And it burns, burns, burns and burns and burns

I think something of Paraguay and the fires finally hit the international news this week. As I said in my last blog, the fires have had a huge impact on San Pedro, the department we live in, with 20,000 people now homeless. And that was only last week, before the rains came. It has had quite a significant impact on us too.

Apparently August is always a very dry month, in which people get sick, crops die and it’s said that if old people survive August one year, they will live to see the next one. According to the mechanic who fixes my car (more regularly than I would like), at the start of the month you are supposed to drink a mix of 6 types of yerba (the tea made from a plant grown in Paraguay) which all have different remedial properties with a lot of rum to prevent yourself from getting sick. I wish I had known that beforehand. I ended up ill in the middle of the month and at one point lost my voice from smoke inhalation. I asked several people what causes the fires and got a whole range of different answers. They can start naturally, perhaps by the magnifying glass effect of intense sun hitting the due on the ground or by lightning strike. Other fires might be started by people who are burning rubbish and have made a small fire which got out of control, or on purpose to clear away the old grass and bring up the new shoots that the cattle and horses can eat. Another reason is that after the dry period, all the vegetation dies and turns brown, making it difficult to see snakes, so people might burn to kill the snakes. Then there are the usual reasons like a carelessly flicked cigarette butt or match. Whatever the reason is, the bottom line is that once it’s started, it’s very difficult to stop and we watched several sweep through the habitat around us for a week and a half until everything was burned and there was nothing left.

A couple of times it came very close to our wooden house. The closest we let it get to us was when it took out all of the reedbeds by the lake about 15 meters from our porch. Fortunately, there is a sand road between the reeds and the house with some overhanging trees. Jeni and I spent a part of our night swinging from the overhanging trees like Tarzan and Jane (not sure which was which) to make sure none of them caught on fire and transferred the burning to our side of the road. It was spectacular to watch, as fire is anyway, but to see it moving systematically from one clump of grass to the next in a line that stretched out to the water was amazing. There were some scary moments too, like when the sky was orange in three directions around the house and the fire too big to stop, or when we couldn’t see each other properly when standing inside the house because the smoke was clouding up our air. That night we all slept in surgical masks.

The whole of the cerrado was destroyed in a matter of days - from bright green to black ash in minutes. The same happened to the forest, only it took a bit longer. All the places where we had traps out or had been studying were destroyed. We went for 26 days without rain and on the 27^th day, it rained for about 3 minutes. I think on about the 33^rd day, we had proper, useful rain and it hasn’t really stopped since. The cerrado is already recovering well and looks much prettier than before. We have seen a significant increase in the variety and quantity of wildlife we catch ad see on a daily basis and the frogs are all out singing every night. Now there are lizards, birds, frogs, snakes, mice, armadillos etc. It seems that the habitat is well adapted to the fire and rain even if the people aren’t. We have already endured a 4 day storm and right now I can hear the thunder coming our way again. Here it comes, the sound of drums (Rogue Traders) – the rain is so loud on the metal roof. In Britain, people complain all the time about the weather, but I can now appreciate that living in a predictable environment is much more comfortable and safe than this country with its wild extremes.