Organic Design (blog)
Porto Alegre[edit] | |||||||||||||||
| Posted by Nad on 2 March 2014 at 00:24 | |||||||||||||||
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This post has the following tags: 2014 Holiday in Brazil
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We picked Mum & Dad up at Porto Alegre airport at about 1:20am on Tuesday 25th, they were pretty jet-lagged but in good spirits :-) They first arrived in Santiago, Chile and then got a flight into São Paulo and then another flight to Porto Alegre. Mum was really hungry because she couldn't eat any of the food on the plane since it all had gluten or other things which aren't part of her strict diet! Luckily Beth had pre empted this scenario and bought some nice fresh fruit so she could have some good healthy food back at the hotel. We're staying at a place called Hotel Açores on the top floor where we can look down on the street and some interesting buildings below. Our first dinner together was very Brazilian with rice, beans, beer and a soccer match on the TV right next to us :-)
The beer we're drinking in the photo is Ceveja Polar which is brewed locally here in Rio Grande do Sul (but not really - shhh!). Note that it's web address is polar.rs - they really like to think of themselves as a totally different country down here, so the local businesses often use the .rs top-level domain which is actually for the Republic of Serbia, but also conveniently matches the two-letter state code for Rio Grande do sul :-) this is actually mentioned on the Portuguese wiki entry for the domain. This week has mostly been about taking it easy so Mum & Dad can recover from their jet lag! The main things we did here in Porto Alegre was to introduce them to some of the local food such as Pão de queijo and Açaí (prepared as a frozen fruit drink with Guaraná and blueberry, apple or grape) and show them some of our favourite cafés and restaurants around here - there's some really nice vegetarian Chinese buffets with a huge range of delicious dishes. The first photo below is taken at Beth's favourite Indian restaurant which serve just a single meal so there's no trouble deciding what to have! The second one is a little less of a cultured setting and is their first taste of the traditional Guaraná fruit in the form of a soft drink :-)
They also really liked checking out the street markets and performers and the architecture of the many old buildings which are scattered throughout the city. The old man below is playing classical songs on an acoustic guitar and accompanying it by playing a leaf in his mouth.
On our last day in Porto Alegre we went to the botanical gardens to have a look at some of the exotic plants and at the similarities and differences of the plants and weather between here and New Zealand. Unfortunately we were a bit too slow and missed out on the snake enclosure which had closed half an hour before we got to it.
On Monday, we then hired a cute little red Fiat and set off for Canela!
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2014 Holiday started![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 1 March 2014 at 23:45 |
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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Giving up coffee![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 2 February 2014 at 11:23 |
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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 Well about four days after we stopped Beth's headaches started to subside, but I started to get very sick, I had huge migraine headaches and vomiting! then after that subsided a bit, all the muscles in my legs began to ache constantly as if they were all over stretched. No matter what position I'd try and be in nothing would stop the pain! I couldn't sleep at all for four nights! I couldn't believe this was due to giving up coffee and thought I must have come down with a sickness, so Beth said perhaps I should have some coffee to see if the symptoms subsided. Sure enough an hour after a cup of coffee my muscles started to feel a lot better again! Late that night they started getting bad again, and once again the next day after another cup of coffee the pain eased shortly after! After a week the symptoms had finally subsided completely without requiring any coffee. I was amazed that coffee could have such a severe affect on my body! Beth's decided to give up completely, but since I don't really have the psychological aspect of the addiction I've decided to still have a coffee every now and again when we're at a café or neighbour's place, but I won't drink it on a daily basis any more. |
A few nature shots from Jan '14[edit] | ||||||
| Posted by Nad on 29 January 2014 at 12:11 | ||||||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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Carpenter bees[edit] | ||
| Posted by Nad on 25 January 2014 at 21:49 | ||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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As well as several kinds of wasps, we also have Carpenter bees which unfortunately are not so harmless, the females burrow into wood and will also sting to protect their nests. One was burrowing into our new bathroom door today! The burned oil didn't seem to put it off much either, but some research revealed that they do much prefer fresh unpainted wood, so I've tried screwing an unpainted piece to the door in the hopes that it will use that area when it comes back next - I also drew a bee-friendly symbol on it which should help it decide :-)
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Wasps on the house[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 25 January 2014 at 21:47 |
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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| Now that it's summer the insect population has really sky rocketed, we painted the whole house with burned oil which seems to have deterred the worst problem insects such as termites, but there's still a lot of interest from wasps. We have at least three different kinds around the house, the first find existing holes and then pad the inside with leaves to make their nest, the second make the typical paper-like nests that hang on the walls and under eves, and the third kind are Mud Dauber wasps. None of these types of wasps are aggressive and don't sting people even when they fear their nests are in danger.
The Mud Dauber wasps are really amazing, they create nests out of clay made of a series of chambers with an egg in each one. They then find spiders and paralyse them with their sting and put a spider in each chamber so the new wasp has food when it hatches. The first time I saw a nest on the side of the house I thought I had better remove it as I didn't know what kind of wasp it was it was and whether the larvae might eat the wood. When the nest fell on the ground I was shocked to see it filled with spiders! I looked on the net and soon found out what was going on. More have been constructed now, but since I now know they're harmless I've just let them be.
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Capacitor plague![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 25 January 2014 at 18:37 |
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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Beth was drying the washing with our portable 500W centrifugal spinner dryer when all of a sudden we heard a loud bang and then the horrible familiar smell of burning electronic components! I took a look and saw that smoke was coming out of the 800W inverter!! luckily this is not our main inverter that we use for running the lights and computers, the 800W is only for tools and other high power appliances, but it's still a major problem to have it blow up because it would take weeks to get a replacement.
 After doing a bit of research I found that the problem was most likely the "capacitor plague" which affected millions of capacitors made about ten years ago and used by many companies in all sorts of devices from vacuum cleaners to computers, and the typical symptom is capacitors exploding well before their normal lifespan and well within their specified voltage. The problem is that there's nowhere in Canela or Gramado that sell electronic components and ordering by net would take at least a week, probably two to sort out. But as luck would have it, I saw an old TV at the side of the road in a pile of rubbish, and TVs always have loads of capacitors in them! so we threw it in the car and when we got back I pulled it apart and pillaged all the capacitors from it - they're probably thirty years old, but they're Siemens which is one of the best brands in the business and things tended to be made better back then too :-) I found a couple that would do just fine and they were rated at 40v which is nearly triple what's required so there should be no problems. I installed them in the inverter and sure enough we're back in business! |
Vagalumes & Pyrophorus beetles[edit] | |||
| Posted by Nad on 25 January 2014 at 17:32 | |||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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Vagalumes are a kind of firefly that make a green light at night, sometimes stable and sometimes flashing. There's a lot of them at this time of year and they make excellent natural Christmas lights :-) Vagalumes a flies about a centimetre long with a glowing tail, but last night a different kind landed on the window and I was able to get a close photo of it, I was even able to hold it in my hand for a minute or so! This one was a different type completely, it's a very big insect about 4cm long and it looks like its eyes are glowing, but actually I think the glowing parts are further back than they eyes. I looked on the net and found out that these are Pyrophorus beetles, they look really sci-fi like some kind of robot bug!
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Fixing Nivinha's ignition barrel[edit] | ||
| Posted by Nad on 25 January 2014 at 15:37 | ||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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 We talked to one of the neighbours who said that it was the ignition barrel needing to be replaced and that a Fiat one should would ok. Beth sent me to get the replacement from a shop on the main road when we were in Canela with her parents, but I miss-heard the instructions and went to our 4x4 mechanic Fernando instead. Luckily he was really helpful and even though he didn't have the right part, he explained that I could temporarily fix the problem by attaching a wire from the positive of the battery to the positive of the coil and remove it when we want the engine to stop. This worked very well and we were able to get Nivinha out of the forest back home :-) This was a real breakthrough for me with my Portuguese learning too because this was quite a complicated conversation and I was able to successfully explain the problem in detail and answer questions about the symptoms and then understand what he said I should do. Since I have all the manuals with the wiring diagram for the car I was able to then work out what exact connections were failing in the ignition barrel. To fix the problem properly, I first removed the ignition barrel (this short video shows how to do that). The main catch is that the key must be in the ignition and turned to the first clockwise position before it can be removed, also there's a small catch that has to be depressed by poking a screwdriver into the hole (a little above the left hand mounting screw on the barrel). I then opened the barrel by removing the metal ring from the end with the contacts. I found that there was some bad corrosion on one of the copper plates causing it to lift off from the contact. I filed off the corrosion and also added some solder to the contact and the plate since the copper was also very thin and cracked. I then tested the connection with a multimeter and saw that the problem had been solved, so I put it all back together and reinstalled it into the car!
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Beth's parents come to visit the land[edit] | ||
| Posted by Nad on 25 January 2014 at 14:54 | ||
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This post has the following tags: Our second year on the land
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Beth's parents arrived on January the 9th and stayed for nine days. They came all the way here from Brasilia by car which is over 2000km! It went really well and they really loved it here! we were a bit nervous before hand because we thought they wouldn't like our basic facilities and having to wash in the river, but they were really happy with everything :-) they brought a huge load of vegetables and fruit trees for us to plant, we have chillis, lemons, pineapples, bananas, mangos, papayas and more! many of them may not be able to handle the climate down here, but we've tried planting them at the border of the forest and the garden where there's no frost but hopefully enough sun.
We all went to Canela a few times to go overboard on cakes and coffee! in Portuguese they say "pé na jaca" which translates literally as putting your foot in the durian and it means to go overboard and have too much of a good thing :-) We also had many good meals at home including an indoor vegetarian "Churrasco" on our wood stove which is the cultural style of Brazilian barbecue cooking.
It was really nice having them here, and I think it was really good for them to see first hand what it's like here and how we live. The pictures really don't tell the whole story and they were a bit worried about us and thinking it wasn't good for our health and well being. But now they see that this is an extremely healthy and fulfilling way of living and completely understand why we're doing it :-) |
