More Brazilian Etiquette and Travel Tips

Etiquette: 

If you enter a group, it is important to take the time to greet everyone, and say goodbye to everyone, individually. 

Touching, especially between men and strangers, is more common in Brazil than in America.  People may also stand closer to one another while speaking. 

In Brazil, a 10% service charge is usually added to a check at a restaurant.  It is not compulsory, but is usually paid.  Additional tipping is not needed or expected.  Tipping is also not expected in taxis. 

Wiping your hands together means “it doesn’t matter.” 

Don’t touch food with your hands (even things like bread and fruit).  Always use your fork and knife.

Tips:

At many restaurants, dishes are priced and portioned for two, but you can either split it with someone, or often order a half-dish (meia-porção) and pay 60-70% of the full price.

For lunch, many places offer comida por peso (food by weight). You fill your plate from a large number of dishes, then they weigh the plate and charge you. 

Finding ATMs and withdrawing money can be especially difficult in Brazil.

Many Brazilian nightclubs do not open until midnight… so be ready for a late night. 

Pantanal Matogrossense National Park

When I think about national parks I generally imagine little entrance booths where you have to pay, clearly marked trails, lots of tourists, and little informational placards about the physical and biological beauty that the park is protecting. Of course if you stray off the beaten path for some backcountry hiking or backpacking national parks can also represent vast expanses of wilderness to be explored, and, personally, these seconds types of experiences have been my favorite in many of the parks I have been to, but all the structure and information is something that I have tended to associate closely with any national or state parks that I visit.

It therefore came as a surprise to me that the Pantanal Matogrossense National Park is actually one of the least accessible places in the Pantanal. In my conversations with Ethan Shirley regarding my plans for the summer I remarked that I hoped to visit the national park to compare the level of weed invasion in this protected area with that of the more developed and ranched areas of the Pantanal near Poconé. He explained to me that, while it is possible to get to the park, you can only reach it by boat and there is really no infrastructure set up to explore it. Rather than the raised walkways and signs that will allow you to get up close and personal with some of the swampiest areas of the Florida Everglades, the national park in the Pantanal is characterized more by the complete lack of access and people. Thinking about this more I thought that this might actually be a good way of ensuring that a protected area was not degraded by tourist activities, but since it is also the case that there is almost not national park service presence in the area, it might be hard to keep tabs on whether or not people are actually entering the protected area or not.

As we have heard in class, the Pantanal is largely privately owned, resulting in this national park covering a tiny percentage of the park. In fact, even when combined with the SESC Pantanal Private Natural Heritage Reserve, a large privately protected area, and the other private reserves that have been set aside for environmental protection, the total conservation only adds up to about 5% of the area of the entire Pantanal. It will be interesting to explore such an interesting wilderness area on private land, rather than in a national or state park setting the way most of us are probably accustomed to. One thing we can think about going forward is how this lack of park service infrastructure might be a positive or negative for the ecology and preservation of the area.

Cole

The World Conferences on Preservation and Sustainable Development in the Pantanal

In February of 1999, the World Conference on Preservation and Sustainable Development in the Pantanal convened in Washington D.C. What immediately struck me about this meeting was first, that in happened 15 years ago in the U.S.! As we have talked about in class, most people haven't really heard about the Pantanal, but it seems like it was on the radar of some pretty big organizations and important scientists awhile ago, which is great. Second, I was impressed to learn that participants in the convention represented 41 nations! It is cool to see that so many different people agree that this ecosystem, considered by many to be the world's largest wetland, deserved international recognition and action to make sure that it continued to exist and be a healthy functioning ecosystem.

I looked a bit through the schedule of the conference and topics of the many talks that were given over the course of the 3 day meeting and was pleased to see that many of the talks, as well as the titles of many of the sessions, were very similar to many of the themes and topics that we have been exploring in class recently. Sessions focused on issues ranging from the ecological status and health of the Pantanal, the relationship because economic development and environmental preservation, the sustainable development of water resources and the path towards sustainably establishing an ecotourism industry in the area.

Looking around a little more I found that in fact there was second conference in October of the same year! For another weekend, scientists, organization leaders and government officials from 34 countries reunited to continue the important discussion on the future of the Pantanal. Many of the topics from the first meeting were discussed further, but new issues such as law enforcement and comparisons to other wetland ecosystems were also included.

All in all these meetings seemed like all of our Pantanal Prefield classes condensed into one intensive weekend! Seems like quite a bit of fun to me actually =P. Maybe after we come back we can submit a talk to give at the 3rd (yet to be organized) World Conference on Preservation and Sustainable Development in the Pantanal. Finally, one of Dr. Bob's books about the Pantanal actually includes article versions of many of the talks given at these conferences, so if you are interested in looking at some of the topics they discussed I would recommend borrowing the book for a few days to peruse some of the articles which are pretty interesting!

Cole

Dam Parasitism

Hello everyone,

This post is inspired by my girlfriend, who just took a class called Parasites and Pestilence (I think Martell took it also?). This week she was studying for her final and wouldn't stop talking my ear off about the lifecycles of a variety of parasites, including those that cause the disease Schistosomiasis.

We heard a little about Schisto from our travel health clinic visitors, but as a quick recap, it is a disease that utilizes two hosts, freshwater snails and humans, to complete its life cycle. A human gets infected when they are exposed to freshwater where the free-swimming larva can penetrate the skin. The larva grow inside the human and lays eggs that are released in urine or stool, which then often makes its way back to freshwater sources, where the eggs can hatch in snails and complete the life cycle. Here's a picture to explain it a little better:

I thought that this might be sometime worth thinking about since we will be interacting with quite a bit of freshwater, and in a little searching around online I came across an interesting little article about how the Manso dam increases the possibility of introduction of schistosomes, and thus provided the impetus for a study on the susceptibility of the local snail populations to becoming hosts for this disease. Luckily the study found that there was a relatively low level of susceptibility, but did not discount the fact that this could still be a potential problem in the area of the Pantanal.

Source: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0074-02762006000900036&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es

Cole

The Yellow Anaconda

 

Also known as the Paraguayan anaconda, they are endemic to South America. They tend to live in mostly aquatic areas, including regularly flooded areas of the Pantanal. They do most of their hunting between June and November as well, so there is a good chance of seeing one. Luckily they usually only feed on small mammals, and other smaller animals such as lizards, but they do like wading birds. They are also not as large as the green anaconda, and they tend to only hunt animals that weigh much less than them. They usually weigh between 55 and 77lbs, although they can weigh over 121lbs! Still, humans should be fine. Yellow Anacondas can also get up to 14ft in length, so they should be easy to spot, unless their springing an ambush which they like to do while hunting. They usually have a yellow base color with black or dark brown saddles or other markings along their body which distinguishes them from the green anaconda, their longer and heavier cousin. They are typically solitary animals, so you won’t see a pair of them because mating season doesn’t come till the end of the year.

-Catie

Exotic Animal Trade in the Pantanal

            For those of you who missed my original presentation or wanted a refresher on exotic animal trade in the Pantanal, today I wanted to write about the different types of animal trade and what consequences they have on not only the Pantanal but on Brazil and the world at large. Animal trafficking is a huge problem in Brazil, with 38 million specimens being taken from Brazilian wildlife every year. Furthermore, it is the third largest illegal activity in the world behind weapon and drug trafficking. Some of the major avenues of animal trade are as follows:

1.   Zoo/collectors: This kind of trade occurs in both legal and illegal ways. Often the trafficking for zoos and special collections is most damaging because it targets rare and unique species, which are often endangered. The lear’s macaw is one of the most sought after species, selling for about $60,000 in the international market.

2.     Biopiracy: This kind of trafficking is for scientific purposes. Species like the Nigriventer spider, the Jararaca snake, and different kinds of beetles are especially popular due to their venoms and bodily fluids, which often have properties useful in the drugs and medicine.

3.     Pet Animals: Pet trade is extremely prevalent in the Pantanal because of the high incentives and because there are so many animals that could be taken from the wild to be domesticated. However, this is especially dangerous since often they are not transported in sanitary conditions and can spread disease. Also, some animals are much harder to domesticate.

4.     Fauna Products: Items such as feathers, skins, leathers, claws, and fangs are very popular. They are used as ornaments or often as part of the fashion industry. In a sixth month period, officials documented that 18,800 kilograms of skin was confiscated.

-Sarah

Packing for the Pantanal

           This week I’ve been moving out all my stuff, preparing to go abroad next quarter. As I’ve been packing all my stuff for Madrid, it made me think about packing for the Pantanal and what we’ll need. As a serial over-packer, who needs to be prepared for every possible permutation of events, I know I will have to use a lot of restraint for Brazil. Thus I did some research to look up what the experts recommend to pack for a trip to the Pantanal.

Pantanal Jaguar Safaris has a very comprehensive list:

http://www.pantanaljaguarsafaris.com/#!weather-conditions/c1c8u

Virtual Tourist also has some user-contributed advice:

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/South_America/Brazil/Estado_de_Mato_Grosso/Pantanal-1508753/Packing_Lists-Pantanal-TG-C-1.html

Most of what they recommend is what you’d expect, but some things to note especially are:

• Good walking shoes – lot of people mentioned high boots to tuck your pants into and good sandals/flip flops.
• Lots of strong mosquito repellant! It seems getting bitten is a common theme in a lot of Pantanal adventures.
• A hat – we need to make sure we maintain our beautiful complexions!

I know we have a few months to go, but I’m getting so excited already!

-Sarah