Bubba's Amazon Adventure

The following will be my stories of the Amazon adventure. What was I doing in the Amazon you ask, the quick and easy answer is looking for gold, but I looked at it like Reepicheep in the Chronicles of Narnia, it was an adventure that needed to be taken. If you don’t get my reference, read the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis it is an excellent book for kids and I could even understand it.
My adventure starts with the plane trip to Brazil, we flew into Belem, which is a city on the Amazon River in the state of Para in Northern Brazil. Now if you don’t count Mexico, Canada or a quick cruise in the Caribbean I have never traveled outside the country. Newton, our Brazilian contact and translator convinced me to take an additional bag and bring him a cell phone, modem, and computer monitor. He called me a mule but I have no idea what he meant by that. So the plane lands in Belem at 4 AM and I have to go through customs. Everyone else in my group filled out the form and walked right through, but they grabbed my bag and took EVERYTHING out. I think the guy spoke English but was not about to let me off the hook by talking to me IN English. An hour and two latex gloves later I was through customs and in Brazil! I promised myself I would get Newton back before the trip was over and you will have to read a future blog to see how I did it, let me just say it is good.
Stay tuned the next couple of days to hear about my international relations blunders, 8 hour boat ride down the Amazon, 200 mile trip into the depths of the jungle, and things I didn’t know about creatures that live in the jungle and Amazon River.