View.
Wildlife
Helicopters.
I need to go back.
Soon.
Long version, and flickr set coming soon.
He's unhappy with Spot. He likes the fact that I know where he is, but he has a pocket full of notes for the engineers (who are waiting for the feedback with bated breath, I'm sure). His first question, why does it take 20 minutes to send a signal every time? I started to mumble some answer about satellites being in space and space being far away but he was not impressed. List of complaints or not, I still like Spot.
Today on the river, our heroes were harassed by cayman who decided - in a seemingly organized manner - that it would be easier to steal fish from fly fishermen than to actually hunt for themselves. The crocs surrounded the boat and eventually the guys (Xav, his friend Tyler and the guide) had to hit the cayman (caymen?) with logs to get them to back away from the boat. Despite all of those hours at the gym, the beatings were only marginally successful - the crocs backed off a little, then came back. Eventually it was the fishermen who left.
Later, Xav caught another cayman on his fly - actually Xav cast the fly, the fish ate the fly and the cayman ate the fish and, sing it with me now: "I don't know why, she swallowed that fly, perhaps she'll die..." That's right, I'm the mother of a pre-schooler and that's my musical reference for the day.
Xav loves to fish for crocodiles even though (perhaps because) I've told him that catching them is grounds for divorce. I am afraid of them and he is amused by them. Did I ever tell you the story of how Xav nearly landed one in a boat in Mexico? There was only one problem: the croc was as big as our freaking boat. I was not amused. But I'm not there to scowl at him (not that it matters) and he kept this croc on his line for a good long while before it actually broke off the line and sunk to the bottom of the river. He was quite pleased with himself.
He also caught a dogfish, a type of shark who spit the fly out of his mouth in the air over the boat. This resulted in the fish landing in the boat and flopping around the bottom until finally he hit something nice and soft. Which he promptly bit. It was Xav's big toe. Xav said it bled like crazy but not to worry because he "put neosporin on it." Oh thank goodness. (And yes, this is what it's really like to live with him.)
Finally, to cap off the day he caught a red-belly piranha and somehow managed to throw it at Tyler "Catch!"
He didn't.
Sounds like buckets of fun, don't you wish you were there?
]]>He's literally in the middle of the Amazon jungle now and the only way to communicate is via satellite. We have one quick conversation every night via satellite phone and during the day I'm able to track him via this groovy GPS gadget called Spot. I'm not a huge fan of Spot's marketing since the whole pitch is about making it back alive and I don't need much provocation to get to my worst case scenario (Yes madame, I'm sorry to inform you that your husband has been eaten by insert name of giant reptile here). Spot's tagline is "THERE IS LIFE AFTER CELL PHONE SIGNALS DIE." Hey kids, give me a call, I can help you with that tricky messaging stuff. Anyway, from my POV the highlight of Spot is that I can literally watch him make his way down the river, 5,000 miles away.
Here's the big pic, showing where he is in Brazil:
And here's the pic that shows where he spent his day:
In theory I should be able to track him without him doing anything, but I haven't figured out how to make that work yet. Happily there is a little button on the device marked "ok" and everytime he pushes it, the device sends an "I'm okay" message to my phone. It sends that same message, along with his GPS coordinates to my account on Spot and when I log in I can see where he was last, and where he's been all day with a sweet google maps mashup.
I have to say this newfound visibility has made a big difference for me - just knowing where he is makes me feel better about him being out there in the middle of the jungle. There is another safety feature, a 911 button. Press and hold that one and the Spot guys will send the local country search and rescue team to your location. Cool huh? But don't press it by accident because sometimes the local search and rescue team is also known as the army - and they really are coming and they don't like false alarms. Press and hold the same button to say "never mind, I can limp my way home from here."
In addition to catching lots of beautiful peacock bass, he saw some amazing things today: jaguars and tapirs and caymans, oh my! The big moment of the day came when he saw a large ray being attacked and eaten by boiling piranhas. I know. But to him, and to the rest of his crew, a piranha attack is the very definition of fun - as long as none of their body parts are involved.
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