4/18/08 5:30 AM

Yesterday was a tough journey. I’m usually all about the journey, but yesterday, the destination was far better than the journey.

The destination was Novo Airao, a small town where Mirza used to live as a judge many years ago. What makes it so special is one thing. It’s not that it’s on a branch of the river. It’s not that her old spacious house had cupuacu trees all over the place. It’s not the small town friendly feel. It’s not that her old courthouse building overlooked all this. It’s that the dolphins hang out in one small area and you can swim with them (for just the price of getting there). And we swam with them for a good hour.

These are called botos here, maybe bottle-nosed dolphins in English, but how much does it matter? Their snouts were long and skinny and one of them had a twisted snout where the bottom and top were rotated to the side, as though it had been injured. These pinkish hued creatures felt softer than I expected, but otherwise like I’d felt at aquariums. They would sometimes feel you up by swimming underneath you and rubbing their snout on your leg. But mostly they wanted someone to give them fish.

This was a little like being in the Atlanta tornado, if you bear with me. I always was curious about having the experience, but figured it wouldn’t happen. When it did, it left me with impressions that will last because it was so surreal.

So that was the destination. The journey was very very long, beginning at 5 AM for me, 3:30 for others. A ferry ride and 3 hours in the car each way was a lot of sitting. Yes, we drove a desolate 2-lane road through rain forest and seeing hours of it wasn’t boring – we even hydroplaned several times through giant puddles to add excitement – but it was crowded in the car and, more importantly, I felt a bit sick on the return even before I tried to get some work done in the back of the car. The bathroom I had to use while awaiting the ferry was so bad that spelling out the details here will only make me sick again. Had I not gotten sick and had I not had to get playoff prep done, it still would have been a long tough drive. I’ve been spending 6 hrs a day in cars, so another day of 7 hours was hard…

And then I got home at 8 pm. I was ready to work and rest at home. But after 2 minutes of thinking that, I was told I had a Rotary meeting to go to. Quick shower and out the door for another hour and a half in the car to a restaurant and another hour back (less traffic), I thought. It turns out that we missed the meeting. So we actually got a chance to be un-chaperoned. So, like college kids finally away from their parents, we bought pizza and beer and took pictures of our informal Rotary meeting with Francisco as our special guest.

I slept from 11:45 until 4 am, did my work, and now am getting ready to go out again. We’re going to see the meeting of the waters – after a lot of driving.