What is that noise encircling our home?

Screeching around our home, the cicadas that come with the onset of the rainy season sound like an army of broken hard drives droning in free space. They can reach up to 120 decibels and can be heard in the heat of the day right before a storm. Their chorus is an extraordinary buzz.

Funny true life story about this part of our Brasília life. Two years ago, two friends were visiting from Alaska and Washington, D.C. when we heard a loud sound in the house. Uli was out of the house somewhere, and the sound seemed to be coming from his office. It sounded like the death of a computer, and I immediately thought that there must be some sort of hardware melting down. Our friends and I rushed into his office to intervene and search for the origin of the noise. We looked and looked and eventually found a two-inch bug happily clinging to the screen window while emitting this broken computer sound. After having a good laugh, our friends made a recording and we started to hear cicadas everywhere.

Now, when the cicadas really get noisy, I cannot help but thinking of flying broken hard drives.

Change of Scenery

Sometimes the best way to find respite is to break up your routine and get out of town for a weekend. We took advantage of the MLK holiday and took off for the nearby town of Pirenópolis. The short two-hour trek from Brasília (150 km) is a beautiful drive across the cerrado or wind-swept savanna. The Portuguese colonial town is clearly an accessible escape for weekenders from the capital city, and it was particularly full of visitors on Saturday evening. The cobblestone streets are lined with vendors, restaurants, and guesthouses. We were tucked back from the party zone for the evening and choose to put our energies towards exploration of the terrain. We joined a guided trip through the information office to the State Park -- and it was lucky we did as our little car could not have possibly handled some of the rough access roads. We swam in waterfalls, awaited a rainstorm under shelter, walked to rock outcroppings and viewpoints, and breathed in the fresh air and surroundings. In less than 48 hours we found total escape from reality, and it felt rather good! 

18th Century Church

Side street in the town

Ahhhhh! The Cerrado!

First waterfall of the day

And the second 

Swimming in the cool, clean water (right before the rain)

Rocks!

Pretty spot for a selfie

Third waterfall where we swam (and got bitten by little itchy bugs)

Vista point - one of the highest in the state of Goiás at around 1,300 meters (4,500 feet)

Sunset -- and rain

Waterfalls are the Brazilian Mountain

Context is everything, right? I love to hike and, if given a choice, I spend my free time outdoors. For me, as a Wyomingite, a hike means an ascent, a sense of accomplishment, and a view. With my husband, we have had many a debate between my concept of hike and the German sense of wanderung. Basically, my version involves a mountain and a scramble to the top and his version involves more of a walk... I remember when I was a student at Augustana and meeting fellow students from Minnesota who went camping at lakes! (Yup. For me, camping involves mountains.) In Indonesia, I understood that hiking might mean walking on a trail in town or climbing up a volcano, probably in flip flops.

Here in Brazil, it seems that the attraction that pulls people out of their urban lives and draws them to nature is the waterfall. Or at least that is the case around Brasilia. And it probably involves proper hiking gear -- you know, a bikini or speedo and flip flops.

My fellow hiking friends and I headed outside of town last weekend to a waterfall trail head about 40 minutes away. We saw four waterfalls, including the Spanish waterfall, Indaia, the Bride's Veil, and the backside of Itiquira. It was not a mountain, but it was beautiful. Take a look.

Post #62: City Park

Brasília's City Park is near our home and consists of 420 hectares set aside for barbecuing, cycling, running, and amusement. It is reputably one of the largest public parks in all of Latin America. If you compare it with New York's Central Park (320 hectares), it is remarkably bigger. There is a stage for concerts and an artificial lake as well as an amusement park. The architecture, landscaping, and art are by some of the founding fathers of Brasília -- Lucia Costa, Oscar Neimeyer, and Burle Marx. My favorite Brasília-esque detail? The iconic tiles on the bathrooms, below, by the well-known Athos Bulcão. 

Post #61: If plants could communicate with us...

We went to this exposition yesterday that is a fusion between agriculture, art, and technology. A bunch of students and researchers planted a natural forest around a home and started to actualize the sound of plants through sensors and measure various qualities of the soil, air, and plants to create visualizations. My significant other has been involved in the back-end of this ecological smart home, and throughout the tour I was struck by the inventiveness and melting of nature and technology. Too often, we (ok, I) think of technology and nature in isolation in diametric opposition to one another. Here, one grew out of the other and created feedback loops for human consideration with an ecological message. Fascinating and heartening to see a group of students here in the national capital of Brazil innovating and sharing their message with the wider community. They do outreach to schools so that students can also combine these two aspects of life -- getting kids to learn about batteries and charges at the same time as they interact with plant life. Completely genius. Their FB page has tons of cool videos -- of plant energies being turned into LED displays and sound -- but I couldn't manage to link them (check it out!).

Part of the garden with sensors in it

An exhibition where sensors around the plants take measurements for an entire day and turn each element into sound, so you can hear nature and compare one day to another. Again, increasing human interaction with nature in a very modern way.

Post #36: Butterflies

Today during our lunch break and between conference sessions, we headed to a sanctuary with a butterfly pavilion. Lush, all-encompassing foliage, fanciful birds, and pretty butterflies. Yes, we must be in the Amazon.

Post #14: Hiking

Today, we were lucky enough to head out of town to a nearby hiking and water hole called Poço Azul, or Blue Well. Bumping along unpaved roads about 45 minutes from Brasília, we came to the park entrance and began to make our way down a dusty, red path towards the valley and waterfalls. The baked soil of the high plains made way to surprisingly blue waterfalls and a running river. We hiked through and up and around, catching views of the landscape and also stopping to watch the locals dive from some of the cliffs into the water. It was a great trip out to see the area and get a sense of place, even if we all came back a bit dehydrated, sunburned, and spent after traipsing around in the full heat of the unrelenting "winter" sun.