The red soil of Brasilia overpowers everything it touches. I almost felt like I was in one of those country songs that talks about "red dirt roads," but this stuff was definitely not confined just to roads. The Brazilian cerrado (se-ha-tho) reminded me of home because of the heat and the aridness, but really there were too many differences to even compare it to Texas. The red soil was only the beginning and as we soon found out, there was also gold/yellow soil. The most prominent features in my opinion were the termite mounds. They were scattered everywhere throughout the landscape, some on the ground and some built onto tree branches. They were hard to the touch, but they crumbled easily if you exerted enough force.
Red dirt road in Brasilia's botanical garden
A classmate inspecting an arboreal termite nest
Cerrado vegetation comes in many shapes and sizes, ranging from full on grassland to beautiful canopied riparian environment. The most common type, however, is called sensu stricto which I would basically describe as scrub-brush. The trees aren't very tall, and most have corky gnarled bark and thick leaves. The grasses are tough and hardy. The plants have good reason for these traits because the cerrado is a fire adapted community. Apparently cerrado fires can spread at a rate of 1 meter per second, and some may only stay in one spot for as little as 2 minutes. We visited a site that had only been burned a month ago, and things had already started to resprout! It was amazing to see charred bark with little green buds coming out of it. It was very interesting to go to this environment because most people don’t even know about the cerrado, and it’s definitely not what you imagine when you think of Brazil, hence the “forgotten forest”.
Cerrado vegetation after a recent fire
Aside from the habitat, we had an interesting time in Brasilia. This is a planned city, but the “planned” part was sort of confusing to me. Apparently it is in the shape of an airplane from the sky, and the streets are organized in different sectors. They have the hotel sector and the restaurant sector and the business sector. In theory it’s a good idea, but in reality it just makes it really hard to get to places because you can’t walk anywhere unless you want it to take all day. We also had to eat lunch and dinner on our own, which was hard with no car, but we made things work. Even more of a challenge was that all we had was a mini fridge and no microwave, so we had lots of cheese and crackers. However, Wendy and I managed to ask for hot water for tea so we had tea parties in the evening!
There was one section of the city right on the edge of the lake that was definitely catered towards tourists because they had manicured grass, really nice restaurants and plumeria trees! Although I don’t think these are necessarily Brazilian (they are also found in Corpus Christi’s botanical gardens), they were so pretty so we took a couple pictures with them.
Some other things we did in Brasilia included meeting with an NGO about their work they do with indigenous tribes and small farming communities, going to the botanical gardens, and eating at an artisanal ice cream shop with flavors of cerrado fruits. We fit all this into two days, so just imagine what we will be getting ourselves into in the coming weeks. Amazon, here we come!
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