Rio Araguaia Com Rotary!

Meu internet esta demorando demais, entao se voce quiser ver fotos, voces precisam procurar no Facebook!.... My internet is taking forever, if you want to see photos that go with this post, you'll all have to look on Facebook! Just click the link to the "August" album!

I’ve been meaning to write about this for FOREVER!

On the weekend of August 28^th (yeah, that long ago) Rebecca (the German exchange student), my host parents, and I packed up our green pick up truck with camping gear, fishing poles, and Brahma and headed off for a 4-day Rotary weekend on Rio Araguaia. Now since we live in the interior of Brazil, a weekend at the river is our version of a weekend at the beach house. To get there we had to drive 3 hours on dirt roads and over little wooden bridges…in the dark. Not an easily forgettable experience, I must say. We pulled over in the middle of the drive to eat dinner and sat eating grilled chicken. Mostly though, Becca and I just sat there with our mouths wide open because you could see the ENTIRE Milky Way. Pretty darn cool.

After three hours of a drive that my ass won’t easily forget, we arrived to Rio Aruguaia where my host brother, Lauro, had already set our tents. We drank some coffee, ate some rice and beans (shocker!) and went to bed where Becca and I FROZE.

My schedule for the next few days consisted of swimming in the river, playing volleyball an cards, and hanging out on the giant rock islands with Lauro, Becca, two kids from Interact, and Matteus, the most hilarious/perverted 12 year-old I have ever met. Lauro taught me to play a addictive Brazilian card game called Truco (troo-coo) which has quickly become my card game of choice. Lauro and I played as a team and took on other teams of very drunk Rotarians, many of whom grabbed a beer when they arrived and didn’t stop drinking until they got home. This led to a quite a few particularly memorable conversations with Rotarians and a celebration on the last night that neither Becca, Lauro, or I understood, but included silver wigs, feather boas, doing the limbo, Michael Jackson music, and capes.

Because I know my dad is wondering about the scenery right now, I’ll tell you all about it. The river was gorgeous, just like all of Brazil. The riverbank was filled with all these expansive rock formations spotted with gaping holes filled with tropical water plants. In between the rocks were little hidden white sand beaches where we swam. There were palm trees all along the river and flowers and butterflies growing in every spot available. Some of the rocks formed a little island in the river that you could climb to. There there were big sandbars in between the rocks where Becca and I taught the Brazilians how to play Monkey in the Middle. From the rocks we could hike along the river bed to places where we could jump and flip into the river.

It’s kind of sad that it’s taken me this long to write this post, considering it’s about happened two months ago, but it was just too great of a weekend to ignore.