Day 7: Carajas zoo + media presentation

Page from "Veja" magazine - blurb on our trip is to the left of Al Gore's picture.

(Thursday, 3 May 2007) Spent part of the morning walking through the Carajas zoo. Given the proximity of the raw jungle to our hotel (here's the view out the back), I was glad to see the menagerie of local fauna in a controlled setting (rather than slithering under my door, for example). Most of the species we saw originated from the immediate area, including numerous monkeys, a puma, and many kinds of very large snakes.

In the afternoon, Simon, Carlos, and Nathan presented an overview of the analog project and HiRISE results to some of the mine personnel at the conference room in the village. We presented the CVRD staff with a wall-sized poster of a HiRISE image as a thank you for all of their help.

I also need to recognize the hard work of the PR personnel from the mine. Apparently, the PR staff sent out a quick press release to the local and national media. As a result of their quick action, I had a very queer experience on the flight back home. When I first boarded the plane, I had a brief conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me. He told me he was a pharmaceutical representative on his way to a conference, and I explained to him how I'm a geologist working for NASA on a project at Carajas. Many hours later, he was reading "Veja," a weekly news magazine in Portuguese that the Brazilian equivalent of Time or Newsweek. Suddenly he exclaimed, "Hey, you are in magazine!" Low and behold, there was a short paragraph that described the collaborative project between NASA and CVRD. The gentleman was kind enough to tear out that page of his magazine and give it to me - here's a scan image of that page. Our paragraph is just to the left of the picture of Al Gore. I must admit, I was a little shocked at how quickly this made it into the Brazilian media. It was a pretty surreal experience to find yourself in the magazine of the person seated next to you on a plane.