The Internet comes back to Castelo!

Sorry we've been out of touch for so long! Castelo de Sonhos has been without Internet (and occasionally without phones!) since we arrived over two weeks ago. Now it's back, but not reliable enough for posting any photos of our exploits here in the middle of the Amazonian forest.

Some of the highlights: we became the godparents to Tainá, the two year old daughter of Douglas & Cristiane, two of Jeremy's closest friends in Castelo. We got our first taste of Brazilian rodeos, too: no cattle-roping, but plenty of hot-dogs and turns on rickety, rusted amusement rides. Since arriving here, we've eaten both pig and cow tongue; the latter is definitely tastier, though pig flesh is much more appealing to the eye.

A few days ago, we caught a bus for Novo Progresso ("New Progress"), the closest town to Castelo de Sonhos. It took us seven hours to travel 90 miles, and the problem wasn't traffic jams. We made the trip to attend an important government meeting about land reform and sustainable development in the region: basically, the Brazilian government is proposing to privatize all federal lands in the Amazon in order to combat deforestation and illegal land markets. We're skeptical.

We've spent a fair amount of time getting aquainted with the local flora and fauna, too. A good friend, Irineu, owns a 5 acre farm just outside of Castelo where his family raises chickens and manages fruit trees (açai, lime, mango, papaya, etc.). Irineu's latest project is beekeeping. Last Saturday, his son Renato took us on a short walk to see the bees: Jeremy was wearing protective gear and filming the scene up-close, while Maddy stayed back several yards as the boxes were opened. Suffice it to say, each of us ended up with wounds. Several bees got caught in Maddy's hair, while others managed to infiltrate Jeremy's bee suit and repeatedly sting him. The next morning, his face was swollen such that he couldn't open his right eye. Ah, well, that's the jungle. And questionable judgement.

We're heading back to Santarém from Castelo de Sonhos tomorrow. We should be back to regular posting by Saturday, depending on the state of the highway back north. Tchau.

The treacherous road, Br-163

By the time most of you read this we will be traveling on a bus along the famed Br-163, the mostly unpaved highway which starts south from Santarém, through the Amazon rainforest, and ends at the agricultural mecca of Cuiabá. The road is notorious for not being much of a road at all: potholes, mudslicks, quicksand, and felled trees make for awful slow-going for most traffic. The road is almost completely impassable from February through June, during the wettest months in western Pará state.

We'll be heading south to Castelo de Sonhos, a very small gold-mining settlement that was founded along the Br-163 shortly after the army built it in the mid-1970s. Hopefully our bus won't suffer a fate similar to this car, which lost both of its passenger-side tires to a deep pothole 15 km south of Santarém. The irate driver was quick to point out the irony of the locale where he had been stranded (after all, he only had one spare, and had to wait for a tire service to come to his aid). The dangerous potholes are located within a kilometer of the ranch of the most powerful federal politician in the area, and only a handful of kilometers from the barracks of the army division whose sole job it is to care for the road. The kicker is that this fella's car was not the only one that had dropped two shoes on the same pothole (we spotted two other cars on the same day!), but his was the only one that rolled to a stop without any cover from the tropical sun.

We'll post some of the highlights from our trip south along the Br-163 when we get to Castelo de Sonhos. For now, we've got to run around Santarém and get things together for the trip. You know, emergency supplies and tire jacks, that sorta thing.

Os rios da Amazônia

Here we see the famed "Encontro das Águas," the meeting of the waters, just north of Santarém. The brown/café colored water is of the Amazon River, and the darker, almost bluish water is of the Tapajós River. Each river carries more water along its banks than the Mississippi. In the distance, you can see the roofs of the houses of fisherfolk who use handmade nets to pull good eats out of the rivers. The boat in the foreground is heading from Santarém to another town only 40 km away (via water); the journey will take three hours.

At the Encontro, the Amazon and Tapajós get all mixed up and run parallel to each other for several miles. We hiked up to the vista point from which we snapped this photo hoping to see pink river dolphins below, but none were to be seen. We also were hoping for ice cream and/or beer at the top of the three-story climb, but all the concession stands were closed. Rotten luck.

We'll be off on a 2-day bus trip tomorrow, south from Santarém through places with names like Rurópolis, Itaituba, Trairão (named after a fish!), Moraes, Novo Progresso, and Castelo de Sonhos. We'll have less internet access while in Castelo for the next 2.5 weeks, but we'll be sure to get a post or two in.

Swingin'

So this is life in the jungle! Maddy is reading a recently published book (by our friend and host Steven Alexander) while lounging in the rede (hammock). Since arriving in Santarém on Thursday, we've taken the time to rest and rejuvenate a bit after the whirlwind summer. Soon we'll be off to Castelo de Sonhos ("Castle of Dreams"), a small community 600 miles south of Santarém where Jeremy is basing his research. The highlights so far: castanha (brazil nut) ice cream; fried pirarucu fish balls; a ceiba tree in the forest; Fox News via satellite; cold showers and even colder beers; a new municipal tree-house in Santarém; a yummy pay-by-the-pound restaurant; and Lucca, Steve and Áurea's 6-year old German shepherd.

Proof of New England Can-doism

Whoever said (was it Frost?) that New Englanders were un-neighborly was just plain wrong. We learned as much on our way back to New York from St. Albans, Vermont, just a few days ago. We had decided to drive up to Vermont at the last minute on Sunday, 8/5/07, the day after our wildly successful engagement party in Queens. The idea was to investigate whether or not Tim and Jen's (Jeremy's uncle and aunt) house on Lake Champlain might be a good venue for our June '08 wedding. We dropped off Kassi at JFK at 6:30 am on Monday (8/6/07), then braved the seven-hours worth of rainy traffic for a quick overnight at the lake. Anyway, back to New England charm and cordiality: Jen informed us how easy it is to get married in the great state of Vermont (e.g., no need for blood tests, witnesses, priestly meetings, or even IDs), so on the way back to JFK to catch a flight bound for Brazil, we stopped in the village of Ferrisbugh, VT (pop. 2,800) to sate our curiosity. The town clerk, a balding man named Chet who had lived in Ferrisburgh his whole life, was more than happy to ring up the Justice of the Peace (a charming woman named Jean Richardson), whom he wrangled from her morning gardening to come over and marry us.

Twenty-five minutes and thirty-five dollars later, we were married on the steps of the Ferrisburgh Union Hall, built in 1762 as the common church for all of the village's congregations. We each said "I do" from the same spot from which Frederick Douglass in 1843 exhorted Ferrisburghers to take up the abolitionist cause. When the two-minute ceremony was over, we walked across the town green under 200-year old maples planted for the area's Revolutionary War dead. We said our goodbyes to Ferrisburgh, got back in the car, and kept going south through the Catskills and the Hudson Valley. On a pit stop, Maddy engaged tradition and used her lipstick to announce to those on the interstate that we were "Just Married!" Though we've no still photographs of the event, we do have one of the car's windshield, and we did record the ceremony with Jeremy's new digital camcorder; we owe Jean and Chet many thanks for this indulgence!. Truth is, they were more than happy--maybe even a bit giddy--to have been shaken from their Tuesday routines to marry us, crazy whirling kids, passing through, always on our way, taken aback by the simple charm of the town and the plain directness of its people.

The marriage certificate Jeremy is filling out in the photo is proof positive that we are not making any of this up. The state of Vermont considers us married, and as the saying goes, "What the state of Vermont hath drawn together, let not man (nor New Hampshire) put asunder." To be clear, however: we are hoping to have, as planned, a wedding celebration somewhere in the United States in late June (probably 6/28/2008). That event will be an opportunity for us to exchange our vows (which we are writing now) and for friends and family to meet and enjoy one another's company.

Love to all,
Maddy & Jeremy

- Welcome - Bem Vindos - Bienvenue - Bienvenidos -

Hello friends and family and sketchy on-lookers! If you've found your way to our blog, we hope you'll make the trip often to find out about our first weeks and months as a married couple in Brazil, Algeria, Spain, and the United States. We look forward to sharing photos and stories here, so that when we get back to the U.S. for our wedding celebration in late June 2008 we won't have to repeat ourselves too much! So, dears, please take advantage of the "Post Comment" function to ask direct questions or comment on a particular blog entry. We look forward to seeing you all soon! Oh, and yes, you read correctly. We are married. And to each other.

Love you all!

- Maddy & Jeremy