Sweat & Snow

Heidelberger Hütte

My friends from the Jungle

so cuuuuuute!

Worms in my pocket
Spiders in the pan
Frogs in the shower
Mice smarter than men

Scorpions in my shoes
Snakes around my arm
Moths on the screen
Millipede doing no harm

Meet my friends from the jungle
They are oh so sweet
Only mosquitoes do bungle
When they want to eat

Before I came here
I envisioned the bush
Piranhas for breakfast
Tigers in a rush

Monkeys dancing samba
Crocos joinging in
Parakeets singing blues
Carnivores eating my skin

But now only

Worms in my pocket
Spiders in the pan
Frogs in the shower
Mice smarter than men

Scorpions in my shoes
Snakes around my arm
Moths on the screen
Millipede doing no harm

In the "Jungle"

planting palm trees

Now I`m an official tree hugger in the Atlantic Rainforest! That means that I am in the middle of nowhere, in a very very green nowhere sourrounded by farms and forest. The project I am helping with tries to make the conservation of the Atlantic Rainforest (which has been more destroyed than the Amazon Rainforest!) more attractive than its destruction. Not so easy because the local farmers need to make money. Well we are working on it, there is a research center, a tree nursery and reforestation, community work, education, an organic farm... Lots of means to reach this goal but still a long way to go. Anyways, I enjoy being surrounded by this wonderful nature, 2 walking hours away from the next village. And its really fun taking care of the baby trees and making some graphics. The best is, everyday I discover new animals - well, maybe not the animals you might think of (tigers and crocos)but lots of butterflies, snakes, scorpions, frogs, worms...

Farm of Hope

The Fazenda is almost like an art museum

My visit of the Fazenda da Esperanca made me really excited! I never saw a community working together like this, giving their time, money and lives for people in need. What had begun with a sad story of drug-addicted people has turned into a huge success story of Fazendas helping people in more then 60 countries! Just Wonderful!

Carneval in Diamantina

Carrrrnewow!

So, first of all, I didn`t stay in any of the famous places like Rio, Salvador or even Olinda. Instead I ended up in Diamantina with a group of crazy Germans. It was lots of fun and a new experience. Diamantina is a small historic miner`s city, very beautiful but normally rather unexciting. This however changes when its time for carvenal! Most of the local croud get out of the city, make sure they don`t leave anything in their flats so that they can rent them to plenty, plenty of mostly young Brazilians who are coming to town to party almost straight for five days... It`s a crazy, chaotic mess that starts in your room (7 people in one little room), grows in the flat (one bathroom for 25 people, no real kitchen, only beer, chachaca and caipirinha to drink) and expands to the streets, other apartments and whereever the wave of madness takes you!

Visiting the Pataxó

Looking pretty much like a real Pataxó

Beautiful Horizont

Finally I got to see why the city is called Belo Horizonte...