June 27,2007: Look Kids, It's Big Ben!

A little late to the post ... I must admit, leaving Brazil was relatively anti-climactic. We were in a mad rush to complete our financial sustainability report on the Mamiraua Institute, our recommendations for becoming self-sustaining, and our presentation on our findings. We were down to the wire - thank goodness our presentation was pushed back ... and then back ... and then .... well, you get the idea. We were to present to our 4 main stakeholders, two of which were in Belem and were unable to attend in person, one didn't show up, and the fourth spoke only Portuguese ... which would have sucked for her, given that all of the materials and presentation were in English. We zipped up all of our materials and then shipped them off to somewhere. Anywhere. We were done!

Here are some amazing pictures Maiken took out of the window on our way back to Manaus -

Anyway, we ended up spending 1.5 days in Manaus, one of which was Stephan's birthday. Before I get to how we celebrated his birthday, I need to explain how frakking fantastic it was staying at the Ibis Hotel in Manaus. It had HOT, RUNNING WATER. CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING. And a RESTAURANT that served food prepared in ways OTHER THAN FRIED. Oh, and the Universal TV station which had movies in English.

When we arrived, we all took hot showers. I have never had a shower feel so amazing before in my life - I couldn't get out. And to sleep without a mosquito net was ... well, sad, as I loved my princess trap. But still, thinking about it now, I still get this warm, relaxed feeling.

So, Stephan's birthday. We had been all over Manaus already, so we ran a few errands, i.e., helping Steve purchase a hammock that his wife would like (I love the fact that Maiken couldn't pass up the opportunity to purchase a hammock either - I don't think the two of us left anywhere without purchasing something).

We told Stephan that he could choose any activity that he wanted for his birthday; lucky for us, he wanted to go see the waterfalls. To make a long story short, we made a wrong turn out of the gate (right outside of Manaus) and ended up driving 2 hours in the wrong direction. And, here's the car, with Steve pissing in the background. I'm sure he was excited about this picture.

And the scenery along the way ... as you can tell, there were a crapload of potholes, so an entrepreneurial Brazilian spirit I'm sure is making a killing. Funny, yeah?

Anyway, our night ended up at the Pier, watching local Brazilian dance and eating fried mozarella and drinking beer. Ah, Stephan ... welcome to 31. It's a bit over-rated.

After a whirlwind 24 hours of travel, the bird has landed ... in LA ... somehow. Although now this news is old, I got into Berkeley on Saturday night at 1am on the 9th, packed up for LA until 3am, went to bed; woke up at 9am, got in the car at 1pm, picked up a freaked out Jackson at 3pm in San Francisco and started my road trip down to LA ... with a howling cat. I arrived at midnight, started work at 8am the next day ...