Piranha

Well.....I began with good intentions.  Thinking of cool things in a rain forest, I naturally thought of piranha.  I did a search, but unfortunately for the quest of knowledge, the first hit was the 1978 movie Piranha.  I've been breaking my brains over a math class all week and had reached the point of frustration where nothing sounded better than feeding innocent people to hungry piranha.  Oddly enough, the 1978 movie is supposedly quite good.  I wouldn't know.  The video store only had MEGA PIRANHA.  It's a new release and is gloriously, hopelessly awful.  It was just the thing--people tromping through the rain forest (although not Suriname) and the piranha getting bigger and meaner every minute until they ate a nuclear submarine and the only thing that saved the world was that a brave navy seal got in the water with them and killed one thereby causing a feeding frenzy.  Why this caused a frenzy instead of just one piranha gulping the dead fish parts and then continuing toward Washington DC I don't know.  And I don't know why it worked this last time when it didn't work twice before earlier in the movie.  The important thing is that mankind is saved! And the bad guy got eaten (fish leaped out of the water and ate him, helicopter and all).  

The moral here is probably a good one---don't go swimming in remote Amazon rivers. (I think I may have figured out this moral without help)  And stay seated in the boat!  No one in this movie had any kind of balance whatsoever and would fall into the river at the slightest movement.   But no need to worry about crocodiles, hippos, leeches, bugs or anything else--apparently those things never bother anybody.

Cool Tree

Check out this cool tree trunk from the Suriname rainforest.

cool site

It's a bit tricky to get information on Suriname.  The library had a Fodor's of South America, but the entries for Suriname are pretty boring.  Ditto most of the internet sites.  However, tropilab.com is a happy exception.  They've got a great presentation with lots of pictures.  It looks like they'll eventually have recipies too, but those are mostly under construction just now.  My impression is that Suriname has your basic history---settled by such and such, discovered, fought over now independent--and some nice buildings to commemorate the history.  Mostly though, it has spectacular rain forest.  So that's where I'm spending the month--mentally flying over the canopy with the parrots, running over the ground with the army ants, feeding the piranha (with food I brought with me, not with myself in person) and checking out the strangler fig trees.  Rainforests house some gloriously weird creatures!

Kibri Den Okopipi!

Save the Blue Frog!!!  or Kibri Den Okopip!  The frog is the blue poison dart frog.  Natives used to dip the darts of their blow guns in the poison. (Mystery plot: conservationist goes mad in the heat.  Develops unhealthy interest in some of these ancient native poisions....) Suriname has some of the most pristine rainforest on earth.  Including a nature preserve the size of New Jersey.  Of course there's the standard battle between industry and conservation, but happily this little blue frog has support behind it.

Welcome to Suriname!

Suriname (which is not in Africa, not that we looked there), is going to be a blast to visit.  It's in South America north of Brazil, so you get all the fun of the South American culture, but it was settled by the Dutch and it's got some major mosques.  Can't wait to explore.  First stop will probably be the beach.  I'm in serious need of a tan.

Cheap romance in Slovenia

Tomorrow we leave Slovenia.  I'd like to come back again either in virtual or real life.  This adventure was sort of doomed from the start.  It's Elizabeth Peter's fault--she's one of my favorite authors.  Her most famous series takes place in Egypt, but Dave gave me a book, Die for Love which is part of a different series.  The book is a spoof on romance novels and my poor suggestible brain has been churning out cheap romance novels cliche's all month long---all set in Slovenia which is peopled with beautiful woman, counts, oppressive governesses, and laborers all of whom look like Fabio.  Maybe it's a good thing that I won't be going in real life for a while.  If I went and saw a middle-aged businessman or anyone with imperfect hair or teeth it would be very disappointing.

Great Food!

After world war two Slovenia was occupied by the Germans and the Italians.  Both cultures influenced the food of the area--which just goes to show that some good can come out of just about anything.  We had my sister, Lisa and Catherine's boyfriend, Conner over for dinner in Slovenia. 

We began with a homemade mushroom soup (I understand that most meals there start with soup).  Soup was so-so in my opinion, but the others said they liked it. 

The main meal was goulash---this because I couldn't quite bring myself to prepare braised horse and blood sausage.  With this I made bacon bread, a pasta fruit salad with a peach/sourcream/pineapple juice dressing, and a filo-dough cheese concoction--quite good.   Dessert was apple-walnut cake. 

Right--no one was counting calories.  Largely because no one could possibly count that high.