Life Lessons Atop Death Mountain By: Jess

Hello and Ciao to all.

This post has been a long time coming, but for a good portion of the last week we were sitting on buses, shuttling around Brazil. Buses here are actually quite nice - makes Greyhound look like traveling via dumpster.

Our last blog was from Rio de Janeiro the night before the epic party that was supposedly going to happen right outside the door of our hostel. The people at the hostel were not exaggerating. Literally RIGHT outside the hostel doors were probably 2000 people mingling and dancing and eating and drinking and just generally having a good time. They know how to party in Rio.



There was a group of guys on drums and a big dance circle formed around them. I am proud to say that I was the first of our group to jump in on the dancing, and I managed to pull the rest of the girls behind me. We also met two very nice British boys (John and John) , who joined in on the fun and served as excellent bodyguards throughout the night.

I think the cultural highlight of the time spent in Rio was seeing an art project called THE GREAT MADNESS. An artist decided to decorate a staircase with pieces of tile from all around the world. It is very much a living piece of art, because people send the artist tiles and he works them into the stairs. I found a tile from Los Angeles, Katy found one from Texas. Most of the countries from around the world were represented. I thought that the stairs looked familiar and it was driving me crazy where I had seen them before. We walked all the way up the stairs, and on the way down met the artist himself. My mystery deja-vu was solved when he showed us pictured of Snoop Dogg and Pharrell rapping on the stairs, and I remembered the scene from a music video.

I am proud to say that since then we have managed to make it most of the way across the country moving South and have seen two more Brazilian cities. After Rio we took a bus and then boat to the small island of Ilha Grande. The island is so small, there are no cars allowed and boats are the main form of transportation. Now, when Laura Fox (whom I love dearly) initially suggested visiting this quaint island, she mentioned that the main form of activity was "walking" to various beaches around the island. Me, the girl from LA, pictured a 15 minute walk through the sand, letting the waves spalsh on our feet, and then multiple hours of relaxing on the sand with bottles of beer, followed by a walk back to our hostel while watching the sunset.

Well. First of all the weather was not that great when we got to the island. It was misty and foggy and pouring rain, and anyone who knows me also knows that this is not ideal Jess weather, to say the least. Given the weather, I assumed that the plans for the walk and beach would be scrapped, and instead I could look forward to a day spent sleeping in and reading my Che Guevara. Imagine my surprise when Fox jumped out of bed at 8 AM and after a quick breakfast suggested that we get started on our day. We managed to talk her into a few more hours of sleep, but around 1030 she was suggesting activity again. It was decided that the weather was perfect for "trekking."

I would like to take a pause and again emphasize that I am from Los Angeles, CA. I do not use the word "trekking." Ever. Walking up the street to the Coffee Bean near my house is a pretty intense experience in the land of LA where most people would hop in their cars to drive up the block. I would also like to add that though I do a lot of yoga and consider myself fit, I am nowhere near the rowing, lifting weights, running and erging for miles machine that is the wonderful Laura Fox. I also had a serious injury in highschool that limits my ability to run, climb, jump, etc.

So here I am, wearing my brand-new, shiny "trekking" sandals, excited about the possibility of completing such a "trek" early on a misty, rainy morning in Ilha Grande, blindly following my leaders like a lemming. It became clear to me 10 minutes into this experience that perhaps, I was in over my head. The hills were steep and slippery. I was covered in mud and unidentifiable green gunk. I was hot and sweaty until the wind started blowing, then I was freezing. The entire purpose of the trek was to reach a waterfall that everyone on the island had told us was wonderful and worth the walk. After an hour or so of painful toiling, we reached a fork in the road. One arrow pointed up an almost sheer cliff and said "cachoeira" meaning waterfall. The other arrow pointed downhill and said "praia" meaning beach. To her credit, Laura did turn around and ask me if I was ok. In an effort not to be the loser I assured here that I could get up the hill, but it would take me twice as long to get down. We climbed up. I mean REAL climbing - like grasping at roots, scraping your knees, digging your fingernails into the mud for dear life, climbing. We made it to the top of what we dubbed Death Mountain. After continuing maybe another half hour we found the waterfall and after leaving the waterfall the immensity of the problem of getting down became real. It was getting later in the afternoon and the mist was rolling and the air was more damp. My calves were still quivering from the climb up. I was thirsty and hungry and tired. I tentatively took a step down Death Mountain, and nearly toppled over. It was just too steep and I was too top-heavy and it just wasn´t going to happen. But the girls encouraged me, so I decided to turn around and go rump-first down the mountain (feel free to insert any other word to substitute for rump, we already have and trust me the pictures are priceless but they are on a different camera without a proper USB cord unfortch). Things got worse before they got better. There was a moment when I was grabbing a vine with one hand, digging my hand into the ground with the other hand, stepping very close to a hole with TONS of spiders going in and out with one foot and blindly dangling my other foot backward down the slippery side of Death Mountain, there was this moment when I thought that the easier option would be to stay in the jungle forever, build myself a little hut, and eat berries for the rest of my life. But no. Laura Fox stayed no further than 3 feet away from me at all times. And every time I let out an expletive in pure terror, she said something encouraging. If it took 30 minutes to climb up Death Mountain, it took close to an hour to climb down Death Mountain. But, I did it. My parents and no one who knows me will ever believe it, but I really did it. And though I could hardly move the rest of the night, the experience was incredible. The views were amazing. I did some yoga moves on the very top of the waterfall. We saw monkeys, birds, and the tallest bamboo ever. The experience was so positive overall that I told Laura Fox she could force me into one near death "trekking" experience ever two months.

After leaving Ilha Grande (right when the sun came out) we rode buses FOREVER and overnight and got to Florianopolis, Brazil. Personally it reminds me of home. It is a very lively beach town (actually on an island) and the people are all laid back and friendly. We met a fun group of Brazilian boys and they promise to show us the nightlife. We also made friends with a 78 year old woman in the grocery store named Edith who was born in Brazil, raised in Virginia and Oklahoma and moved back to Brazil after college. She has invited us for lunch on Saturday and we are very much loo9king forward to it.

We will leave Sunday-ish for Iguassu Falls, and then bid Brazil goodbye for Agentina.

Hugs and kisses to all.


PS. For Marcus - JCA 7, WORLD 3 - i'm winning!
PSS. Perhaps we should be contacting our manager first, but we would like to pitch our idea to you for a reality game show inspired by the kitchen at our hostel on Ilha Grande. It will be referred to from here on out as "Apokatchen" due to its post-Apocalyptic amenities, ambiance, stench, and overall appearance (please reference photos below). So in this game show, teams will be assigned to a kitchen in such a style as this and will be forced to buy cooking supplies at a local market that consists mainly of mystery foods in a foreign language while only spending roughly 2 US dollars per team member to cook a nutritious, delicious, and filling meal. This game show would clearly pit teams against each other to create the best and most frugal meal possible while keeping their supplies from contracting any air-borne illnesses due to the preceding nuclear fall out. The show will clearly be most riveting when team members turn on each other while buckling under the pressures of accidentally purchasing the salted, rotting, unpackaged meat that is so alluring and omnipresent in Brazilian supermarkets when that weeks challenge was clearly to make a vegan stir fry! Alas, we are hoping to make enough money from this show idea to finance us staying at places not like this -- any takers? -- Laura