Até logo, Brazil! And good riddance!

Today we leave Brazil.  Hopefully.  I mean, we're supposed to be on a plane tonight, but it's Brazil...what's ever gone as planned?

Right now we're still at the farm.  We spent the last 2 days here, actually staying right here on the farm campus itself.  It's not your typical farmyard.  There's no sprawling farmhouse since the owner doesn't live here.  Actually, he doesn't even live in this country, but even when he is here, he and even the managers live offsite at a town several hundred kilometers away.  This farm sports a couple big dorm-style buildings where many of the farm employees live.  There's a main cafeteria where they are served their meals (and based on our limited experience, the meals are pretty much the same things all the time: bologna sandwiches for breakfast--eww!--followed by beans and rice and spaghetti for lunch, and dinner usually has a little more variation, more beans and rice and some other main dish).  The rest of the barnyard is full of machinery and big sheds housing tools and spare parts.  The whole compound is surrounded by a tall chain link fence topped with razor wire.  There's a guard tower (literally!) at the entrance manned by security guards packing some major fire power and even ski masks at night.  It's a little creepy!  I guess they've had some problems with security in the past, hence why they're so well fortified now.

As Jonathan was finishing up the last installation here on a 3rd combine, I was looking into plane tickets for our next and last trip.  Next week we fly to Argentina for about eight days, and then we're done (how thrilled am I that our trip to Brazil was cancelled!).  It's actually kind of sad, thinking of being done with these adventures. But we're not done traveling yet!  After Argentina we're spending a week in Illinois tying up loose ends with Precision and visiting family!  After that we're spending a few days in Magdalena, Mexico!  So it's a totally different kind of traveling--yay for visiting people we love!

For now...we've set our sights for home and the Beach Cottage!  I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend our first anniversary!

Finally!

Good news!  Today we finally left Brasilia with the shipment!  It's pick-up time went from Monday morning, to Monday 4:11pm, to Tuesday 8:00am, to Tuesday 11:30am, to Tuesday 1:30pm, to Tuesday 6:30pm, to Tuesday 10:30pm, to Wednesday 9:00am.  We left town by ten this morning.  Not bad.  It's pick-up location went from "maybe Terminal 2"/"I think, Gol airlines", to Gol cargo, to Avianca cargo, to being shipped to our hotel (it never showed up so...), and finally back to Avianca cargo.  When Jonathan went in to get it, after shuffling around for awhile they informed him it was indeed onsite, but somehow it had been changed to one of the employee's names rather than Jonathan's.  The missing employee was called in to sign for it, and we were good as gold!  Needless to say, I think I'm done with Brasilia.  It's an okay place, but...I'm just done with it.

Tuesday morning as we waited around for news on the shipment, we spent our extra time visiting the zoo.  

 As we parked we were greeted by these funky looking birds roaming free.

This doesn't do their height justice; they were taller than waist high!

 These dudes were my favorite, but it's not a great pic, sorry!

The giant anteaters!  

As we stood there, one stuck out his tongue!

So gross.  An impressive kind of gross.  Google it.

 Leopards.

 The lion gave a roar for us.

It sounded more like a complaint.  Not very majestic, to say the least.

 Tiger.

And elephant.

So...I know the pictures aren't that exciting.  I mean, anyone can go to a zoo just about anywhere and get even better snapshots of the typical animals.  But in my general defense regarding picture taking this trip, honestly, there hasn't been much worth taking pictures of.  And I also forgot the camera in California, so these are iPhone pictures.  

As for Brazil, it's looking like we'll cut out the second half of our trip because waiting on the shipment wasted so much time!  This means we might have to come back as part of our planned trip to Argentina in a week.  Yikes!  I'm already gearing up mentally for another trip into this frustrating country.  

We learned something when we were engaged that has really stuck with us.  "Expectations lead to contempt."  I think that's been the chief problem with adapting well to Brazilian culture.  When you're constantly fed an expectation--"The shipment will be here tomorrow at 8:00."--when it doesn't come through (which is apparently often here) it's not easy to be flexible and adjust without a lot of negativity.  We have a lot of learning to do.  Maybe that's why we're coming back.  God's not done teaching us this valuable life skill: letting go of expectations.

What a day!

Futile.  Like trying to communicate with someone and just getting a lot of confused looks and head nodding.

Wild goose chase.  Like visiting twenty different hotels and explaining we need to use an oven.  "Do you have rooms with an oven?  Is there an oven we can use?  Do you speak English?"

Searching for a needle in a haystack.  Like trying to track down a package that was supposed to arrive to the airport with only an "I think it might be coming in at 4:11...terminal 2, maybe?"

The result?

After 2 and a half hours of driving all over Brasilia we found a hotel willing to let us use their kitchen oven.  Of course, the kitchen staff didn't speak any English so a daunting challenge would be explaining that the oven had to remain at precisely 70 degrees Celsius so as not to fry the electronics of the piece of equipment we were baking in their commercial oven for 2 hours.  Hmm, we'll see how that goes.

Off to terminal 2.  Stuck in rush hour traffic in downtown Brasilia.  More fruitless conversations.  No luck.  Finally somebody points us in the direction of terminal 1.  On the way we spot the cargo terminal.  Must be there.  Around the crazy loop-de-loop that is Brasilia International Airport.  We arrive at Gol airlines cargo.  (We ascertained that our shipment must be on Gol since it was the only airline with a flight arriving from Sao Paulo at 4:11pm.  Thank you google.)

No shipment.  No cargo arrived on that flight.

At least, I think that's what he said in his broken English.

So, I guess we don't need the oven.

Oh, wait, the packages will arrive at 10:00pm.  (yeah, right, you've been saying that since March)  But we close at eight, so you'll have to pick it up in the morning.

See you then.  We're calling it a day!

Maybe instead of a sojourning, we should call it a wandering...

Did I mention we only brought one change of clothes with us on the 5 hour drive?  It was only supposed to be one night, and we needed room in the car for the boxes arriving in the shipment.  Here's to another day in this pair of underwear!

Counting down the days till our Friday flight back to civilization, a.k.a. California.

Brazil again. (Note the enthusiasm.)

Nah, I shouldn't be that way.  I just get down on Brazil because it's the most outside my comfort zone and therefore very challenging!  I think it's the not being able to communicate combined with the lack of infrastructure that I'm used to.  But, it's good for me, right?  Stretching, here we come!

We had a glorious weekend-turned-ENTIRE-WEEK at the Beach Cottage!  It was wonderful!  The weather was great too, especially after drizzly New Zealand.  Besides digging our toes into the sand and watching the sun set over the waves, we fit in a bike ride too!  It was a little intense, left me sunburned and sore, but felt so good!  The wind was not so good to us making the return ride rather miserable.  But the weekend was amazing--I made it to dear Suzy's wedding shower, Jonathan met with his professor and worked on school stuff, we caught up with Altadena church, had breakfast at the Local Yolk, slept in...all kinds.  

The reason our home-stay was extended was due to customs in Brazil still holding onto our systems.  They're still not here, but we left Thursday hoping they'll arrive soon.  We did a day flight, instead of our usual overnight, which was interesting.  The great part was being upgraded to business class (frequent flyer paying off!).  We felt very snobby.  And now we're totally spoiled.  

After a layover in Panama City during a downpour, we landed just after midnight in Brasilia.  Then we sat in customs.  Much like our systems.  

I snapped this picture of Jonathan during our wait,

notice the boxes' sad condition, that was Panama's downpour at work.

I'm not sure you're allowed to use a camera in customs, but the only guy on duty was preoccupied with a couple who looked like they'd been on a shopping spree somewhere.  Finally someone else showed up, and the process was actually very quick.  An angel named Francisco helped us get our rental car.  He'd lived in the U.S. for a few years and had enough English to be very helpful.  If only he'd been with us at the cellphone store this morning.  That interaction was a little rougher, but we made it out of the mall with working phones.  

Then began the long drive.  Brazil is so vast.  It's hard to describe.  It seems like the city just vanished and suddenly rolling hills of jungle stretch as far as the eye can see.  The roads are fairly straight, which only heightens the effect as you top a ridge and see road stretch down and then back up off into the distance.  Sorry I don't have a picture.

There is one thing for sure, the thing about being stretched outside your comfort zone is the forced dependence on God.  And He's been nothing but faithful so far!  I'll keep you posted!

The End of New Zealand

Tomorrow we leave New Zealand.  And as far as we know, we won't be back, at least not with Precision this time around.  But we hope to come back.  Really, really hope to come back!  Our last few days here were pretty exciting ones.

First of all, Zach was here!  

That's right, Precision flew Zach to us again acting as mule!  This time it was big boxes of the new and improved version of the paddles that go in the clean grain elevator--remember, the thing I know how to do?  So most of Monday was spent working on doing the paddle switch in a few combines.  Which wasn't too torturous for Zach considering it was pouring down rain.  All day.  Kind of a bummer.  This extreme guy has dreamed of getting to go to New Zealand to do all the cool extreme stuff!  Little bit of a let down to spend so much time in the car driving between combines.  But hey, we made it fun, jamming to Lecrae and Beautiful Eulogy and trying out our kiwi accents and dying laughing at ourselves.  Tweenty-see-ven.  

Funny story about accents.  One night at the takeaway place where we were grabbing some turkish kebabs the cashier asked us where we were from (a question we get quite frequently), and then went on to say she loved our accent!  How funny is that!  I wonder if they try to imitate us like we do them.

Anyway, Tuesday was much brighter and no rain in sight!  Jonathan went to work, but Zach and I toured Hobbiton!  I was thrilled to get to go back, and Zach loved the experience too!  We had a blast!

 The Shire.

 Chilling at the Green Dragon.

Zach also slept a lot.  The jet lag was pretty tough on him.  But I definitely didn't mind having someone to chill with, hang out with, play Scrabble with, laugh with, and goof off with during those long afternoons when Jonathan was out riding in the combine.

Good stuff!  Fun times!

And now, tomorrow we're off.  Beach Cottage-bound!  Restful and relaxing weekend up ahead!  Cheers, New Zealand!  It's been fun!  

Holiday on the South Island

We've had four lovely days exploring New Zealand's South Island--also called the mainland.  And if you thought the North Island was beautiful...just you wait.  Seriously.  I've never seen anything like it.  At one point Jonathan said, "The scenery almost makes you sick.  It's so stunning you feel like you can't fully take it in."  So true.  

We landed in Christchurch, rented a little mazda 3, and took off.  Our plan was to make a giant loop to see as much as we could.  Leaving the city, this loomed in the distance:

Then this started,

so it kind of muted the spectacular-ness of it all, but it was still a gorgeous drive!  We arrived on the other side of the pass later that evening--and between the clouds and the gathering dark, there wasn't much to be seen.  We checked in and grabbed a bite to eat.  Then...off adventuring.

 We arrived here.

Only it was, like 9:00 at night, so of course it was pitch black.  We had flashlights, but the jungle at night is just sort of freaky.  But we found what we set out for: glow worms!  Funky little larvae things that literally glow in the dark.  Cool stuff.

Next day, we got up early to hit the road again.  To our surprise, the sun was actually shining, and when we walked outside it was like, Oh! That's what we were missing!

  Rainforest-covered mountains climbed even higher,

giving way to snowy peaks glittering in the morning light!

Not to long and we found a beautiful mountain lake, stunningly clear! 

So clear you can see the water's ripples on 

the bottom as well as on the surface!

The road took us down to the west coast where we could see the towering peaks in the distance even while the ocean loomed on our right.  We couldn't resist pulling over for a hike!  Several kilometers through the jungle, and then--a gorgeous beach with huge rocks standing a little way out in the surf.  The best part was how deserted it was!  Supposedly, at the right time of year, it's a famous beach for penguins.  Bummer to miss that!

Some cool rock formations at the beach.

The only downside of our beach visit was the sand flies that absolutely devoured me in only a short time.  Somehow Jonathan got away with only a few itchy welts.  Figures.  Anyway, we were sad to be driven away since we were having so much fun!  But, it was time to get on the road anyway.

 Our view most of the day.

Once we crossed over to the other side of the mountains, the scenery changed dramatically.  Gone were the jungle-covered mountains with spectacular waterfalls careening down their slopes.  Now the mountains that weren't snowy, were carpeted in short yellow grass with pops of colorful bushes--light purple, olive green, and rich brown.  

Soon our destination loomed ahead in the distance.

 Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand.

The sun was beginning to set, painting the peak a most vivid pink and gold!  Just looking up at something so incredibly awe-inspiring turns something inside, like a twinge of pure praise that can't help but bubble up at the truly awesome display of the beautiful power belonging to our Creator!

We knew we were getting close to our accommodations for the night--within sight of Mt. Cook itself--but we kept expecting to climb up some foothills and switchbacks closer to the mountain's height, like the Rockies.  But that's what makes this range so dramatic.  You feel dwarfed as the mountains shoot up all around you--from nothing!  Right from the plain you're driving in!  

 Only minutes from our hotel.  Almost there!

The sun set as we checked in, and after grabbing dinner at a café opened by a guy by the name of Sir Edmund Hillary--the first guy to summit everest, and a New Zealand native, we bundled up for some star gazing.  Yes, it was cold.  Imaginably so.  But the stars!  The stars!  I've never seen anything like it!  The small village of Mt. Cook is very conscientious of light pollution and has all "down-turned" lighting.  You've never been in such a dark township at night before--no streetlights at all.  With dark mountain peaks rimming the sky, billions of stars literally twinkle in the crisp air.  I've never seen a night sky like that.  And I lived in Mexico where the desert sky at night without much light pollution was pretty spectacular.  This was breathtaking!

The next morning, we were up decently early, hoping to beat the rain!  Our plan was to hike Mt. Sebastopol, the lowest peak in the area, but affording great views of Mt. Cook and the two glaciers that come down into the valley.

 Mt. Sebastopol from about halfway up.

Looking across to the neighboring peak, you could follow a stream all the way down--

over waterfalls and rapids.  The sound of it serenaded us as we hiked up.

 It was chilly, and a tough trek, but we had a blast!

 And the views were unbelievable!

Really.  I had a hard time believing what I was seeing!

 You can see the glacier lake and floating icebergs off in the distance.

 From the top!  It was really windy and really cold!

And good thing Jonathan thought to get me a waterproof jacket, because I needed it!  We got a little wet when some rain came through, but nothing bad.

 It doesn't do it justice.

 Stunning!

Looking out over the yellow valley toward the sheer mountainside jutting up out of the landscape, you could almost picture Gandalf cresting the hill in the sunlight bringing much needed help to the mountain city of Gondor!  (sorry, couldn't help it)

Three hours later, we finished the hike as the rain set in.  We didn't let it stop us, though!  We had to see a glacier up close!  

 Tasman Glacier and Lake.

The bright blue ice was cool, but most of the glacier and surrounding the lake was mostly muddied rock and ice.  Sort of a let down, but still cool.  Much of the mountains in the range sported glacier-like blue ice up by the snow layer.

We had a fantastic, if short, stay near Mt. Cook.  The hotel was like a resort with several restaurants, activity choices, even a planetarium.  One of the best features was a lounge with a grand piano facing the huge picture window overlooking the mountains.  I enjoyed that one!  When we left, it was raining and the clouds hid the mountains too well.  However, we did drive by a spectacular lake on the way out.

 Bright blue, like it belonged in the Caribbean!

Tomorrow, it's back up north.  But I'm so glad we made it down even if for such a short time!  I can't imagine thinking of New Zealand as just the North Island.  I've never been so awed in my life!  And now that the seed's been planted, we're hoping to come back for more adventures!

Bubbling Mud.

So...it's been awhile.  And recent posts have all been about work.  We did have a day off last week, and I figured I should blog about that adventure before I have too many wonderful things to say about the present adventure.  But, I'll save that, for now.  Suspense!  Don't you love it?!  

New Zealand has been a lot of work.  Unlike Argentina, where our 3 combines are always all in the same field, here they can be anywhere--sometimes we drive over an hour hunting down the next harvester!  And because we're always moving around, it's impossible to keep a "home base" so it's almost always only 1 night in each town.  While that means lots of unpacking only to repack in the morning, it also means I usually end up riding with Jonathan all day as he visits various fields.  Which means, I spend a lot of time sitting in the truck while he's with the operator in the combine.  When I get stir crazy, I'll walk around and enjoy the scenery.  We are in New Zealand, after all.

 One picturesque little paradise near a farm where we spent one afternoon.

 Besides the maize being harvested, they also raised sheep and deer.

Actually as I walked along the lane, one poor little sheep was outside the fence.  I'm not sure how it got separated from the others on the inside, but I gave it quite the fright when I came walking up.  The rest of the flock of course scattered leaving the little guy all alone.  He bleated and cowered, poor thing.  I tried to sweet talk him, let him know I wouldn't hurt him, but he scampered off.  Don't worry, later I saw him around the barnyard begging to be let back into the pen with the other sheep.

From that field, with the next day being Sunday, we decided to squeeze in a trip to Rotorua, a famous stop for tourists.  Any guess what the draw is?

 It's geothermal!

And you could tell the moment you stepped out of the car into the night air.  I thought it smelled like burnt popcorn.  But then, I had to agree with the standard stench comparison: rotten eggs.  Lovely.  But the next morning, as we strolled around the park near the hotel, I had to admit the smell was worth it.  Steam rose from open vents in the ground all around.  It was pretty spectacular in the morning light.

 Jonathan sneaked off the path to feel the stream water.  

It was hot!

The best of our attempts to get a picture.

Rotorua was cool, but really only worth a day.  It was a little bit of a tourist trap--a fact made rather obvious by the tour busses of Asians that swarmed our hotel.  One rather exciting experience was the bubbling mud pit--hence, the title of this post, and I've featured it in a quick video.

Rather disturbing, the way it gurgled and belched.

Other Rotorua adventures: we attempted to find a supposedly "secret" hot pool with a waterfall off the beaten path.  Jonathan had the coordinates and so, with hiking boots donned along with swimsuits under our clothes, we set out.  Apparently we had to do some bushwhacking to get to the place.  We got so far as to hear the waterfall and see some steam rising, but couldn't find any way to get down to it.  We gave up after I became more than a little upset at the jungle trying to eat me alive!  On a more pleasant note, we did enjoy some time at another hot water pool--a.k.a. the hotel's hot tub, which suited me just fine.  So there was no waterfall, but it didn't smell like sulfur or have a slimy mud bottom either.

Early Monday morning, it was back to work.  And boy, was it a crazy week!  At least it was short!  We felt the tug between Precision, who was under deadline to make production decisions and needed lots of good data, and the harvesters, whose main concern was pleasing their bosses and their bosses' clients and they didn't want anything to slow them down.  The days were long, but we hung in there, knowing an end was in sight! 

A well-earned burger late one night after a long day's work 

(which included skipping lunch!).

No, that's not dandruff in his hair, it's corn dust.

Actually the burger joint was really fun!  It's slogan was "engineering the perfect burger, because life's too short to eat bad burgers".  And they lived up to it!  Delish!

But even after grabbing a bite to eat, the day wasn't done.  We unloaded the truck that night before finally crashing.  Why?  Because we left the island!  This morning we boarded a plane bound for New Zealand's South Island--free of work for 4 whole days!  Let the adventuring begin!  Well, I think it did a long time ago, but--let the adventures carry on!