The mountain house

This weekend we decided to camp out at Iracambi's Mountain House. I had been there by car so realized it was not named that by accident. Since we were hiking up to the Mountain House this time..and I do mean "up"...we decided to go after lunch on Saturday (aka the hottest time of day) so we only needed to bring enough food for 2 meals. We also decided to forego things like blankets for beer and cachaça. This was my first hike here and I did warn everyone in advance that I'm no good with "uphill" since I come from New York where the biggest hill I climb on a daily basis is the 1 flight of stairs up to my apartment.

It was a beautiful hike, first on the edge of a Eucalyptus plantation then alongside farmland and cow pastures. After much starting and stopping, due to me, we did make it to the Mountain House.

Aside from just camping out, we did go up there with a job to do - make the place presentable for the bird watchers who are coming to Iracambi next weekend. So after we caught our breath a bit, we set to work sweeping and unpacking hammocks and moving building supplies out of the house (for Robin to pick up in the Land Rover).

Since we only had one broom, I tried my best MacGyver impression and made this lovely broom. It worked pretty well until the bristles started to fall out and cause an even bigger mess.

As it started to get dark, we realized that since we had no electricity we should hang up the hammocks while it was still light out. Sadly, we are not knot-experts. For some reason people remembered I said I grew up sailing and looked to me to get the hammocks in place. I did my best to remember how to make a bowline, but don't think my knots were quite up to snuff. I did recall how to make slipknots and thought this would be good to tie around the metal hooks, but during the night the knots continued to slip and most of us ended up almost on the floor. This is what happens when a New Yorker is asked to perform outdoorsy tasks.

One thing we were all good at was making a fire and I think we ended up burning through all of the wood we could find.

Though the beer and cachaça warmed us temporarily, the lack of blankets and the wind coming down from the mountains made it a very cold and sleepless night. However, the beer and cachaça did make the cold and our hammocks hitting the floor all night far more enjoyable and full of lots of laughter.