In which The Author, having been confined to The House since His Glorious Arrival, and being Exceedingly Antsy to sojourn forth into Parts Unknown, and having been Lured into a False Sense Of Security with his Portuguese-language Skills, beguiles Himself into sojourning forth into Said Parts Unknown, namely Chapada National Park, with Two Non-English Speakers who, despite their most Valiant Efforts, can’t understand why the Colossal, Abnormal Swelling on The Author’s neck could be Capable of causing serious Medical Problems, but He still has fun anyway, despite nearly Becoming Unintentionally Intimate with a Renault, thanks to Brazil’s generally-accepted Method of Driving, which was most likely the inspiration for that of The Bad Guy In The Chariot Race Scene In Ben-Hur.

Today was the perfect opportunity for me to get out and about and actually experience a little bit of the natural world for which Brazil is so famous. Not only was the port side of my neck suddenly and mystifyingly swollen –nay, bloated—to worrisome proportions, but ‘twas raining buckets for as far as the eye could see, which was about half of a city block.

And so, after binding and gagging the little angel on my shoulder, we set off with great aplomb for Parque Nacional Chapada. The aplomb consisted of cutting arm and head holes into several large plastic bags and fashioning them into something approximating ponchos. Being confident in my tried-and-true Akubra, I smugly declined the “capa” that was offered me and studiously avoided the somewhat-concerned gazes that were subsequently directed at me. After all, it’s just rain, right? Right?

Our first stop was Cachoeira Martinha (kah-sho-ay-rrah mah-tee-nyah [Martina Waterfall]). She was the first of about 10 different cachoeiras at which we stopped throughout the course of the day, several of which can be seen on the video at the end of this entry.

But I wasn’t necessarily there for the waterfalls. I was there for the birds. And lo and behold, I accomplished one of my life goals today.

I got to see a toucan.

And then I nearly died. Allow me to rephrase that… over the course of the 57 kilometers back to Cuiabá, I teetered continuously on the precipice of Sudden, Instant, And Even Immediate Death. The best description that I can give of standards of driving in Brazil is as follows: a rigorously-enforced, mandatory boycott of sanity.

I’ll try to get some video of it.

Anyway, for those of you who are following along with the geography of the whole thing (Dad!), I’m right in the very center of the continent right now. On Thursday we’re going south to Campo Grande by plane and then headed toward the Bolivian border by bus. If you like to use Google Earth, the city on the Bolivian side of the border is Puerto Suarez; the Brazilian side is called “Corumbá.”
I don’t know if we’ll have internet there, so this update and tomorrow’s could be my last until we reach Santa Cruz.

Unless I venture out onto the streets again, in which case it’ll probably be my last ever.

In which The Author, being tempted by the sultry voice of the Hammock On The Front Porch, and having discovered that said Hammock offers the best Vantage Point from which to poach Wireless Internet, and being force-fed all manners of delectable victuals by a Most Obliging Hostess, accomplishes absolutely Nothing.

Well, not absolutely nothing. I did submit a couple of final projects electronically. And drank copious amounts of fresh pineapple juice. And lounged.

But tomorrow I’m going to a location called the Chapada to look for jaguars.

And Wednesday we’re supposed to go orchid hunting.

And then Thursday, it’s off! to Bolivia.

I’ll post in more earnestness tomorrow after The Searchings For The Jaguars.

Ciao.

In which The Author, armed with one carry-on laden with books and another bursting with Adult Diapers, and having out-maneuvered the Transportation Security Administration by checking all Toothpaste And Other Highly-Explosive Liquids/Pastes with Ken’s baggage, and having patted Himself on the back for being such a Smooth Operator, finds out What It’s Like to travel from Redmond to Portland to Chicago to Sao Paulo to Brasilia to Cuiaba with one (1) eighty-year-old.

I am now a wheelchair expert. The last 27 hours have methodically trained me to be able to calculate the width of a wheelchair seat to within millimeters, all from a worthy distance of 25 feet. The point of this exercise, obviously, is to determine whether or not said chair is spacious/gracious enough to accommodate the derriere of my ward. I made Redmond get us a golf cart. Portland was acceptable, but Chicago was absolutely not. I took one long, critical look at the diminutive assemblage of wheels and plastic that was produced to transport us all the way across O’Hare International Airport and couldn’t help but wonder if it was the sick lovechild of some long-ago affair that a skateboard had with a shopping cart. I cleared my throat, looked Chanelqua (our porter) in the eye, and confessed that I had been hitherto unaware of the existence of “wheelchairs” that actually fit down the aisles of a Boeing 737. Were they, I queried, designed to transport passengers piece-by-piece? They brought us a new chair.

Notwithstanding the hassle of overseeing wheelchair auditions at every single airport, there is at least one fantastic advantage to traveling with someone who requires wheeled transport. Our flight from Chicago to Sao Paulo was completely full, yet Ken and I magically cleared customs in about four minutes.

And I’ve invented a new language. I’m going to call it Portspanglish©. As the name suggests, my new dialect incorporates elements of Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Central to the efficacy of this idiom, however, is a fourth dimension: that of highly-animated gesticulation. (I left it out of the name because “Gesticuspanglishuese” sounds a bit like an infection that sailors might get after months at sea without a fresh change of underwear.) In all fairness, Portuguese is a mesmerizingly beautiful language, particularly when the speaker is one of GOL Airlines’ flight attendants.

Anyway. We got picked up at the Cuiaba airport by Ken’s brother David and off! we sped to David’s house where a dinner of chicken pie, rice, beans, fresh bananas, and authentic Brazilian coffee awaited us. And now, time for installment one of our show, “Life Lessons with Jack!”

• Jack’s rules to live by, #759: Never, ever give Brazilian coffee to an 80-year-old who has just been on 27 consecutive hours of flights. Just don’t.

And now back to our regular programming. Actually, that pretty much concludes the show for today. Stay tuned for more fun stuff, and click HERE to see a little video from today.

In which The Author, being beset by a Mighty Urge to travel the planet, and ever eager to do so on Someone Else’s Dollar, agrees to accompany An Octogenarian to Brazil and Bolivia.

Just to bring any of you who aren’t paying attention up to speed, I agreed to accompany an elderly man named Ken down to various and sundry exotic, tropical, and subsequently mosquito-infested locations in South America.

For three weeks.

Now that you’re up to speed…

I’ve traveled to quite a few places on this little green and blue speck we call Earth, and in my opinion, there are few areas that rival southeastern Oregon.

The crystal clear blue skies over the barren Alvord Desert make the distant horizon seem almost within arm’s reach; the inky night sky, pierced by the brightest stars you’ll ever see, is one of the darkest in the country, affording extravagant, exceptional stargazing; three miles away, the bright white flash of a nervous antelope’s tail strobes like a lighthouse, warning his brothers and sisters of danger.

And what might that danger be? These days, he’s most likely afraid of you and me, but he still has to keep a wary eye out for coyotes and mountain lions, just like he’s been doing for thousands of years.

And what about those strange paintings on the rocks around Petroglyph Lake? Those were left there by the Paiute people, who have also been here for thousands of years.

And what of that column of steam coming out of the ground? That would be the perennial hot waters of one of dozens of hot springs that dot the landscape with boiling pools of sulfuric water, spewing water vapor into the dry desert air. Just like they’ve done for thousands of years.

And it’s all in my backyard.

June 5-8 of this year, I’ll be sharing that backyard with ten people, all accommodations, food and transportation included.
If you’d like to be one of them, click here or give me a call at 800.962.2862.

Hey all! Wow, it’s been a while. I’m posting this because my webmistress keeps threatening to make all of my links redirect to pr0n sites if I don’t post something soon…

At any rate, I think it appropriate that you should all know that I’m headed down to South America for three weeks, March 15-April 5.

I’ll be making stops in Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, most likely, so if you have any information (NOT found in Lonely Planet guidebooks) please let me know as soon as you can!

Oh, and let me know if you want me to bring anything back for you…

The most important video you’ll watch this year.

Oregon, as many of you may not know, is not all green forests and rivers and ferns. In fact, if one looks at a map of Oregon, one might be surprised to find that a solid 4/5 of this great state is actually high desert (click on the map). This is the result of the rain shadow that the Cascades mountain range throws across much of northwestern USA.

Now, I live in the middle of the brown. In Bend. And trust me, the farther east you go, the browner it gets.

So all that said, a couple weekends ago my roommate James and I decided to go camping in the Alvord Desert in southeastern Oregon. The Alvord Desert lies along the eastern slope of yet another mountain range called the Steens Mountains (which cast a rain shadow of their own). According to the highly-reliable source of wikipedia.com, the Alvord receives less than 7 inches of rain per year, so it’s pretty dry.

And that’s where we went.

We set out from Bend on a Friday evening and made our way to Burns, 130 miles distant (see map). We were about 10 miles out of Burns when I mentioned to James that we should stop at Safeway and buy some beer for our trip, as I had forgotten to do so before leaving Bend. James, in typical fashion, turned to me and posited, “No, Jack. We need to go to a BAR!” Now, let me give you some background information on Burns, OR…

Burns is an agri-business society in Harney County. The population of Burns is 3,020 people, and it is shrinking. This is in no doubt due to the fact that cousins don’t typically produce reproductively-viable offspring. But I digress. Anyway, so as we drove into town, we kept all four of our somewhat travel-bleary eyes open for the seediest bar we could find, hoping to God that the chastity belts (“It’s an Everlast!”) we had purchased prior to leaving Bend would withstand the, ahem, “negotiations” which we expected from the local fauna/townspeople.

We settled on the “Central Pastime,” which came complete with saloon-style doors. As we ever-so-unobtrusively swaggered in, we were greeted by a vomiting drunk, a quasi-toothless bartender named “Belinda,” four walls covered with big game trophies (one of which was a boar wearing a cowboy hat), and the smell of stale tobacco. ‘Twas a scene that Kevin KIine would have loved had it been included in “Silverado.” We asked Belinda which beers she had on tap, and she responded, “Coors, Coors Lite, Bud, Bud Lite, and Amber Bock.” We wisely chose the amber, which was quickly served along with two food menus.

Now, there are a few things in this world that will provoke a man to do strange, irrational, and potentially fatal things.  Pretty girls, for instance.  Or the promise of cheese.  In this case, it was the delightful spelling on the menus.  I turned to the page titled “Appitizers” and quickly scanned them over.  I couldn’t resist it.  There it was right in front of me, and I gave in and ordered the “Chickin Gizzerds.”

Imagine the texture of a jellyfish.  Now deep fry it.  Voila.  Chickin Gizzerds.  We left Burns with no regrets other than that nagging sensation in your bowels that says “I’m those ‘Appitizers’ that you ate earlier, and I’m going to come back and haunt you in about three hours.  Prepare  yourself, sucker…”

The drive from Burns down through Frenchglen was uneventful, save for a near panic-attack on James’ part at being a little tiny bit inebriated and out in the middle of nowhere.  Believe you me, Central/Eastern Oregon on a moonless night is a dark, dark place.  That said, if you’re driving at 1:00 am through Frenchglen, Oregon on a dark, dark night, don’t stop.  Ever seen “The Hills Have Eyes?”  Yeah.  Just keep driving.

At any rate, panic attacks notwithstanding, we arrived at our campsite on the very edge of the Alvord Desert around 1:45 am, just in time to get a flat tire.  If we’d been 15 minutes later, we might have missed our appointment, but we made it on time and got the flat.  And then decided to fix it in the morning.  That decision was based upon the fact that it was an absolutely clear night with not a hint of moonlight, and the stars were so bright and numerous that it almost seemed like they truly three-dimensional.  Like you could reach your hand up in the sky and stir them up like the bioluminescent algae on the GBR.  So we did the only logical thing that one does in situations like that… we took pictures!!! Enjoy Scorpio, by the way…

DAY 2:

Nissan trucks are easy to fix.  Especially if you remember where your tools are.  Well.  I completely forgot about the existence of a removable wall (behind which the jack handle resides) behind the back seats in The Barracuda, so we had a jack but no handle to attach to it when we decided to change the flat in the morning.  That said, James and I, being Manly He-Men, decided to improvise our own tools for The Fixing Of The Flat Tire.  We wound up using two old sticks, a broken shovel, a jack, some peppermint-oil soap (for Teh Lubrications, you know?), a screwdriver, a tent stake, a Crazy Creek, and a lugwrench.  All before breakfast, too.

After a short amount of deliberation and some Very Manly Poses In The Desert, we decided to go back to a small hamlet called Fields to get the flat fixed and refuel.  Fields, according to Wikipedia.org, is small.  Yeah.  We rolled in and immediately noticed that the post office, bar, restaurant, general store, gas station, and mechanic’s shop were all in the same building.  We were both pretty haggard-looking (from all that Manly Posing…), and when we walked into the store/bar/restaurant/service station to see about getting the flat fixed, an old-timer named Jerry behind the counter looked us over, leaned forward ever so slightly and, in the most grandfatherly of tones, asked, “You boys need some breakfast or sumthin’?”  I thought James was going to cry.  Anyway, to make a long story short, we fixed the flat, refueled ($5.26 per gallon…), cooked some breakfast, played with Crash (that’s Jerry in the background), and set about adventuring again.  We found an immature great-horned owl (Bubo virginianus) in a little marshy area across the road from the bustling metropolis of Fields and James took about a trillion photos.

There was also a little shack there that, apparently, belonged to the man who started the community of Fields in 1881.  So we flawlessly executed a bunch more Incredibly Manly Poses and a couple of Moderately Manly But Still Quite Masculine Poses and cruised on out.  Our next destination was the Alvord Hot Springs and we hadn’t a moment to lose.

Well, the hot springs were under construction and had enough Dirty Hippie Cooties in them that we just decided to forego jumping in.  Instead we decided to drive around on the playa.  And take pictures.  And pose a few more times.  And have a heterosexual-life-partner moment.  And relish, after the life partner moment, in our manliness.  Abundantly.

Well, all good things must either (a) come to an end, (b) be paid for, (c) get better, or (d) end in a sandstorm.  In this case, all of the above.  We were blissfully performing acrobatics in the middle of the desert and completely ignoring the oncoming storm.  Well, it hit the desert and turned into a sandstorm 20 miles wide and 500 feet high.  Coming straight toward us at 65 miles per hour.  So we did the only sensible thing to do when you’re stuck in the middle of the desert with a huge sandstorm bearing down on you and all exits blocked: we drove straight into it at 50 miles per hour with James in the back of The Barracuda taking pictures.  Check ‘em out…

To cut to the chase, we survived.  And James’ camera didn’t get any sand in it.  But we went right through the heart of that storm.  In short, we pwned it.  And then it was time for lunch, so we drove over to Mickey Hot Springs.

Mickey Hot Springs are too hot to swim in.  They’re boiling.  And hotter.  In fact, Jerry From Fields told us a great story about (and this is a direct quote) “some city-slicker came up here all hopped up on them meth-am-phet-a-meeeens and got hisself kilt up in thar.  Yup.  Found ‘is body a-floatin’ round in thar about two days later.  Looked like a over-cooked lamb shank.”

So we didn’t swim.

But we did cook in them! Click here for all the pics…

Anyway, our time was drawing to a close, so we hopped back in the truck, drove north to Hiway 78, got another flat, took a picture to prove that we were there, and drove home into the sunset.

All told, we drove 600 miles, had two flat tires, chased a sandstorm, cooked in hot springs, visited a ghost town, and had one hell of an adventure.  Come with us next time.

The End.