Saturday the 21st... Paulo's birthday!

The day before we left Alter do Chao we went into town to get more of the best ice cream in the world (Açai and Brazil nut combo this time, a proper Amazonian treat!) and met a guy called Berto who told us about these tours he could take us on in a boat to see the surrounding forest... I was really keen to see a bit more of this- you know, since we're in the Amazon and everything! (I've had a great time splashing around and jumping off trees with the others but to be honest we could've done that in Bahia, or, I'll admit it, Wales... I'll do everything I can to make that 40hour bus journey worth it!)
We didn't have a whole day left, our bus to Santarem for the boat left at 11, so we asked if there was any chance we could do a quick one starting early and returning for 10 or so.
He told us we could start at 7 and just go and see this community in the forest nearby for R$10 so we went for it.
After dragging the others out of hammock at 6:20 with steamed plantain & coffee as bait, we got our stuff sorted & ready to go and off we went, saying goodbye to our dear Argentinians on the way- they aer going to a place called Alenki before making their way to Manaus on Segunda-feira.
The boys were falling asleep on our way to the community, as we drifted past the last scattering of houses from the little town and off down the huge river.
Before long we were entering the trees, floating between the almost submergwed treetops and looking down through the underwater branches, trying hard to picture how different the landscape must look in the dry season!
Soon a round lodge raised above the flooded water appeared and we pulled up between some wooden canoes & waded through the weedy shallows to a little path.
The smell of woodsmoke & cooking drifted over along with some morning voices. A German guy (sorry, the name's gone again) came over and introduced himself, before taking us for a walk around the community.

(ok the next bit is a compost rant. I'm just warning you so you can skip if you want- the next break is where i've finished. just because it's something i feel strongly about, i don't have to inflict it on everyone else!)
He suprised me a couple of times- he was telling us about the leaf-cutter ants, the last of which were drifting home to bed.
He explained how they are a real problem for farmers & gardeners because they are programmed to gather new plants above all else to ensure a variety of leaves...
This means that the moment you plant something, they find it and completely devour it overnight!
I asked him how he dealt with it & he said he poisoned them, which was my first suprise.
I don't know why but I didn1t expect that kind of thing.
I walked along scratching my head with images of glass bottle barriers around veg plots and mini moats for the next little while...
The other issuee I want to think of something for is the soil fertility thing.
I remember bein suprised when we learnt in Environmental Science that soil quality in the rainforest is actually really poor- the thing is because all the other conditions are optimum for plant growth (hot, bright, humid), the plants are growing really fast, and most of the nutrients are in cycle.
The systems there have evolved to break down and use up all the nutrients from the leaves and wood that fall straight away.
This is another reason why it's so grim when rainforest is torn down for growing crops, because only one or two crops can really be produced from the land before it's barren and infertile- & either has to be fertilised artificially or left derelict to slowly get reclaimed by the forest or just wash away once all the old roots have rotted.
But the other aspect of the whole thing that I hadn't thought of till now is that when people do try and farm on a smaller scale, it is made quite difficult because the plants around are so wel adapted to suck up every trace of goodness they can find in the poor soil, so it's very difficult to grow mos things among them.
I tried to ask if he'd ever thought of setting up some sort of composting collecting scheme with the local town
(it kills me to see all the juicy mangoes swept up off the street and chucked into the dustbin along with the cans and bottles and wrappers, even just throwing it in the river would be better...and domestic composting is pretty much ignored as far as we've seen so far)
he replied that they'd tried once but people's mindset wasn't really on composting, and anyway they could use the fallen leaves if they were desperate.
I din't push it further, but I was thinking, surely that's the point? It's got to be the perfect oppurtunity to change afew peoples mindsets about composting, which is a great first step towards being environmentally conscious- and what better place to start than in the Amazon, technically the lungs of the world, which happens to be being deforested at a horrific rate and is probably one of the places we're losing soil fastest?
I think it would be super cool to have a big skip in the town & a sign saying how important it is to save organic waste (saying what is done with it etc) so that people (and the sweepers!) can save up their nutritious goodies and contribute it.
It'd be really good for awareness & for the community, or any farm they chose to give it to, whatever. Even if they just went and chucked it in the forest! But obviously it's better for people to see the results of theis hard work, at least in theory if not first hand.
Hey, they could give it to a local school to set up a little garden with volunteers, they could grow veg & learn directly the cycle!
Aaaaaah dreams.
Maybe a better person to have spoken to would have been Allan from the same pousada we were staying at.
He told us in his musical Bahian accent about the project he was working on Saude & Alegria - a movement to up awareness for kids as far as I can tell, they do workshops & a magazine, & caring for the environment seems to be high on their agenda.
Reading his leaflets and listening to him chat, waving his hands around enthusiastically, gave me another wave of frustration at only being able to understand half of what he was saying.
But I got the general gist, & I'll be googling it and copying and pasting it into an online translator in no time!
I may well have to come back here & see what contibution I can make, I mean there's no limit to what I ought to do to 'cancel out' the damage i've done by flying here...

Speaking of which...
It is now the 21st. Ash flies back on the 8th of April- that's 18 days away, and Sao Paulo is... a really long way away.
We'd have to spend about 100 hours of lessthan 2 weeks on coaches if we travelled back from Belem, & wouldn't be able to see the Pantanal, Foz do Iguaçu, or the clockwork smooth recycling, public transport & social systems in action in Curitiba. Not fun eh?
Which is why we're on our way up and not down the river sea, to Manaus where we will fly to Cuiaba in the Pantanal. There we can go on a tour with Dilwyn's friend Joel, & catch a coach to Foz- quickly have a look at the waterfalls (no-one has said we need more than 1 or 2 days there) and back to square 1 via Curitiba if we've got time.