Hanukka assignment |Ed Stafford’s footsteps

Vocabulary:
1. Area: איזור
2. Connect: להתחבר
3. Depressing: מדכא
4. Disappointed: מאוכזב
5. Else: …ו
6. Exactly: בדיוק
7. Exhausted: מותש
8. Expect: לצפות
9. Expedition: מסע
10. Failure: כישלון
11. Familiar: מוכר
12. Impression: רושם
13. Medicine: תרופה
14. Mental: נפשי
15. Miracle: נס
16. Official (adj): רשמי
17. Physical: גופני
18. Poisonous: רעל
19. Preparation: הכנה
20. Pretend: לחקות
21. Progress (n): התקדמות
22. Remind: להזכיר
23. Resource: משאב
24. Source: מקור
25. Step (v): לצעוד
26. Supplies (n): אספקה
27. Survive: לשרוד
28. Unfortunately: (לצערי (לצער רב
29. Victim: קורבן
30. By accident: בטעות
31. Live hand to mouth: (לחיות מהיד לפה (פתגם
32. The whole: הכל
33. Ups and downs: עליות וירידות

8th April 2008 | Start of preparations:

Ed told me what maps I should learn. After learning 2-3  small maps of our expedition we learn together a map that included all of the small maps together.

19th April 2008 | End of preparations:

It took us 7-11 days to learn and remember the maps.

Then, we packed our stuff in two big backpacks; we brought the most important stuff like food, clothes, toothbrushes and toothpastes, bandages, some First aid kit, injections against poisonous food or bugs, small camera and our cellphones.

21st April 2008 | The flight:

After we prepared all our stuff, we went to the airport; then, we got on the plane and waited 2 hours for it to start flying.
Meanwhile I was waiting, I was thinking about what can make us make problems, what resources are there that might affect us (for example poisonous water) and how we would survive in general. After hours of waiting, the plane has finally started to fly and at this point, we realized our journey has started.

Ed’s here with me, just the two of us. We’ll have a great and scary time together.

22nd – 23rd April 2008 | The point where we are alone:

Finally, after 12 hours of flying around the world, we have finally landed. It’s 2 AM now; we’re driving to the Amazon Rainforest.

It’s 5 AM now, we’ve arrived, we had to get some sleep, so we were on our way to find a place to sleep at.
After a few minutes of walking into the woods, we found a little cave, it was empty, quiet and a bit warm. Our “beds” were our backpacks, we had to sleep on them; that was a bit hard because sleeping on the floor in a cave in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest is not a usual thing we and other people do.

So we slept as much as we could and woke up in 11 AM.
We brushed our teethes, ate some fruits and went to our way. After all that, we started to walk right to the river. While we were walking, we came across a big snake, but he was hardly injured, it couldn’t even move, I thought that if I’ll just kill him it won’t suffer more, so I took a big rock and crushed him; he died. Then, we continue our walk and came across a hive of bees, we didn’t make any noise, but they still saw us and we had to run straight to river, lucky us, we had to run 100 meters to reach the river. They’re still after us, we dropped our backpacks and clothes as fast as possible and jumped into the water. Unfortunately, Ed was stung by one of the bees in his left cheek before he jumped into the water. He told me to wait in the water and he took out the bee’s sting and used a bandage, then, jumped into the water. We waited 10 minutes and finally got out. It’s known that in Brazil, there are some dangerous types of bees, it was pretty scary but luckily the bee who stung Ed was a normal bee.
After we walked for a few hours, we got tired. It’s 8 PM now, we should go to sleep by now.

29th May 2008 | Continue of the expedition:

At this point, we were just walking and walking non-stop until we will see something. Nothing special happened until we saw a group of monkeys. One of them threw banana at Ed and that was actually funny because the banana was all over him. The monkeys made a lot of noise and it looked and sounded like they were laughing at Ed.

17th June 2008 | Big surprise:

Wow, both of us didn’t expect to see this. We found a small village. What a surprise.

They saw us, they thought we’re going to hurt them so they pulled out their weapons; they didn’t even have guns. Only spears and small knives. This level of low life made me want to help them and teach them, but, we didn’t have a lot of time, we wanted to finish our journey.

After they pulled their weapons, we told them we’re not here to hurt them and we’re here to talk and chat with them. They understand some English, so luckily we’re saved.

We talked to the chief and asked him if we can sleep here for night or two; he agreed and let us stay here. We thanked them all and gave them some fresh water and fruits.

We were exhausted and went to sleep.

4th July 2008  | Nothing surprises us anymore:

We’re here for only 3 month and we’ve seen: Snakes, monkeys and tones of bees. Nothing can actually make us scared anymore, we learned how to get by with most of the animals, places and things we met. I think it’s time for us to end our journey.

19th July 2008  | Conclusion and reflection:

That’s it. That is what Ed and I went through together.

It was amazing, great in many ways and a bit scary. It was very scary in the very start but then we got used it. We didn’t spend a lot of money, so we still had money on us.

I can’t express my feelings in writing but this journey has changed my life. It was the best time I’ve ever had. I wish we could stay there for a bit longer, but Ed had to leave because his grandmother got sick and went to the hospital, so we had to come back together.

I hope Ed enjoyed as I did.

I would love to visit there again, not as a long, big journey, but rather as a small visit.