Day 1- Where are we now?

Nathan and Dan

Bom Dia everyone! Welcome to the official 2016 Brazilian Maymester travel blog. Over the next month, we will be recounting our adventures (and misadventures) in South Brazil. However, before we begin, there’s one question we need to answer.

Where are we now?

Of course, Guil waited to inform us of this until after we were completely disoriented from our first hike. This morning, we woke up in Florianopolis, a decent-sized city a couple hundred kilometers south of Sao Paulo. The hotel was comfy, the people were friendly, and we were living in the lap of luxury. However, after driving for a couple hours, the luggage-packed vans had dropped us off at a sleepy, off-season seaside village, void of almost all its inhabitants except for a flourishing street dog population. Geared up and ready to go, we had hiked to the outskirts of the town and over a couple hills, and were now staring at a large igneous rock outcrop protruding out of a sand dune. One thing was for sure: none of us knew where we were.

With the most experienced of us having a semester or two of Portuguese under our belt, the city had been challenging enough. Now here, confronted with this enormous rock (or was it two rocks? Or three....) the language barrier felt petty. Half the group had never even taken geology before! And yet, here we were, tasked to draw this outcrop in one minute. After that torture exercise was over, we were given some pointers and tasked to draw the outcrop again in ten minutes. Then, with a partner, we had to compare our drawings and observe the outcrop on a much more personal level.

A big lesson today was: observations are key. In geology, it’s so easy to get caught up in the terms and the processes, but in reality, everything you need to know about a rock can be pulled from just paying attention to what the outcrop is showing you. Today, we really got down to the basics of geology, and after that, we all learned the most important thing of all: the mantle, the layer of Earth below the crust, is not liquid. It’s not even solid. According to Guil, the mantle is “DAMN solid,” and we were not to forget it.

For the record, we are in Farol de Santa Marta. We didn’t know that before, but we do now.