Ilha do Cardoso, 1994

Back in 1994, I took a 2 1/2 week trip to the rainforest of a small island off the coast of Brazil to assist in researching the fresh water ecosystems. The island is Ilha do Cardoso, and is located about 350 miles south of Sao Paulo. It�s a state park, and the research team I had volunteered on was instructed by the Brazilian government not to go to the island. We didn�t listen. As it was, we had to sneak much of the equipment into Brazil past the Brazilian Customs officers. I had something like 300 specimen vials in my suit-case. How do you explain to the Brazilian Gov�t why you would want to carry little plastic specimen vials into their country on a tourist visa? Nobody suspected a thing though, and the trip got underway with no problems.

The research team stayed the first night in Sao Paulo, a dirty, smog choked metropolis with over 19 million residents (Paulistas as they affectionately call themselves). The housing is disgusting, the taxi drivers don�t know what roads, red-lights, or pedestrians are (but they do know what a horn is!), and the smell of diesel exhaust is overwhelming.

After meeting in the lobby on the first night, the team went out to a restaurant and a couple of local bars to get acquanted with each other, and then left for Cananeia the next morning. We drove from Sao Paulo to Cananeia, and it took a full hour after we left the border of Sao Paulo to get away from the smog and diesel smell.

We spent the second night on Cananeia (still civilized enough to have electricity and indoor plumbing). There, we talked about the conditions on the island, and what we were going to be doing. Everybody had a role and it was determined there who would be doing what. I got to do a little bit of everything.

The next morning, we boarded the Gaia, a boat owned and operated by a villager (Ilton) from Cardoso. Since the gov�t had told us not to go to the island, and that the research station there was off limits to us, we had made a deal with the villagers there in Maruja. We would be staying with them, and setting up our research station in a thatch roofed bar. The village had no electricity, and marginal plumbing. We lived on beans, rice, cabbage, tomatoes, and (for those that ate meat) chicken or fish for the duration of our stay. The day went pretty much like this:

We would rise at 7am, eat breakfast at 7:30am, get on the boat no later than 9am. The boat would take us to the river we had chosen for that day, and drop us off. We would hike about a mile or so up the river (many times IN the river, which was usually just a big stream) using GPS to map the water systems, and traps to catch and catalog critters. At about 5pm, the Gaia would come to pick us up, and we would take our critters and computers back to the research station. At 7pm, we would eat supper, and then at 8:30 we would start cataloging the critters, testing samples of water for salinity, and mineral content, etc... By the time we went to bed, it was usually after 11pm. Two members of the team would go out each night searching for Broad Nosed Caimen. Never found one. They are endangered, and are being poached by hunters. At one point, we even came across a hunters camp site. Luckily for us, he wasn�t there at the time (they will kill to protect their catch). This went on the entire trip.

About a week into the trip, we hiked up to the north part of the island to an even more primitive fishing village (no electricity, no plumbing) called Cambriu. We stayed there four days and three nights conducting the same kind of research on the streams and rivers up there, then hiked back down to Maruja for the remainder of the trip.

There were times that I was so tired that I didn�t want to see another stream, bird, turtle, prawn, or fish. There were times I was so grumpy, my shadow pissed me off. But I had the best time of my life on that trip, and I�d go back in a heart beat!

Check Out the Pictures!

I�ve included some pages of pictures from the trip. I�ve put more than one image on each page, so it may take a couple of minutes for the pages to load. Just be patient. I�m going through some of my other pictures and will be putting more up. I�ll put some thumbnails here later and give each image it�s own page.

Related Links

I found another site by somebody who went to Ilha do Cardoso back in 1990. His site is organized much better than mine, and he actually lists each day of the trip on it�s own page. It�s quite interesting, take a look!

I�m planning on going on another trip to Brazil in about a year or two, but this time it will be in central Brazil, about 650 miles west of Sao Paulo.

Also, be sure to visit Earthwatch�s Web site! If you are at all interested in the environment, or history, etc..., you should look into going on an expedition. You�d have the best time of your life!