Cactus Flower

Over the years many things were carried to the island camp on the big Noé boat: A herd of sheep  A Jeep  A sailboat  A sandrail and go-karts  Kayaks  Electric generators  Pounds and pounds of live tilapia babies and harvested ones on ice  Harvest of onions  Household effects of a family - more than once  A horse or two  Campers, of course Getting things onto and off of the boat can be tricky! When the sand rail from the video needed to go out, it was a touch and go situation. My biggest fear was that Uncle Byron would overshoot the deck of the boat and end up in the brink on the other side! Once we had a big 50 gallon jug of diesel fuel on the front deck of the boat. It was one of the few times we took the boat into Casa Nova across from the island. The church folks there gave the fuel to help with the costs of their retreat. It was very late and we were in a pretty big hurry to leave and still get across the lake and back to our p...

At every retreat that we went to out on the Island, Uncle Byron gave the same speech about water safety and general camp rules.  It was the same every time and many repeat campers had the whole speech memorized right down to the intonation of the jokes.   The most famous part was that - "on the Island even the fish wear lifejackets." Uncle Byron and I weren't very well liked when we first came to the island because we insisted on standard rules for all to follow.  Rules in Brazil are always made to be twisted just a little at best, and absolutely disregarded at the most.  Yeah, that's a cultural generalization based on my American upbringing but I stand by it. Anyway, on a particular retreat, the steering system of one of the pedal boats had been broken. Uncle Byron pushed it way up on the beach away from the other boats and removed the cloth seat so that no one would mess with it.  It was also getting close to night time and all the other canoes and kayaks...

  In 2012 we took a trip with a geologist all around the big Sobradinho Lake to do some research work about erosion for the big electric company.  Uncle Byron actually made a couple of trips with the man, but this trip was with our whole family.  We slept and ate on the boat for a week.     We even took the boys' sand rail/dune buggy so they could run around some during the day.  We took kayaks and a canoe as well.  AH, and lots of food. This was the trip when I lost our big red water jug in the lake.  You can read about that on my other blog sometime if you like. I wrote an epic poem about it!  Little Red Jug On this trip on the way home we experienced the biggest waves we had ever seen while out on the lake.  The boat was rocking side ways so much that it seemed the sand rail tied on the back deck of the boat would end up at the bottom of the sea.  The video is earlier during the day.   The waves got bigger after dark! ...