Last friday was a holiday -Independence day - so we'd booked ourselves a weekend away. Hugo had spotted the place in one of our travel guides while he was here so we have him to thank for what was a stunning weekend. It's an eco bird lodge between Teresopolis and Novo Friburgo about 2 hours from Rio, on a large estate belonging to a British Brazilian and his Argentinian wife.
We travelled by coach and hadn't prebooked our tickets so queued with the world and his wife and then found the next 2 buses were full. The bus station is somewhere you feel that 'all of life is here' as it's how Brazil travels and is teeming with people, setting off on all sorts of journeys, particularly on a bank holiday.
Getting over Niteroi Bridge took a while, as we'd expected it would but we eventually got to Regua about 4pm. The lodge we stayed in consisted of 8 rooms with a communal dining room & sitting room and a small library stocked with natural history books, focusing on the local area. Food was simple but plentiful and freshly cooked by local staff living on the estate. There was a big table on a veranda overlooking the garden, liberally sprinkled with bird tables - stacked with bananas! - and humming bird feeders, with a wonderful view of mountains in the background. Caipirinhas were served on the terrace at 6, supper was at 7 and many people were tucked up in bed by 9 as they wanted to be up for the dawn chorus at 5.30 the next morning!
The eclectic mix of people staying at the lodge was one of the best things about the weekend. These included a group of fairly elderly British ornithologists; a young British couple who were biodiversity academics; an American couple who had spent the previous week in the Pantanal; 2 Brazilian men who we walked with the next day; a Belgian couple who had been friends of the current owner's grandparents and had visited Regua in the 50's and another youngish British couple from South London who had been annually since the Lodge opened in 2006 and were now running the website and promoting Regua at UK birdfairs etc. And there was also a young Bulgarian helper who had taken a degree in Chinese in Beijing and would be going back to helping to organise arts festivals in Amsterdam once her stint had finished at Regua.
It was all very informal and friendly without being too pally. Conversations over the weekend ranged widely from Werner Herzog films (starting perhaps not unsurprisingly from a discussion about Fitzcarraldo) to the changing face of Brazil and environmental policies. We got brownie points for living & working in Brazil - and for using public transport!
Patrick had borrowed an extra pair of binoculars as he'd thought I couldn't show up at a bird lodge without them but in fact it wouldn't have mattered. The British ornithologists pored over their bird guides and checklists in the evening and were first out in the morning but there were others who spent the whole day at the lodge enjoying the numerous different hummingbirds and other birdlife in the garden and soaking up the atmosphere.
The afternoon we arrived we walked down to the wetland reserve that had been created near to the Lodge and Patrick saw more birds in our hour down there than he'd seen in the whole of the rest of our time in Brazil. The sight of hundreds of egrets flying in to roost in the trees on islands in the lake
as the sun set behind the mountains is something we won't forget in a hurry.
Nicholas gave a powerpoint presentaion after supper outlining what they were doing at Regua which was extremely impressive. He'd been living in Brazil for over 30 years (he was probably a bit younger than us) and had taken over the running of the estate from his uncle. Things had really started happening fairly recently when he came up with the idea of the bird lodge and set about creating habitats that would encourage birds and other wildlife and he also wanted to do his bit to restore the Mata Atlantica (atlantic forest, found on the east coast of Brazil) which has been even more badly deforested than the Amazon rainforest.
To this end they've been replanting with trees grown from seeds they've collected from the remaining forest, have trained hunters who used to hunt on the estate to be rangers and wardens, are engaged with educating the local community about what they're doing, run a farm, the bird lodge, a volunteer programme etc etc etc. And even though they have a helper to deal with their paying guests they came up to the Lodge every day we were there to chat & socialise - sometimes as early as 6am! We were shown slides of the wetland area being constructed, less than 10 years ago (in which time the bird population has increased 400%) and it looks as if it's always been there. The tropical climate means that things grow incredibly quickly.
What is it with these inspirational Brazilians we keep meeting?! First, Ricardo and his children's charity, Onda Solidaria and now Nicholas & Raquel at Regua. They think big out here.
Brazil may have its problems with drugs, poverty, corruption but the Brazilians we've got to know and like, whether at the uni, in my favela classes or last weekend at Regua have been, to a man, woman & child, friendly, welcoming, thoughtful, interesting, direct, honest and in some cases inspirational and our lives have been enhanced through coming into contact with them.
I realise this blog is going on but I have to write about our amazing walk on saturday. The 2 Brazilian guys (one of whom turned out to be a geologist about to embark on a Phd as a mature student at USP who Patrick, purely by coincidence, met again at the uni in Sao Paulo Thursday when he was
there for a meeting) had arranged to have a local guide take them for a hike in the estate's section of Mata Atlantica and were happy for us to join them. This turned out to be a great arrangement for us as the local guide meant that we didn't have to worry about getting lost and we also had the
benefit of 2 Brazilian companions who spoke excellent english and one of
whom was very knowledgeable about trees.
We drove through the estate to the edge of the forest and were on foot
by 8am with our bottles of water, packed lunches and binoculars. It's going to be difficult to describe what the day was like as what we saw and the environment we found ourselves in was not like anything we'd ever experienced before. We walked for about 8 hours, covered 12 kms and climbed about 900 metres. It was extremely hot but luckily most of it was under the shade of the tree canopy. The diversity, richness and plenitude of life in the forest has to be experienced to be believed. The trees, many of them with huge buttresses, and plantlife grow symbiotically together and the ground is carpeted with fallen seedpods. Micro-orchids and bromelliads that store water cling to tree branches and stringy cactuses and twisted vines hang down. Birds can be heard but are not often seen. We saw a large sloth with its baby coming down a tall tree, monkeys up in the canopy, an armadillo, huge butterflies and a high waterfall. The view from the top made the effort of getting up there worthwhile - even if we have been suffering from sore legs ever since!
Thanks for bearing with me. I'll leave you with Regua's web address in case you want to read more about it
and come over and see it, with or without us, for yourself. As you've probably gathered, it comes highly recommended!
Www.guapiassubirdlodge.com