Videos from the Brasilian Amazon

Originally, I wanted to post the videos themselves.  I have been trying for almost an hour to upload them, and can't.  Blogger is not the easiest program to work with.  However, I've uploaded to YouTube, and the links are in the text.

These are just two small videos I put together out of tons of footage that I have from my trip last year.  The first one is of a very large woodpecker working for a living. In the background, you can hear a noise that sounds like wind moaning through trees. Nope, it's a troop of howler monkeys, who were carrying on all day that day.

The second one is of my Brasilian guide, Morães, showing off, climbing a strangler fig.  Morães and I had known one another for 3 years, dating back to my first trip to this particular area.  Because I speak Portuguese, in both trips I had an enormous advantage in that I would go out alone with Morães, with no need of a head guide or interpreter, and Morães, who is a native of the area, would tell me all sorts of stories, point out incredible things.  He is a veritable treasure trove of information about the rain forest, the plants and creatures in it, and how people make their living there.

Both videos were taken from a canoe.

Coffee Pruning Video

Sundays are usually days off; today, I made good on a promise to myself that I would work on video footage I have, some of it dating back to this time last year on my trip to the Brasilian Amazon.  I've uploaded with this post a little movie I made of workers on the Ruiz coffee farm near Boquete pruning the trees.  I haven't done anything with sound; you hear the pruners and birds in the background, which I thought were far better than anything I could do artificially.

I have some other videos of the pruning operation that I'll post separately.

The quality isn't going to be all that good because I have to compress to lower resolution--uploading large files is risky, given our situation.  but it's good enough, I think, to give you an idea.