February 28 - Day 14

I woke up Tuesday morning after sleeping in until 7:30 to discover that it was sunny outside and that the temperature was already at 30C with a high humidity. Luana and I had breakfast together and then she was off to work. I caught up on my diary, swam, and then joined Patti for her breakfast and enjoyed some more of that delicious Brazilian coffee. Everyone except Luana was home for lunch. After lunch, Amoedo and Salete were going to take us to a hotel complex where we could buy tickets for a combined river and jungle trip. Worney wanted to go with us and I wouldn't have minded because otherwise communication between Luana's parents and us was going to be limited by Amoedo's limited grasp of English and my likewise limited grasp of Brazilian Portuguese. However they insisted that he had already missed enough university classes and he was using his interpreter role as an excuse. So off he went and off we went. Despite the lack of a common language we got along well and we found out about our tickets. Initially it was going to be a group of us going on a certain day of the week. Later plans would change. They took us on a side tour of an elegant mall beside the hotel that had shops with a lot of wonderful art, clothing, duty free shopping, all ecologically sound products, most of which was out of our price range. They also took us on a tour of their property near a club in a gated community by a lake where they hoped to start building their new home. Back at Amoedo's, we had another "light" meal, which like the meal at lunch time had fruits, veggies, rice, meat, and delicious fish. At 8:30 in the evening Luana got back from her university class. Her boy friend, Fabio, took time of from studying and they had their first food since breakfast. With the exception of Fabio who went back to his studying, we all watched Brazilian Big Brother together. Nae visited with us in the evening as well. Bedtime at 11:45 for me. I slept well! You might note that the entries are getting briefer. The trip was finally tiring my body, and as a result, I was becoming quite brief in my recall of events of the day.