Bungle in the Jungle

Hey Fam- we are returned alive from our grand jungle adventure! And it was awesome! and epic! and amazing! Enough with the exclamation points! And may i just say that "blogging" for a bunch of school teacher types is rather intimidating! But here is the scoop, lowdown, and skinny. We had a great time. We were met at the airport by Mc and a companion. It took a while for him to transition between portugese and english, but he ably translated for us throughout the journey. M could understand things some of the time, since spanish is rather similar. We spent a couple of days in Manaus, going to the zoo, a natural history museum, and meeting people that Mc had taught or had been his friends. It was wonderful. We went to their homes, ate their food (aligator), drank their soda (guarana), and even met Mc's namesake- a one month old baby called "Nixon". We took lots of photos, and i must say i enjoyed being a tall person, for a change! We also ate lots of delicious and exotic fruits. Then we headed into the jungle. Our journey was rather convoluted- van, boat, ferry, vw van, motorized canoe. after several hours we arrived at our jungle lodge, and were greeted by Conchita, the resident grey wooley monkey. This was a hight point for me, since i have dreamed of having a pet monkey ever since reading "Pippi Longstocking" and being jealous of Mr. Neilson, her monkey. Anyway... we had an amazing guide- Fabio. Sadly, he did not have bulging pecs or long flowing locks, but he was amazingingly well informed. He knew about all sorts of things, history, plants, animals, native customs, gastronomy, computers, ecology, you name it. So we learned alot from him. We went on excursion to catch caimen, see farms, birdwatch, etc. It was very adventursome and beautiful and HOT. They kept saying it was the coolest October they could recall. Boy oh boy, did we sweat. M and Mc had some fishing adventures- they can fill you in on those at the wedding, courtesy of our canoe driver- Nicodemos. We ate brazilian home cooking, with fish and more fish, and rice, spaghetti, mashed potatoe, and manioc at every meal. And cool fruits, including juice made of the cashew fruits that we picked in the jungle. It was just wonderful.
Then it was home to Manaus for a last day of shopping and then home. Unfortunately, Mc was ill on the way home, and is not quite recovered yet. We had him at the Dr yesterday, and he is taking a deworming regimen, which will hopefully fix him! It is great to have him home, it makes me realize how much we missed him! We had a great, once-in-a-lifetime adventure together. We will bring some photos to show y'all at the wedding. xoxolori