The Tucano Journal

2 June 04

The party began in the Miami airport. Tom and Margaret played it safe, leaving Chapel Hill at some ungodly hour and arriving about in time for breakfast. The next wave of arrivals, Rob, Guerry, C, and Nancy took advantage of the beachhead established by Tom and Margaret and made their way up to the American Admiral’s Club waiting area to kill some time in the lap of luxury. Tom proved to be quite the host, keeping the cheese and crackers flowing.

            Around 6, the first wave started checking in at the Lloyd Aero Boliviano desk, and the rest of the travelers, Pam and Jeff, Phil and Diane, Linda and Larry, Sheri and Jim (fresh from scuba diving in Key West, after visiting the Galapapos Islands, AND Machu Pichu!) trickled in, and we all took off at 930.

            Five uneventful hours later, we got through immigration and customs in Manaus. Margaret was apprehended for trying to smuggle in an apple and some home-made muffins. Fortunately, the authorities had mercy on her and let her, but not her foodstuffs, enter the country.

            We were met by our guides for the trip, Souza and Edevam, and took the “12 minute” (this is a very precise crew) bus ride to the Hotel Tropical, Manaus’s 5-star “Eco-Resort and Convention Center,” where the good ship Tucano was awaiting.

At this point, we’d already made it into

3 June

            After a brief introduction to the boat by its owner, Mark Baker, we retired to our cabins. With a good, solid 2 hours of sleep and pre-breakfast under our belts, we got in the 30-foot canoes and puttered around Lago (Lake) Januarilandia. (While we were all enjoying those two, too short hours of sleep, the boat had traveled downstream from the hotel, past Manaus, into the lake.)

The lake is on the peninsula between the Amazon (Solimoes, as the Brazilians call the Amazon between its confluence with the Rio Negro and the Peruvian border, where the river changes names again, back to the Rio Amazonas) and the Rio Negro. As we boated around, we were alternately in silt-laden waters that came from the Solimoes and the black waters of the Negro. Snail Kites, Large-billed Terns, White-winged Swallows and Striated Herons were abundant. We took the canoes through some of the flooded varzea (white water) forest and got back to the boat around 9-something for our second breakfast of the day.

One of the many endearing aspects of Brazilian culture is their philosophy that life is short—eat dessert first, which they have taken this to the extreme of having cake for breakfast. They haven’t quite gone the whole-hog (quite literally) British route of having sausage and bacon along with the meal, but they make up for that with a cornucopia of tropical fruits—mangos, papaya, oranges, and melons—along with eggs, bread, cheese, and “pao de queijo,” little balls of cheese bread.

Next stop was the meeting of the waters, some 8 km down the Rio Negro from Manaus, where the black tea of the Negro and the Café au lait of the Amazon swirl and eddy side by side for miles downstream. The rivers don’t mix immediately for a couple of reasons. The relatively cool, “white” water of the Amazon and the warmer black waters of the Rio Negro have a slightly different viscosity (because of the temperature difference), and, more importantly, they meet at a pretty acute angle, which is to say, they’re pretty much heading in exactly the same direction (east) when they meet, so why bother mixing? The length of the meeting of the waters varies, depending on the relative discharge volume of the two rivers. When the Amazon is at flood stage, it backs up the Rio Negro (this is why the Negro is flooded in the dry season) and the meeting of the waters doesn’t go that far down stream. When the Amazon drops. The Negro flows much faster and the meeting of the waters extends much farther downstream.

We then began the trip up the Rio Negro in earnest, or at least in the Tucano. We motored past the thriving, crowded port of Manaus, where one can catch a glimpse of old colonial architecture peaking over stacks of shipping containers between a few uninspiring and dingy skyscrapers. Few of the passengers saw this bit of scenery go by—the vast majority were resting their eyelids.

On to the Tarumazinho, a small tributary of the Rio Negro just upstream of the Hotel Tropical, where the trip began. There we visited the state-run Rubber-tapping Museum, which is based in the authentic looking, rubber-era buildings. The buildings were built a few years ago as the set for a movie about the rubber era. Dona Judith poured her soul into the telling of the tale and one of her locals, recently retired from the actual rubber tapping business, showed us how the rubber is harvested and processed.

At cocktail hour, we ran into our first SNAFU—no tonic water on board. Rob and Phil went into mild panic, but faced with a surfeit of gin and no tonic, they showed their true mettle and invented the G&G—gin and guarana. This went through a few iterations over the next few nights (including martini night—gin and a couple of olives from the kitchen) until coming upon the perfect ratio—a couple of fingers of gin and a healthy dollop of guarana, just enough to take the edge off the gin.

After dinner, we all crashed pretty hard while the boat chugged upstream through much of the Anavilhanas archipelego and anchored just north of Santo Antonio, on the east bank. The Anavilhanas is the largest fresh-water archipelago in the world. Some 400 long and skinny islands extend over about 85 miles of the Rio Negro.

June 4

Most of the group rallied, bright and not so sassy, except for Phil, who’s always sassy, at 0520. After a brief Breakfast #1 we did a canoe trip out through one of the islands, came back for the heartier Breakfast #2, had naps or shot the breeze until lunch, further upstream. Or maybe the afternoon walk was near the morning cruise? Anyway, we did our first hike on terra firme (never flooded) forest, where Edevam and Souza talked about the plants of the forest and their traditional and medicinal uses. The forest was unusually thick with vines, compared to the forests north of Manaus.

After showering, we had lunch and did an afternoon boat trip further upstream, near the mouth of the Rio Curiau, home of the Waimiri Indians. We got back in time for cocktails on the poop deck before Souza and Edevam led a show-and-tell session describing many tropical fruits.

TROPICAL FRUITS AND VEGGIES 101:

Started out with the cannon-ball like Brazil nut pod, and the similar sapucaia (both in the Lecythidaceae family). Then they cut open a cacao and it’s cousin, the cupuacu. (“-acu” is the Indian term for big.) The pulp around both is sweet. In the case of cupuacu, they make ice cream and candy from it. Chocolate seeds taste awful—lots of voodoo, or at least chemistry, is necessary to turn these into the chocolate we eat. Jambo was next—a pear shaped, tart fruit. (We later saw the trees blooming at the Hotel Tropical, carpeting the ground with a hot-pink blanket of flower parts). Inga is a giant pea pod, with big seeds covered by a tasty aril. Monkeys love this. As do we, their less hirsute descendants, the opinions of the Kansas Board of Education notwithstanding.

Then we moved on to the palm fruits, starting with tucuma. A favorite breakfast of the caboclo (the “mesticos” of Brazil) is tucuma, farinha, and coffee. A few breakfasts later we had little sandwiches made with tucuma. Coconuts are the larget of the palm fruits. They get coconut milk from green coconuts (we sampled this after one of our terra firme hikes). Tom later explained that this is liquid endosperm. Several nodded in agreement, murmuring something to the effect that that’s what they’d always thought. (Because coconuts float all around the oceans, botanists cannot figure out where the coconut palm evolved.)         

Pupunha, known as peach palm in English, is boiled prior to eating. The oil that comes when you boil it is used in cosmetics. The heart of this palm is a good substitute for acai, because it grows to harvestable size much more quickly than acai.

Genipapo is used medicinally in various ways. (This fruit is reported by some, clearly burdened with grossly insensitive taste buds, to be edible.)

Guava comes in two forms—white and orangey. The rather sour Aracaboi (and guava) are in the Myrtaceae.

Passion fruits are filled with a juicy, tastily tart pulp around many seeds. The flower makes a tranquilizing tea.

Other plants seen or sampled were: ginger, eggplant, chu-chu (choyote), acorn squash, sweet potato and yams. Cara is a tuber from a vine, eaten boiled for breakfast.

Manioc, source of farinha and tapioca, is a staple in the Amazonian diet. The tubers of the plant are highly poisonous (full of cyanide) and have to go through a complicated processing to be rendered edible. About everyone in the group whose name wasn’t Rob took exception to the “edible” designation. Macaxeira is the non-toxic version which we had for several lunches in the form of French fries. This version of manioc proved to be a popular side dish throughout the journey.

5 June

            Dawn boat trip just east of the Isle of the Jaguars (Ilha das Oncas). Pre-lunch hike on terra firme, up the same tributary. Showers and lunch as usual, then headed up the Negro for an ill-fated attempt to visit the giant kapok tree, the “star” of the award-winning children’s book by the same name. (Many of the illustrations were painted from Rob’s slides of rainforest critters.) Our attempt to get there by boat was thwarted by the water being too low. The alternative foot trail wouldn’t work, because the water was too high. So we landed in a little abandoned clearing that someone was in the process of reclaiming. The frame of a house had been started.

We added a twitch to the list when we recorded and called in a Plain-crowned Spinetail. Tarantulas were on the visual menu in the fronds along the stem of a large palm. We then decided that with so little ground above water, there were probably a lot of snakes crowded onto that little patch of dry ground, so we beat a cautious retreat and motored up river for a spectacular afternoon canoe excursion.

After cocktails and a tasty catfish, we got back in the canoes and had our first experience with night-lighting. Saw a few black caiman and an iguana, but the highlight was an adult Spectacled Owl, whose eyesight is probably just recovering now. We also got a nice look at Ladder-tailed Nightjars, both male and female, as well as a couple of sloths (the other three-toed species) and a cane rat, which Souza called in. These are one of the few nocturnal mammals that rely on vocalizations, rather than pheromones (scent) to communicate. The critter is about 3 ft, with half of that being tail, and makes an ungodly loud series of barks.

            I don’t think anyone had trouble sleeping….

6 June

            Post first-breakfast canoe excursion. Now, where is that butterfly? We spent an inordinate amount of time trying, unsuccessfully, to get everyone to see it. It was a neat butterfly, but not worth the 20 minutes we spent on it. Other critters seen included Hoatzin, Anhinga, and Orange-fronted Yellow-finch, at the mouth of the Jauaperi River.

            After second breakfast we moved a bit onto some complicated channel at the mouth of the Juauperi River and headed off for a long boat ride to our terra firme hike. We split up, as usual into the long and short hikes and explored the best upland forest we’ve seen to date. Souza led the long trip. We saw some large stands of a ground bromeliad, a few in bloom. Fantastic views of golden-handed tamarins, who seemed as curious about us as we were of them, providing great looks. (This is the monkey with the great scientific name of Saguinus midas.) Phil said he was going home to start the chapter in his memoirs entitled “I saw the branch where the monkeys were.” After a lot more bushwhacking (appearances to the contrary, we weren’t lost--Souza was cutting the corner on the loop trail to save some time) we came upon a group of bearded saki monkeys, which was as unperturbed by our presence as were the tamarins. On the way back we saw a Laughing Falcon leaning over and peering intently at the vegetation below its perch. He bobbed his head a bit, the way falcons do when they’re focusing on something, and parachuted down to attack a snake (we assume, as this is about all they eat), unfortunately out of sight.

            Lunch, en route to the Rio Branco, was grilled tambaqui for most of us—rice and beans for the Mannings, who have been scared off Amazonian fish once and for all. “All the more for me,” Rob was overheard muttering under his breath. Tambaqui are the big fish with nothing but crushing, molar-like teeth.

            The trip to the Rio Branco took us through a very wide and glassy Rio Negro, past a few largish (more than 5 houses) settlements, replete with futebol (soccer) fields, cattle, and more than a few Cattle Egrets. Those who didn’t want to look up to see the sky could just stare at the river to see a mirror image of the clouds overhead..

Over the past day or so, the Rio Negro had been getting browner and browner, thanks to the sediment laden waters of the Rio Branco dumping into it. The Branco carries sediment because its headwaters are high in the Venezuealan and Guianan Shields (mountains) and build up a head of speed coming down to the Amazon basin. The black waters of the Negro and most of its tributaries drain lowlands, where they never get going fast enough to erode anything, but are rich in tannic acids, leached from the very nutrient poor, white-sand soils found in the northern reaches of their watersheds.

We turned right into the mouth of the very brown “White River” (Rio Branco) and motored a half hour or so up the west bank, almost close enough to reach out and grab the branches going by. The afternoon canoe excursion started out with a real bang when the lead canoe saw an enormous raptor perched above the river’s edge. Despite all best efforts to turn said large raptor into a Harpy Eagle, we had to settle for a spectacular Black Hawk-eagle. Things then slowed down, bird-wise, and heated up, thermometer-wise (at least for Souza’s boat) for a while before the birds started happening. Umbrella Birds were seen by one canoe, Black-necked Aracaris, Scarlet Macaws, a gorgeous Hooded Tanager, and many more.

The night excursion was relatively uneventful, save for Souza catching a frog in the genus Hyla, and Edevam grabbing a young spectacled caiman. Too small to make a wallet out of, so we let it go after many photos were taken.

7 June

            The morning canoe trip was a winner. We seemed to be on the Red-capped Cardinal Highway. Umbrella birds were seen by everyone, along with a gorgeous pair of Yellow-bellied Dacnis. As we were heading home, Mark pulled up some water plants and started talking about how bladders to keep them afloat. The next decision point—back to the boat, or 15 more minutes of birding—was heavily influenced by the preceding discussion. When the boat that headed back to the mother ship reappeared on the birding horizon, all the males had wimped out, leaving the serious (distaff) nature watchers to go out and get that last great look at an Umbrella Bird.

            The late morning excursion took us through the woods to Aratucuna, a small settlement on the Amajau River, which feeds the Negro. There we met Sr. Moacir, the patron of the remaining few families, who was making his own fishing hooks with a fine piece of steel, a file and a hammer. His pole did not come from Orvis. Only a few of the 10 residents were in residence—the rest were off in the “big city” (all things being relative in the distant corners of the MOTFA). Not long ago, there had been quite a few more families, but the school teacher left and most of the families followed suit. Phil decided that the distance to the nearest cappuchino (some 400 miles at best) left him unmoved to chuck it all and move down the enjoy the “simple life.”

On the ride home, we completed the sweep of Caracaras, with a quick sighting of the Red-throated, scourge of wasp nests across the Amazon forest.

            Lunch began happily for Hobby, because the cook had whipped up a really fine hot salsa from a pocket full of hot chili peppers Hobby had scored in Aratucuna, and ended with much scraping of dessert spoons as the underfed travelers strained rather frantically to get to the very last dollops of Crème de abacate (Avacado Cream) from their bowls.

            Back in the Rio Negro, heading home to Manaus in the early afternoon. After navigating a tricky, rocky narrows, we stopped at the only beach we’ve seen since we left Manaus. We all swam and talked to the family that lives there—8 kids—and watched the odd bird flitting around the flooded forest. Hobby added Vermillion Flycatcher to the list and Sheri spotted a pair of Thick-billed Euphonias.

            After a most refreshing swim (more than one of the group suggested that future forest walks be turned into swimming sessions), we visited Moura, a very small settlement on the west bank. This was once the administrative center for about 15% of Brazil’s territory, but was pretty much abandoned because the landing area in front of the town is shallow and rocky. Moura persists because the Brazilian Air Force has a quarry they use for landing strip gravel there. We wandered around the little town, watched someone butchering a peccary (wild boar), someone else plucking a tinamou, and saw a bit of the afternoon futebol (soccer) game. There were lots of turtle shells around. While it’s illegal to take any of these game species, it’s hard to convince someone living this deep into the forest that there’s any reason not to take any game they come across.

            The night trip was somewhere around or in the mouth of the Rio Jauaperi. Souza caught a very small black caiman (we saw a spectacled the night before—or was it two nights before?) We went into the forest to see a new tree frog and wound up with a great look at a Tropical Screech Owl. Shortly thereafter, we pulled in to the edge of the forest to see a caiman and saw a sloth. (There’s a moral there, we suppose.) Upon closer inspection of the caiman, we saw that it had the last two-thirds of a largish iguana in its mouth. It was not about to give up this hard-won meal, especially given that it was getting nice and rotten—I mean tender. After it tired of spotlights in its eyes, it disappeared into the igapo forest, trailing its next couple of meals.

8 June

            Sometime late at night we arrived back along the east bank of the Negro near Ilha das Oncas. The between-breakfasts canoe excursion was slower than most, although we did see a nice Long-billed Woodcreeper and Black-tailed Tityras, and had a great look at a pair of Hoatzins, as well as our first Osprey. (1 year old Ospreys don’t migrate back to North America in their first spring, but stick around for another year, heading back to the breeding grounds just short of their second birthday.)

            Before lunch—Velho Airao. A twice abandoned settlement that was once a focal point for rubber tapping in the area. The ruins of an old steamer ticket station were giving up the ghost, looking rather like the old cells on Devil’s Island (albeit quite a bit roomier), with pretty large trees growing from the back wall of the building. The old store walls were standing, with the dates 1900 (first built) and 1950 (rebuilt) showing above the doors. A few families have re-resettled (the town had a brief second life when the Japanese took over the Malaysian rubber plantations) and have some slash and burn clearings in various stages of planting.

            After lunch—HARPY! As we motored downstream, the ever vigilant Larry and Margaret were on deck, checking each emergent as it went by for the holy grail of Amazonian birding—the Harpy Eagle. Hobby, master delegator, was also on deck, but engrossed in his mystery, leaving the mundane task of tree checking to his underlings. Margaret, now officially known on board as “Eagle Eyes,” finally hit pay dirt, spotting a very large bird in a canopy tree. Rob scoped it out and confirmed that it was, indeed, a Harpy. The bird had disappeared into the distance, with only a few of us having caught a glimpse of it.

When Souza heard what we’d seen, he asked if we wanted to turn the boat around and try for a better look. No hesitation in the response there, and as we headed back upstream, Linda saw our bird on a branch right next to the river, not in the tree where Eagle Eyes had first spotted it. We pulled up almost underneath the bird and everyone got fantastic looks at it in the scope. Our skipper maneuvered 142 tons of boat like it was a canoe, pulling up and drifting aback in the current, only a few dozen meters from the forest edge. Phil unknowingly struck upon the technical, ornithological description of the bird when he proclaimed it “one big-ass bird.”

            The bird was totally relaxed, preening and hopping around to show us its back after we’d all had good full frontals. After maybe 10 minutes, it took off and dove down quite low behind and below the first row of trees. Someone then spotted another bird flying into the first tree, so we went back for more. This was clearly the female. Massive springs to mind, as the appropriate descriptor, Phil having co-opted the other. We watched this on the other side of the tree for a while, until she hopped over onto the branch where the male had been. She then moved to a nearby tree, where we had an even better view. Film was running through cameras at high velocity, while Pam was heard muttering, “I’m selling this to National Geographic,” as she videoed the bird. Finally this bird took off, and someone saw the male come into sight carrying prey.

            We moved the boat back upstream for a look and could see that the bird had part of a sloth in its talons. It was looking around, probably for the female. Courtship feeding, perhaps? We had heard a second bird calling—a high, thin whistle, rather un-eaglelike—while we watched the first bird. We could clearly see the leg and claws of a sloth hanging from the eagle’s talons, but couldn’t figure out where the rest of the sloth was and then realized that the male had already eaten part of it. After a few minutes of scanning for its mate, the bird flew off away from the river, and a pretty excited boatload of birders continued the trip downstream. As it flew off, we saw an Umbrellabird perched nearby. Normally, the Umbrellabird would be an attraction all by itself, but this time it was pretty seriously upstaged.

            The afternoon boat trip provided two new species for the list—a Giant Cowbird early on, and as we headed back to the mother ship, Band-tailed Nighthawks were out in serious numbers. We boated under at least 50 and saw many more over other strips of forest. We got good looks at the Long-billed Woodcreeper, a Great Blackhawk, and a nice pair of Laughing Falcons, which were laughing at each other. Hobby’s suggestion that we tell jokes as we approached the birds was not recognized as the ground-breaking birding concept that it could be.

            The night trip was pretty uneventful. The previous birding was a tough act to follow.

9 June

            The morning excursion was part birding, part fishing for piranha. The birding was pretty hot (activity-wise). Some of us (Hobby not included) finally got a good look at the Greater Manakin, and we added Cherrie’s Antwren (or a similar species, Hobby needs to check this) and the Green-tailed Jacamar to the list. Fabulous looks at the Long-billed Woodcreeper as well.

            We boated fairly deep into the flooded forest and tied off to a couple of trees. Souza showed us how to fish in the Igapo. Before dropping his line into the water, he put the tip of the pole in the water and made quite a racket, imitating an animal falling into the water. The technique clearly works, as he caught the first piranha in short order. Hobby followed suit with the smallest fish by far of the day. Most everyone caught at least one, while Edevam filled up the back of their canoe with fish. The fisherpeople in the other boat assumed that Edevam’s boat was just in a better place than ours. It couldn’t have had anything to do with skill. Pam spent most of the time trying to video a spectacular, big-ass (to borrow Phil’s phrase) Morpho that was flitting around the canoes.

The terra firme hike was in some nice forest. Memorable moments were most unusual sightings of the well named Screaming Piha by both groups. This bird occurs all over the Amazon rainforest and is perhaps the most vocally conspicuous bird in the forest, but it is apparently all but invisible. Hobby would like to forget slipping and grabbing on to a palm stem that put a couple of hundred tiny spines in his hand. Diane sampled the spines from this particular nasty tree twice—coming and going.

Lunch and off to Novo Airao, where we took a walk around the town (adding 4 species to the list), doing a bit of shopping for woodwork made from scraps for the few remaining boatyards that still build wooden boats. We visited the yard where the Tucano was built about 4 years ago.

            We then cast off and began the last leg of the trip downriver to Manaus. The sunset was spectacular, even if part of it was hidden behind a bend in the river. We had the piranha we caught in the morning as hors-d’oeuvres before a fancy turkey dinner, with the salon fully decked out, including real napkins!

            After dinner we returned to the poop deck for caipirinhas, the national cocktail, which is made from cachaca. Cachaca is sugar cane “rum,” (we use the term very loosely) and is pretty deadly. Caipirinhas are made of cut lime sections pounded with some sort of pestle, a bunch of sugar, and cachaca, or, for the more discerning, rum or vodka.

            Mark tried to show us how Brazilians dance, but it took Janete to really get the idea across. It became pretty obvious than not only can white men not jump, but when compared to Brazilians, they’re not the most graceful beasts on the dance floor, either.

            After the dancing faded from its not-so-fevered pitch, we enjoyed a fantastic view from the bow—the moon was still down, and the sky was clear and full of about a million more stars than we’ll ever see in the North Carolina sky. The Milky Way stretched across the sky not far from the horizon, with the Southern Cross to our right and the glow of Manaus above the river ahead of us. Behind us the Big Dipper was, as always down here, pointing straight down to the horizon. We were all reveling in the scene when the captain politely and discretely mentioned that it might be a good idea if some of us moved out of his line of sight so that he could keep the boat from plowing a new channel through the igapo forest.

10 June

            We awoke to find the Tucano anchored off the Hotel Tropical dock, where the trip began 9 days before. There may have been one or two in the group who sampled a few too many caipirinhas the night before and this morning learned the meaning of the Portuguese word “ressaca.”

The original plan for the day had us all getting up at the completely ungodly hour of 5AM, doing breakfast and the city tour at about 6:30, returning to the boat for lunch at 10:30 (!) before heading to the airport to begin the very long, and round-about trip back to Miami. Sanity had prevailed and this plan had been soundly voted down the night before in favor of the infinitely more logical approach of getting up at 7, having breakfast and then doing the city tour and going straight to the airport.

Which is what we did, after a minor bout of chaos dealing with getting luggage off the boat and onto the bus. We drove through the city, parked at the new fruit market along the river and walked to the old market, where we saw the ironwork designed by Eiffel (of Tower fame), bought some farinha (gee, I wonder who might have made that purchase), cachaca, and tee shirts.

Back on the bus, and off to the Opera House, which was closed, this being Corpus Christi and all. The consensus seemed to be that it was worth a look even from the outside.

Back to the Manaus Airport for goodbyes to Souza and Edevam, whose name by now had mutated to Etchy, Edgy, and Edgimar, and the beginning of the very round-about—actually better described as “There and Back Again” trip to Miami, via Brasilia and Sao Paulo. (We flew over Manaus 13 hours after we arrived at the Manaus airport.) The only memorable moments on this odyssey were a couple of very long overdue Gin and TONICS in the Brasilia airport (has to be one of the coolest on the planet) and “Eagle Eyes” finding yet another Harpy Eagle—this one on a tee shirt in the Sao Paulo airport. She can spot ‘em in shops just as well as in trees hundreds of yards away! Hobby, on behalf of the group, bought the shirt for Our Lady of the Eagle.

11 June—The last day

            We arrived in Miami a mere 17 hours after getting to the Manaus airport and scattered to our separate flights. Rob, Guerry, Jim, and Sheri added the 135^th species to the trip list while waiting for northbound flights at gate H10. A small group of House Sparrows has established a beachhead inside the airport and were noisily flitting about the potted plants and decorating the glass above us with white pinstripes. Given that Miami is just a northern extension of Latin America on the North American continent and that 4 of the group saw the birds, the List Committee (Hobby) declared this a valid addition to the list, and thus the trip endeth.

Guerry adds the following:

**        Wow!  What a trip.  The flora and fauna were fantastic, especially the Harpy Eagle.  And the food was very good.  Then there were all of you, my new friends.  I want to thank everyone for making me feel included, and not like a 5th wheel.  You took good care of me, and I appreciate it.

Whenever you are in Charlotte, please give me a call.

            Again, through this trip, I am overwhelmed and awed by the magnificence and beauty of God's creation.  And the fact that those trees, etc. can survive flooding for 3-4 months followed by drought or near-dought year after year is absolutely amazing.

            I look forward to another great trip.  Where to next time, Rob?!   **