Month: May 2016

23rd February, Anavilhanas – Manaus – Campo Grande

8am departure to Manaus.

2.5 hour road trip.

Quick tour of Manaus:

– Opera House (photos accidentally deleted)

– Local food market

– Meeting of Rio Negro and Rio Solimoes
Lunch at regional restaurant

16:10 JJ3435 Manaus to Brasilia

21:16 JJ 3591 Brasilia to Campo Grande

Hotel DeVille

(Rain in Manaus)

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24th February, Campo Grande to Pantanal

Breakfast at hotel.

10am to airport.

Cessna 210 to Pantanal.

Fazenda Barra Mansa. Only guests. Middle of very wet season.

All meals at lodge.

Afternoon boat ride along Rio Negro. Caimans, caipiberas, otters, loads of birds.

Dinner at lodge. Lodge is very basic. Hardest beds in the world! We had a guide, Luis, with us the whole time.

(Rain in morning, clearing)

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25th February

Morning boat trip to Vasante or flood plain.

Lunch – wild pig!

Afternoon explore by tractor

– anteaters, macaws, deer, birds

Dinner at lodge.

(Clearing in morning. Lunch shower)

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26th February

Breakfast at lodge. Typical Brazilian.

Piranha fishing in morning. No one caught anything!

Lunch at lodge.

Lazy afternoon then short horse ride at 4:30pm.

Dinner at lodge. Rice, beans, chicken, salad.

(Mostly sunny but rain showers)

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27th February

Morning trip to salt lake. Ash’s tummy no good again.

Late afternoon horse ride.

Dinner – dorado soup, fried piranha and pacu.

(Mostly sunny, some showers. Hot and humid)

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Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, Amazon, Brazil

Three weeks into our journey today. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the longest period of time we have travelled away from home as a family of five, and the “firsts” will just keep coming. Ash and Nicky have always been incredible travellers, so we waited to see if Nesi would come into her own. She has travelled extensively and always with high drama since birth. It’s only been six flights into our Big Trip, but all within a short period of time. Already she seems to have cottoned on that there is no point to fussing on a travel day, now that traveling is part of “normal”. Getting from Cartagena to our lodge in the Amazon took 3 car transfers, 2 flights, a 1 night stay in an absolutely no frills hotel in Manaus, and involved 0 tantrums. A first for a traveling day, and gives us high hopes for the rest of 2016.

Sunday at Anavilhanas Lodge. First rains since we arrived 3 days ago. Locals tell us that the water levels of the river have not risen as they usually do this year, which is highly unusual. In fact, they rose a little at the start of the rainy season, but then fell again. There are huge ecological impacts involved, but for our family at this point in time, it has meant navigating up many steps numerous times a day to get to the river for all our excursions as well as our daily bath in the Rio Negro. By the middle of the rainy season in 2015, there were just three steps from boat to land. This evening we walked over a hundred to get to our “holiday house”.

The kids refer to all our accommodations as holiday houses. Since we left Tres Picos in Mexico City, we have had six holiday houses. We try as much as possible to choose places where we are able to have private spaces (rental apartments or family rooms within a lodge work the best) and not have to remind our kids to keep a lid on it as we are pretty much living in public this year. This is something I never thought about before the trip – how not having enough private spaces can affect us. Kids being too noisy, wanting to come to breakfast in pjs (we generally let the kids, but sometimes adults need that too!), someone being sick in bed, someone else needing quiet time, bickering, a good old fashioned tantrum over nothing at all to release the stress of being on the go. A certain amount of adrenaline takes over when we go on holiday and this helps with the stress of traveling. In the past when we return home, adrenaline levels go down and thus the immune system also takes a hit. It was not unusual for someone in the family to be down with a cold or a tummy bug soon after a holiday. At this stage, three weeks into our travels, I remember waiting for the other shoe to drop – who is going to get sick? Thankfully we stayed healthy in the jungle.

Campi ya Kanzi, Chyulu Hills, Kenya

 

I cannot remember the number of times I have thought about picking up my computer to post a new blog. The last entry from either Sparx or myself was just after Cartagena, and I feel incredibly humbled, yet privileged, to consider the places that have left a mark on us since. I am almost resistant to write an account as it forces me to acknowledge that time is passing by. And really, there is no contest between getting out my laptop to check in, and getting out there to check it all out.

I am sitting in one of our “tents” (inverted commas being necessary as one cannot truly call it a tent – the accompanying image is rather far from our current experience!) in Campi ya Kanzi, Kenya, looking at Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, with the Chyulu Hills behind me. We have just over a week left in Africa before heading off on the European leg of our Big Trip. Outside the birds and insects are chattering. At the moment, the watering hole in front of me is full of impalas, and every now and then I can hear a noisy male trying to assert his dominance within the group. I do not have words to describe the stillness beside the constant activity. I am not ready to leave Africa!

These past few months have been a contradiction in so many ways. How can one stand the constant excitement of discovery and experience? I’ve been thinking of how to explain this feeling – it’s almost like the night before Christmas or a birthday, so full of expectation, except you know what you are going to unwrap, and know it is going to be fabulous. In a way it is even better than the presents being a surprise. There is this short period of time just before we head off to a new place, where it almost feels hard to breathe – my heart is just so full of excitement. I feel like rushing into all the experiences on offer, yet am constantly reminding myself it is perhaps better to let the experiences happen to me.

More on Africa much later as I try to play catch up now. I write as I want to have a written account of our trip. Some family and friends are kept up to date through our iCloud Photo-sharing, but it would be wonderful to get all these pages printed and collated into our book of memories when real life comes back to bite…