Saturday, July 31 — August 1, 2015
Tulsa, OK, USA to Cuiabá, Brazil
Tulsa, OK, USA to Cuiabá, Brazil
I left from Tulsa Airport on Delta Airlines Friday, July 31st for a chain of flights: Tulsa to Atlanta, Atlanta to Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo to Cuiabá (Quee-a-bah), Brazil.
I had about a 3-hour layover in Atlanta, so I bought The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in the airport bookstore, intending to return it for a nice refund when I returned. However, most nights I was too exhausted to read it, so I am reading it now that I am home. It is a good, well-written book, the third in this series, which began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
A thunderstorm moved into the Atlanta area. When we finally boarded the flight—an hour late—we sat delayed on the runway for another 2.5 hours! I was a little worried about making my Sao Paulo connection to Cuiabá, but all turned out well.
On the long flight to Sao Paulo, I was seated in the center 3-seat row on the left aisle. A mother seated in the center seat, asked me if I would consider changing with her son so that she and her 9-year-old son, who was in the center seat in front of us, could be together. I hated to be hard-hearted, but I declined. I could not sit cramped in the center for the 9-hour, 44-minute flight. It was bad enough sitting on the aisle. Her husband and daughter sat several rows behind us.
Turned out this woman was from a German-speaking community in Argentina. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was the child of a Nazi War criminal. She said that there were “a lot of them [Germans]” who had their own German-speaking community there.
I envied those in first and business class who had bed seats and even little comforters to make them comfortable. My feet and legs screamed throughout the flight. My compression hose worked fine but were doing their job too well, so I took them off about three-quarters through the flight. Arrived in Sao Paulo with swollen ankles, of course.
There was a charging port and small TV/computer screen in front of each passenger. However, the plane roar was so loud that I couldn’t hear the movie, so instead played games, worked crossword puzzles, and read before trying to sleep.
When, in Sao Paulo, I picked up my bag to send it on to Cuiabá, it was soaking wet. They must have left it outside while we waited for the storm to subside in Atlanta. Fortunately I had packed all but my pj’s in plastic bags. Dried the pj’s at the Cerrado Park Hotel, not a difficult task as the AC quit each time I left the room, and it was tropically hot outside..
In Sao Paulo I met Heini and Erkki Holopainen, a Finnish couple who were in our Field Guides birding group. We were on the same flight to Cuiabá, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and the site of our tour’s start. Known as the “Southern gate to the Amazon,” Cuiabá has a hot, humid, tropical climate. Heine and I had corresponded via email and were looking for each other. We flew GOL to Cuiabá and then Erkki called the Cerrado Park Hotel, which sent a shuttle to the airport to pick us up. Erkki and Heine had been traveling from Finland for 2+ days and were exhausted. When we reached the hotel, we ordered Chinese delivered to their room. Heini is a strict vegetarian so a Chinese fish entrée suited her (and me) well. I had exchanged only a $20-bill and most of it went to that meal . . . that I could have done without.
We ate our meals in our separate rooms—which happened to be next door to each other. Then I got ready to catch up on my sleep, but Jan Huebner called. Jan was another single-woman participant from Orlando, FL. She was in the hotel too, but all the rest of the party had been stranded in Miami and would not be able to make it to Brazil until 10:30 am the next day. Jan had “hotel fever” and knew Marcelo Padua, our guide, so called him and arranged for him to take the two of us—the Holopainen’s were too exhausted—on a birding tour of Mae Bonifacia Park, a forest park within the city limits.
We had barely entered a wooded park trail, when a family of black-tailed marmosets with fleshy pink noses came down to investigate Marcelo’s bird calls (see below).
When, in Sao Paulo, I picked up my bag to send it on to Cuiabá, it was soaking wet. They must have left it outside while we waited for the storm to subside in Atlanta. Fortunately I had packed all but my pj’s in plastic bags. Dried the pj’s at the Cerrado Park Hotel, not a difficult task as the AC quit each time I left the room, and it was tropically hot outside..
In Sao Paulo I met Heini and Erkki Holopainen, a Finnish couple who were in our Field Guides birding group. We were on the same flight to Cuiabá, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and the site of our tour’s start. Known as the “Southern gate to the Amazon,” Cuiabá has a hot, humid, tropical climate. Heine and I had corresponded via email and were looking for each other. We flew GOL to Cuiabá and then Erkki called the Cerrado Park Hotel, which sent a shuttle to the airport to pick us up. Erkki and Heine had been traveling from Finland for 2+ days and were exhausted. When we reached the hotel, we ordered Chinese delivered to their room. Heini is a strict vegetarian so a Chinese fish entrée suited her (and me) well. I had exchanged only a $20-bill and most of it went to that meal . . . that I could have done without.
We ate our meals in our separate rooms—which happened to be next door to each other. Then I got ready to catch up on my sleep, but Jan Huebner called. Jan was another single-woman participant from Orlando, FL. She was in the hotel too, but all the rest of the party had been stranded in Miami and would not be able to make it to Brazil until 10:30 am the next day. Jan had “hotel fever” and knew Marcelo Padua, our guide, so called him and arranged for him to take the two of us—the Holopainen’s were too exhausted—on a birding tour of Mae Bonifacia Park, a forest park within the city limits.
We had barely entered a wooded park trail, when a family of black-tailed marmosets with fleshy pink noses came down to investigate Marcelo’s bird calls (see below).
In the park we saw Little Woodpecker (1), Pearly-vented Tody Tyrant (2), Short-crested Flycatcher (3), Grayish Saltator (4), Bananaquit (5), Bare Faced Ibis (6), Green Ibis (7), Common Pauraque (8), Cattle Egrets, Bare-faced Curassow (9), Ruddy Ground Doves (10), Rock Doves, Great Kiskadee. We heard several other species and tried to call in and track down a Pheasant Cuckoo (11), a shy, seldom seen species, but to no avail. I included two views of the Greyish Saltator because later on the tour I saw one from behind just as shown in 4b and described it as a bird that looked something like a robin with an eye-ring. Well?
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