Wildlife in the Caatinga

Here a few more impressions of the natural and "man-made" wildlife you can meet in the Caatinga.

Goats and sheep are pretty much roaming around freely although there are a few fences especially close to roads.  People outside of the town live on mostly isolated farms where they keep their animals and grow a few vegetables. The roads are not paved and the further you get away from town, the worse the condition with really deep pot-holes. Many people cannot even afford a car and they go by moped on these roads. They also have the tendency to honk their horn every time they meet somebody. The past decade or so, the government has set up power supply lines so even the remotest place has electricity now. In addition, they all get treated water delivered to their homes which is stored in tanks. 

As geologists, we have to make sure they understand what we're doing so that we can look for rocks on their land without them getting annoyed at us. Most people were quite  friendly and interested in what we're doing but the most frequent question was if we found any gold (although most of them were joking of course). It's a bit difficult to explain that they are actually living on some of the oldest parts of the South American continent, something which is far more valuable in geology than gold ;)

Not really wildlife but I love cacti! 

Black vultures (called urubu here), the garbage men of the Caatinga feasting on a dead goat in this case. Unfortunately many people are not that considerate where they throw their waste so sometimes you have trash heaps where you can find venues (new word I learned today!) of black vultures as well. 

This beauty just needed to be photographed too. 

Super-cute almost new-born goatlings, the black one I almost took with me:

 

And last but not least a view into the distance ... 

German inside (1)

It is widely known that Germany is a very environmental friendly country which is not only evident in energy management but also in recycling and generally in trying not to produce waste. 

This is why most German supermarkets don't give out plastic bags for free anymore. You can pay for them but the majority of Germans goes shopping with their own reusable bags, baskets or backpacks. 

In Brazil, however, you have ample of plastic bags to pack your goods into and you have to use lots of them because they are so weak that they won't hold 2 bottles at the same time. In addition, there is usually somebody from the shop packing things for you into these bags so the German has to be very fast to shove the backpack to the person and point inside together with a "por favor". And it works - everything gets nicely packed into the backpack, just the bananas went into an extra plastic bag so that they wouldn't get smashed :) When leaving the supermarket I usually get a few strange smiles from the cashier but I bet she wouldn't want to walk 20 minutes to her house with 50 plastic bags in her hands ;)

Obrigada, Brasil!

Caatinga

Barely after two weeks of being in Brazil, I've already been on field work. The destination was a town called Uauá in the state of Bahia. This region is characterized by a very dry climate which consequently has an effect on the vegetation called the Caatinga. Basically there are no big trees and instead mostly shrubs, thorny bushes and cacti which can be very annoying if you're a geologist roaming the countryside to find great rocks. Some of these plants do not only have thorns but also cause some kind of allergic reaction if you touch them .. like this one here which is called Cnidoscolus quercifolinus or commonly favela plant in Portuguese:

The next candidate is even meaner and likes to grow just in between the rocks but I don't remember the name:

 

Then there are of course the cacti which just have thorns (some up to 10 cm which is why hiking boots with a big sole are recommended):

People living in the Caatinga are generally quite poor and keep mostly goats and sheep. Occasionally you also stumble upon some donkeys and horses. To keep these animals alive, water is collected in artificial lakes.