Jungle Growth at the Lake

Wow, what a little fertilizer, some water and judicius weeding can do for a flower garden. Here is a photo just outside the west door of the lake house at 7am. I had arrived home from Brasil at 5pm the previous day after leaving Sara and Wem's at 4:30am on June 3. Took a 12 hour bus ride ($R83 or $40) to Belo from Montes Claros which was bumpy, lurchy and stopped over 25 times to pick up passengers in various towns and rural locations. NO, no one got one with any chickens or livestock!! I was asked that by my Brasilian seatmate on the plane to Miami and by Carol E. when I mentioned it to her on the drive back to the lake. There were several older people who obviously lived very close to the soil and had worked hard all their lives. This bus must be one of their few means of travel, as they greeted people as they came on and as they left. My favorite part of the trip was that because we sat up high in the bus, I was able to see over the weedy roadside and could enjoy more of the landscape and buildings and way of life than I could when we drove to Montes with Wem driving the small car. I was able to take a couple of naps on the trip so was in fairly good shape by the time I reached Belo and had to haul my luggage (thank goodness, I only had one big bag and 2 small ones) up some steep steps to the upper level of the bus station. I finally found the bus line for the airport at Confins (north of Belo) after asking 3 people and walking past it 3 times. The last lady at the info booth wrote the name UNIR, which is the bus line, but pronounced it UNIQUE. I was always looking for a word with que at the end. Now I realize that the letter R in Portuguese is pronounced as a gutteral H which sounds like QUE at the end of a pronounced word.

Bus ride to airport was uneventful, but they took a route I wasn't familiar with until we went past the Habibs restaurant that we had eaten in the first night that I was in Brasil. The bus cost $R7.50 which is about $3. It was a local also, but didn't stop very often. It did get off at major off ramps on the way to the airport, evidently to see if any passengers were waiting, but would stop at the intersection and then just go back the on ramp and finally to the airport. Wem had mentioned that they had a lan house (computer store) on the main level inside the airport, so I was able to send e-mails to let Sara and Carol that I was on time with my flight to Miami. All flights were on time or arrived early. Weather was very cooperative. Did see some lightning about 3am as we were flying to Miami, but we were above the clouds. Eric, hope you didn't get toooo much rain in Philly/Baltimore area!! TV in Miami airport was predicting travel delays in that area.