Nature's orchestra

It can be quite nice all sleeping in one room. Sometimes if only two of you are awake you can play whispering or sign games while the others are asleep.  This morning I was lying awake listening to the cacophony of sounds at dawn. It's a little like hearing a song and trying to listen out for the sound of a specific instrument. But in the Atlantic Rainforest, there are so many different sounds, squeaks, tweets, squawks, low-pitched whistles, from the various animals, birds, frogs and insects, punctuated by the cockerel* (whose time clock is out as he starts at about 4am every day) that it's impossible to count how many sounds there are.  We also enjoy a vigorous rustling in the roof of the bats every morning and evening, with their high pitched almost cartoon-like laughing. 

Louis looked over and could see I was awake and gave a little wave and a smile. Suddenly, there was a piercing shriek, much louder than the rest of the sounds.  Louis' eyes widened in surprise - "What was THAT?" he whispered.  I had absolutely no idea and given all the birds out here have very long names like “great-breasted falsetto-warbling ant-shrike”, my guess would invariably be way off the mark, but I explained I imagined that it was how a passing pterodactyl might have sounded, and we shared stifled laughs together.  

I wonder if that's our 4am cockerel....

"Daddy, I can't sleep with that chicken"' he said, referring to the cockerel and settling down with his fingers in his ears. Unable to block out the cockerel though, Louis put his head torch on and started making hand shapes on the wall.  An extra shape appeared and we realised Frankie was up too!

* We did wonder whether there was an outside chance of a cockerel-eating spider that might be encouraged to make an appearance. Alas not.

My 7th birthday

At 06:46, I woke up and put my hand under my pillow.  I felt something papery and then I took it out. It was my tooth and my money!!!!!!

I told Daddy that I didn’t expect a present and Daddy agreed. Then I got out of bed and found 3 presents and 2 cards!!!! The 3 presents were Jacks, a Kindle and a Moshi Fling, I liked them a lot. 

I went down to breakfast and then everyone sang “Happy Birthday!” It made me feel brilliant!  

After breakfast, we went on a trail walk with David and Richard. We saw lots of little animals and insects. We also saw red bananas, green oranges and orange lemons.  I swung on a Tarzan vine, it felt awesome!  Louis found a wolf spider that had a picture of a spider on it’s abdomen. 

When we got back I had a double surprise birthday cake.  Jorge made the sticky chocolate cake and David made the banana and caramel cake, they were yum! I also shared my cake with Marleson and Wenderson, two Brazilian boys I have made friends with.

I thought my birthday was 100%!

By Frankie

The cannonball tree

The cannonball tree lives in the AtlantIc rainforest and the fruits are as heavy as cannonballs. The cannonballs on the tree are browny orange and really heavy.  It is also known as the "monkey apricot tree"!

By Louis

The wolf spider

I spotted this spider on a nature walk in the Atlantic Rainforest among the leaves and nobody saw it except me.  It is a medium size spider, about 8cm long, with another spider on it's abdomen and we thought that that spider might have had another spider on its back too, and It kept ongoing on for ever!  It could give a small bite but is not really poisonous.

By Louis

Frankie's Journey

We were all excited to go to Rio and we were at the airport, I got a sandwich which I ate on the way to the gate.  then we got on the plane I sat with daddy and Louis sat with mummy and we both had spare seats.  I watched 3 really good films then I lay down and had a sleep for 4 hours.  When we landed we got a taxi who drove like a racing driver!!!!!  

Frankie 19/8/12

Journey to Rio

After endless rounds of goodbyes, well-wishing and last drinks lasting almost as long as a reasonable sabbatical, we are finally on our way.

We're about 10 hours into our flight, not counting a two hour wait on the tarmac at Heathrow to address a "very minor technical problem", that in our minds at least became decidedly less minor as the "short delay" was periodically extended.

The family goodbyes were hard, and a little tearful, everyone trying not to dwell on how long it would be till we met up again, the boys seemed to skip through them pretty well though.

I was prompted to write this a few moments ago, to record an unfortunate incident that I think Frankie might recall later. He is fast asleep again now, across the two seats next to me, hugging his blanket and George, his little St Georges bear given to him by his class as a leaving gift, that he chose as his one cuddly toy to travel with. He'd been sleeping with his knees tucked up, but at that moment, I noticed  in sleepy horror, as the flight attendant raced purposefully down the aisle, that his right leg had straightened and was overhanging his seat.  As trolley crunched into foot, I was reminded of the hobbling scene from Misery, where the image of James Caan's foot being broken with a sledgehammer is indelibly etched in my mind.  Although to her credit, the flight attendant bore little resemblance to Kathy Bates.  Frankie let out a yell almost as loud as mine and then settled back to sleep. I can't see any blood.  Can one sleep with a broken foot?

We're rather hoping that the chap meeting us at the airport from our Bed and Breakfast will have waited the extra time for us in preference to going to bed.......

Phil 19/8/12

Animals we have seen

Introduction

On this whole adventure Frankie and I are going to write about all the animals we've seen. 

Hopefully Daddy will be quick enough to take photos of most of them.  We may also include creepy crawlies and other living things if they are interesting too!

The day I had my jabs!

I was sitting and waiting for my turn of jabs, it was not very exciting.  But it had to be done otherwise on our trip we might get very sick and that wouldn't be good! I went first  they did hurt a little bit. Mummy said that we could have a treat afterwards which made things a lot better for me but maybe not Louis.  I had a Maltesers packet and Louis had a Mars bar, they were both yum!  We watched Deadly 60 while we were eating them.

Yuk! I hate jabs!

After that Mummy said we could play on the computer for half an hour. I played "Flight" all of the time, Louis played all sorts of games like "Needle" and "Jet Penguin."

Then the moment we've all been waiting for, THE BIG PARTY with more than 10 people. First we played marbles with Jensen, and then some more people came. Next came Albie and Josh. Suddenly Toby Aston and then Kyran arrived and  we played football for a very long time the scores were 5-2 to me and Jensen.
           
A week later I had my other Jabs they hurt more.

By Frankie