tajana_diary_5

16th June

Yesterday we traveled for a few hours to visit Rondonia.Rondonia is not a well known state like the others. A majority of its citizens now live in urban areas. It is a main exporter of wood, as well as a significant producer of both coffee and cocoa, it is also an important cattle breeder.We expected to easily communicate with the locals, however there were some many languages adapted from indigenous people,it seemed like we visited 5 countries at once. Some of the languages we found out about include: Djeoromitxi (Jabutí, also Jabotí, Yabuti and Iabuti), a Macro-Ge language, Gavião, nhengatu (Lingua Geral, traditionally a Lingua Franca, a native Tupian-based, jesuitic language. We tried to communicate with some of the locals but they only spoke these languages so we had to relay on our map reading to get to the Akuntsu Tribe.

The Akuntsu tribe is one of the isolated tribes of Rondônia. One of the elders of the tribe told us that they were first contacted in 1995, when they numbered seven people. As of 2006 their population was down to six. They are located in the Igarape Omere region to the southwest of Rondônia. After seeing the elder from this tribe he sent us to see the other tribe in the lower region.

Another isolated tribe known as Kanoê of Omere lives near their village.The tribe consists of chief Kunibu Baba (male,age: 70), Pupak(male, age: 40), Ururu(female, age:80) and three women with ages from 23-35. The seventh member of the tribe died in 1995. The only child born after that died in 2000 in a storm. With this they face extinction together with their traditions. After hearing this sad story we decided to stay overnight with them. Although impossible to communicate without a translator( who kind of got tired from translating so many of my questions), we found out that soon the 3 girls plan to move out and go live in the capital city.Knowing this would devastate the elders completely, I started explaining to them that the world"out there" isn't so great. By the end of the night we were celebrating with them and they were telling us different stories from their tribe. The night ended when i smoked some herb from a pipe they were passing around the fire. It was something really strong because I slept until 12pm.

After waking up and eating a really nice breakfast we packed our staff and went to hire a car to travel to Tocantins. This turned out to be more difficult then we thought. When we turned up at hiring shop, the assistant couldn't speak English at all. We had to wait for about 2 hours for the owner to show up which to my surprise was from England. We hired out a van and started our travel at 2.30pm.

We arrived at Tocantins at 6pm which meant that the only thing we could visit at that time were clubs and restaurants. We headed straight to the New Beach of Porto Real which is the best beach in the region. We stayed at Playa Del Carmen.

This was an excellent deal because we got to use every facility in the hotel and all meals were included. Today is the last day of stay in North Region of the Brazil. Tomorrow we travel back to Rio De Janeiro to see the rest of the crew. I can't wait to hear what their experiences were. We will spend 10 days there and then we travel home.

UNTIL NEXT TIME BRAZIL, STAY THE SAME AND NEVER CHANGE!!!!!!