside is the quality of the road will deteriorated after a night of rain.

partial rainfall is a common thing around this region 

On either Tuesday or Wednesday, we went to check our cameras in a valley and also to practice recognising tracks (quite fresh Puma tracks!) when suddenly a bus appeared and destroyed all the tracks. When the bus stopped, a couple of guys went to us and we greeted each other. Apparently they were from the ETH (bioethanol company which owns all of the cane fazendas in the region). It was an immediate challenge for us. With some Portunol  I have managed to explain what we were doing in the area. The guys from the ETH seems to understand and luckily we also got some basic phrases from Desiree, to ask when they are going to harvest the canes. Fortunately this area will be harvested around May / June, so we could leave the cameras in this valley with more ease in our heart.  Of course, it is also a good news for the wildlife in this area. As there are a lot of wildlife in this area considered on the amount of tracks that we saw along this path.

Puma (Puma concolor) tracks!

On another areas there was another challenge for us. When we came, we saw a lot of activities and big machines. So we wondered what will happened. It was during lunch time so all the workers ceased their work and we kind of disturbed their lunch to ask what they were doing. The manager explained that they were going to sprayed some fertilizers in this areas. The positive side of this story is that they gave us colas and cakes and even asked us to joined them for lunch. We had to decline this kind invitation because we still had many things in the agenda.

Burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) [zoom in the picture to see it more clearly] 

Tuesday and Friday were more fun, at least for me. After all this time being drove around by Efi (which is really great and we thank you very much for your time and effort ;)) finally I can sit behind the steering wheel and have a taste of driving around the canes. For the first time it was a bit awkward, because I am not used to drive around a big pick-up truck and also because I haven't drove manual car in the last six months. The road was challenging because there are a lot of big mud pools due to the last rain. Also there were a lot of dead six-banded armadillos (Euphractus sexcinctus) on the road to avoid. After all it went well and I got the hang of it.

Another challenge was on Friday, when we went to replace a camera. Suddenly, the cloud have gathered and the rain poured from heaven. I was soaking wet in an instance and we still have to drove back to JCF.  On the main road to get out of the valley lot of water streamed  down and definitely a different kind of driving experience and one that I haven't experienced before.

After all it went well and we got back to JCF safely and thus I can inform you about my new experiences in and around the canes.

Adriano and family

Similar as the last week entry, I will write about other things besides field work. This week I like to dedicate this to Adriano and the family. Adriano builds house for occupation (like the office, all of the enclosures here in JCF and the house of Leando and Anah.). He and his family are frequent guests in our cottage. Two weeks ago they were also here. Now they are back to finish the works and so they stayed with us this week-end.

Similar as two weeks ago, Adriano and his family are really friendly and kind. Especially his mother is a doll and furthermore a great cook. If they made cakes, they always shared some of it with us. They even brought their own tank of gas to cook. Also, they cleaned the floor in the veranda and the kitchen. I feel quite embarrassed because they are so kind to us and we cannot give something in return.

Last night, I had a great chat with the guys. Just small talks about things that came across and It was a good fun to have some conversation in Portuguese (well, for me it was a good exercise to improve my Portuguese). They gave even a compliment for my Portuguese, which seems to be odd because I still used a lot of Spanish words if I talked with them. Nevertheless, we could communicate to some extent which made me really content. And its seems they too. I think people appreciate it if you try to speak their native language, even if you made a lot of mistakes.

Adriano has a lovely wife (Angela) and two kids (Adriely and Andre). The smallest one is almost two years old and really cute. He seems to like the peanut candy thing (which I also like, but the girls detested it :P). He works together with his brother, José Roberto. Because now it is a vacation time here in Brazil, Peterson the son of José Roberto is coming to help to finish the project. This family is a nice and hard working people and I am so glad to be able to know them even better.

To return the kindness of the family in some way, we gave them a postcard from Holland. I read about this postcard tip somewhere and it seems to be quite effective. I wrote down on the postcard "Muito obrigado, por voceis son afável, muito prazer..." Which translated means something like " Thank you very much, because you are so kind, really nice to meet you" I'm not very sure about the grammar, but it seems that they quite understand what I meant. He even said that I wrote it down like a Brasileiro, which made me a bit flushed, haha.

In the end, we made a group photo and the result you can see it here. On the foreground from left to right; Peterson, Adriely, Adriano, José Roberto, Dorith. In the middle, from left to right: Your sincerely, Lorena, Angela & André, Trindade, Aleimirio and Efi. In the back, from left to right: Taylisson and Rodrigo.

Happy anniversary!!

Last but not least I would like to say a few words for my parents, as today (December 17th) is their anniversary. Time seems to flew by really fast as you are already married for 15 years now. I wish you two a wonderful day, even if you are on two different parts of the world right now (Asia and Europe). All the best wishes of course for the many years to come. Sadly, I cannot prepare anything right now, and to be honest I just remembered this. Nevertheless, my thoughts are always with you guys and I'm really proud to be your son. A lot of cheers and hugs.

This is the end of my weekly update and I hope to write to you again someday next week. Ate a proxima semana!

Yuga