Years of Poems and Spirits

Song woke up early to a heavenly sunrise and had the pictures to prove it.

Bird songs here are not like anything we have heard before: incredibly harmonic. They are most lively in early morning.

Morning canoe trip: hanging bird nests, first sighting of red-green macaws. Macaws in the air look like holy cross. Very vibrant colors. Always fly in pairs.

Met this couple from Canada. The guy was a pet store manager, knows a lot about birds and pets and is on a mission to meet jaguars and pythons. He is so eager and so open about such desire that I couldn’t help but wonder his sincerity. Maybe he knows very well that his beautiful Brazilian girlfriend wouldn’t allow him near those animals.

We did chat a lot. Chris told me that in a city called Salvador there was two churches. The Portuguese colonialists forced the black slaves to build one for them and the slaves built another, the black church, for themselves at their “spare time”. But despite a Catholic façade, the slaves practiced voodoo like native cult with idols masked as Catholic saints. Today, they charge tourists good money to witness their brand of “catholic” rituals, such as live animal sacrifice. That is really wild.

In the afternoon, we went to piranha fishing. The fish is a tenacious creature: the first time I put bait (cattle meat) in water, within one second, I felt the pull already. It took less than 10 minutes for me and Song to fill up our 10-piece quota. It is amazing. Late night, we had fried piranha for dinner. Not as good. Wish some good Cantonese cooks are here.