Into the Jungle, II

So I'm finally at a computer terminal again, in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. Updates will probably stay as unrealiable as they are now, since we're running around the countryside a lot. Internet here is about half as much an hour compared to Rio. (5000 Guarany vs 6 Reais)

Wednesday, 4th of May, Jio de Janeiro

Another early hiking trip. By the way, the reason we are getting up this early, defying all our natural instincts, is that it gets suddenly dark around 5, 5:30 pm.

This time, our target was the Floresta de Tijuca (Floh-'resch-ta de Ti'juke, using German sounds [ sorry, English is too unreliable in that respect]). The Floresta is actually just another part of the parque de Tijuca, but has well maintained and numerous hiking paths.

Things accomplished:

• hiked through rainforest, including an 800m peak, through plants and over rocks (Breathtaking view: I think the German word for this kind of rainforest is Nebelwald, so we saw a lot of mist)
• swung on a liana
• saw monkeys and some kind of reddish colored
• ran into the giant cobweb of a hellishly large spider... Aaagh! Hellishly large is defined as a spider with a body the length of my middle finger, plus head and legs, as opposed to simply terrifyingly large, which are resident spiders the size of slightly less than my thumb, and which, unlike Hellspiders, definitely are more afraid of me than I of them...
• ate a tapioca wrap and some kind of sweetened corn mush bought from two street vendors