Banana Farm Visit!

This morning Eddie and I walked over to the Ecological park here in Cubatao (we had visited it yesterday with Dave & Carol after the morning favela English class). It was nice & sunny out so we decided to just walk over there again. It's about a 20 minute walk and it was much warmer today than the past few days. We again encountered one of the workers that has attempted to communicate with us yesterday and wanted to be our tour guide. Today she brought out her boss and we all fumbled around trying to say a few things to each other. The people here in Brazil really are as friendly as I had heard. Everyone wants to try to communicate with us even if they don't know one word of English and even though we know very little Portuguese. They often kiss you on the check in greeting even if they've never met you before. We've encountered many people in the places we've gone who want to help us. If they see us looking for something, they'll do their best to communicate with us to help us find whatever we're looking for.

Today we were able to make the visit to the banana "farm" that was planned last week but then cancelled. One of the workers we met at the feira was once a student of Dave & Carol's. She works for a banana farmer who runs a small "hobby" farm in Valle Verde near here. When he saw us talking with Clara last week, he told her we could go out to his farm. It was really awesome to see! He said his was a very small farm with 5000 trees. Each tree produces about 3 big bunches (can't remember the Portuguese word) about every 2 years. He cuts or harvests about 90-100 in one day to sell for the week at different feiras around Cubatao. While we walked around the farm, he also let us sample another fruit right off the tree and also sugar cane. We had tried the sugar cane juice (with lime) at the feira, but not the actual cane. Eddie said we paid for the trip in blood, but it was worth it! We were eaten up by mosquitos...a different kind than we encountered in our first few days here. These left bloody welts behind and they itch! I estimate I have around 20-30 bites on my legs. Oh well...it was awesome. We didn't see any toucans today because he said they only come around when it's raining, but that they frequent the trees when the weather is rainy.

Tonight is Eddie's computer class, so I guess I need to publish this post since we're about to head to the club. Thanks for praying and/or reading!