Well currently we are stationed in Ilheus for a couple weeks. Ilheus is a little beach town that is very popular with Brazilian tourists and now very popular with me. We are doing a village study and looking at the way the primary care clinics function in the community. And perhaps visiting the beach a tiny bit.
Ilheus used to be the world's number one producer of cocoa (80%!) but twenty years ago a nasty bug spread and contaminated the fruit. But they are recovering slowly. We got to visit a cocoa plantation/wildlife area today. And eat a lot of the cocoa fruit and some ultra bitter seeds. We followed the cocoa through the process from tree to fermentation to drying. And once the little brown seeds are dry people walk all over the little piles of them to shed the skin. They bag them and sell huge bags for various delicacies (chocolate, cocoa nibs, chocolate liquer) which are all over Ilheus.
MOST IMPORTANTLY at the cocoa plantation there is also a SLOTH rescue center. Which equals baby sloths and slooow sloths climbing around. Some of them were actually moving faster than I imagined since I had only seen sloths in one place before. And I TOUCHED one! He was way softer than he looked.
Chocolately sloths...a fantastical day.
4 comments:
Peresozo!! Bring me one baaaaaaack!!
slowly, the soft sloth slithered stealthily, slipping steadily south of the sea, sending sounds of sonorous singing and sensual snorts of slimy reverie somewhere to me
see the sloth squash the squidget's stomach, simply a-sunder a spread of scented humboldt squid, scrambled in sloth-scat and cinnamon, sunny-side up
sloth, oh sloth, you snort in sleep, a snort so solid as to start a sputum-like snow, sent spinning into air, shimmering star-like, splattering onto the skunk below.......splich....splat.....skplogtfch....sbtubogafgvch
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