Greetings from Brazil!

Scott sounded really good today.. but tired. After looking at the pictures and reading his e-mails I can sure see why! I've cut and pasted some of his highlights for you from his e-mails to the girls. Stay tuned.. it should be an exciting week at the Isom house! Indiana Scott will no doubt have more adventures and those of us at home will have an exciting week filled with field day ( tomorrow) and Kinder graduation! ( Thursday).. this last week of school's going to be an exciting one!

I’ve got some pictures I’m going to try and send you from our time in Manaus. Use your imagination and pretend that you are rowing on a canoe with me down the Amazon river, looking for caiman, toucans, piranha, and anacondas. The Amazon is a huge river, bigger than anything I’ve ever seen (including the Nile). There is water everywhere and dense jungle everywhere you go. You see lots of boats because that is the best way to get around. This year, they’ve had the biggest water levels that the area has seen since 1953. This means that much of the forest is flooded and you can canoe into areas that you would normally hike in. Yesterday, that’s what a bunch of our group did. We went looking for wildlife in a flooded forest on canoes. We found some interesting plants, and it felt like we were in a movie. Later we walked past a turtle pond and Paulo (our guide) picked up a 40-year old turtle that was very heavy. I held Monkey up (from Mrs. B’s class) and the turtle actually snapped at Monkey and almost bit my hand. Everyone laughed pretty hard because they’d never seen me move so fast. Funny stuff. The Amazon Eco Park Lodge where we stayed was beautiful and had all kinds of interesting things to do nearby.

Yesterday, we also took a boat ride for several hours to the place where the Rio Negro (Black River) meets the Rio Solimoes and forms the main branch of the Amazon. At this amazing place, called the Meeting of the Waters, the black, slow moving water from Rio Negro (the main tributary of the Amazon) meets with the brown, faster moving Rio Solimoes (coming from the Andes) and the two waters flow side by side for several kilometers before finally mixing. It’s a really weird sight. We also ate at a floating restaurant on a lake on our way back to do our canoe trip.

The day before, we did a morning walk through the Amazon rainforest and got completely drenched. I haven’t been that wet in a long time. Later that afternoon, we went piranha fishing near the flooded forest and also went hunting for caiman. We caught a couple of piranha and I took Monkey’s picture next to one. We also lured a caiman out from hiding by stringing a big piece of meat on a fishing pole (with no hook) and this six-foot caiman sprung out of the water and ate the meat, giving us a really good look at him. Then we went on a boat ride to a native village up a tributary. They performed native dance and song for us and we got to look around their village and see how they live. It was very interesting.

The first night we were at the lodge, we went out at night and to look for caiman. Our native guide (Tucandeira) saw a caiman way off in the distance using his light. We motored over there and Tuca took off his shirt and dove into the dark water in the middle of the night and pulled out a little 3-year old caiman. He brought it up on the boat and Paulo’s boat came over so that he could tell us a little bit about the caiman by pointing things out to us and letting some of us hold the little critter. I chose to take photos instead! Earlier that day we also got to visit a monkey preserve near the lodge and saw wooly monkeys and red-faced monkeys. We also met a little orphan monkey named Saulos. I introduced him to my Monkey but he wasn’t very happy. Check out the video I’m sending. Saulos thought Monkey was a little scary!