Week 4 – Thursday-Sunday: It’s Sunday night and we just returned from supper. We have a slight breather. Unfortunately the internet is down, which we have found to be the case a lot the last few days. I am going to try to get this written and then load it the next time we have a connection. We left Piracicaba Thursday night at 10:15 pm after we got Kip and Dan’s room unlocked so they could get their luggage out. You will need to ask them to fill in the blanks. It could only happen to Kip. We drove all night and arrived at our next destination at 8:30 am, two hours late. In the middle of the night we drove through a rainstorm and we came across a tree across the road to signify a bridge was out ahead......an interesting way to notify drivers on the road. The detour we used was an extra 110 miles. Bet you haven’t had a detour that long before!! After a quick breakfast, since we were so late in arriving, we visited a co-op, Castrolanda that was started by the Dutch in the 1950’s. It was quite interesting to hear about the history of the co-op and the 15 families that came from the Netherlands and who built their own community in the state of Paranara . Paranara represents 3% of the population in Brazil but 25% of the agriculture production so we could see the importance of the state to Brazil. The co-op handled milk, swine, grain, sweet potato, animal feed, and potato chips. A majority of the revenue was from grain and fertilizer. In the afternoon we visited a research station which focused on crops, plant propagation and primarily no-till farming. We were able to see the equipment they have developed based on the issues and concerns from farmers and how the equipment was improved. In the pictures you can see that the equipment was built to be pulled by horses and we just tried it out. We saw grasses, corn and beans. That night we had a wonderful Italian meal in the Italian community of Santa Felicidade.

On Saturday we drove to CPPOM which was a catholic university on the coast in Morretes. There they did research on clams, oysters and other marine life. We were able to see fish and hear about the practices they were doing to encourage oyster production in Brazil. We then traveled to Camboriu, Santa Catalina and arrived about 5:30 to the beach. We stayed there until 8:30, swam and watched a beautiful sunset. The students experienced the beach nightlife and this morning we went back to the beach and stayed from 9:30 am until 1:45 pm. The beach water yesterday was dirtier than today and warmer. Since we arrived late it was not crowded. Today we were on the other side of the inlet and the water was cooler and cleaner and the beach was very crowded. It was a gorgeous day. We had a great time relaxing in the sun. We returned to the hotel, got cleaned up and traveled to where we will start our day tomorrow.