May 24, 2004
May 21, 2004
May 19, 2004
Visit to Bahia
We're just back from a long weekend in Bahia state. We started off spending a couple of days with our friends Lyndsay and Ralph at their house near Salvador.
From there, we carried on to Ilheus, the "capital" of the "cocoa coast", famous for its association with the writer Jorge Amado.
Catriona with a cacau pod
We paid a visit to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Supply's cacau research station, CEPLAC, near Itabuna. They showed us all aspects of raw cacau production through to the sale of dry cacau "peanuts". They also showed us their research facilities for attempting to help Brazil's farmers refine the cacau further themselves, thus capturing some more of the value-addition in the production process.
Daniel's first swim
We managed a little relaxation at our hotel. It's "winter" in Rio, but even in the low season, Bahia is pleasantly tropical.
We also went to the Ecoparque de Una, an attempt at bringing sustainable ecotourism on the African model to Brazil.
Catriona was hoping to see monkeys, but we didn't see any. She did get to see a big snake in the road. We took a canopy walk, way up in the trees like in one of Catriona's favourite books.
Before we left, we had time for lunch at a barraca on the beach. Probably the highlight of the trip from Catriona's point of view.
May 09, 2004
May 02, 2004
Weekend in Curitiba
We spent this past weekend in Curitiba catching up with some friends from our year spent living there. A reminder of winter - it was about 10C at night, and a great opportunity to introduce Daniel to everyone who only knew him as "the bump!". He's now 7.1kg - about 16 lbs, weighing at three months what Catriona weighed at six.
This photo was taken at Bocaiuva do Sul at the convent of the Sisters Daughters of the Cross (Irmăs Filhas da Cruz), where we were visiting with our friend Sister Mary Finbar. She noted that we had been there the same weekend last year and that we were expected to make it an annual visit - perhaps a bit difficult once we've gone back to Inglaterra!
