Now I know why the Pantanal has been preserved after 200 years of Western-style cattle rasing and exploitation like fishing, hunting and so on. Mosquitoes. It is hell on earth. This is my first winter here. I had never expected that it could be so wet, that it could rain so much, that there were so many species of mosquitoes, that life of pantaneiros could be made so miserable. In the subject of mosquitoes, there is one that is all white, fast and looks like a white shadow and worse, it is not a friend of diplomacy. When it stings, you feel. There is a variety that is heavier than the shadow and that swarms into people's skins by the hundreds. Last January I walked 12 kilometers on the Pantaneira Road, with, anytime, 400 of them following me, landing over me, buzzing around my head. There were so many of them that my nose started to itch and I ended up developing a sneezing crisis. One day, I had prepared lunch for four of my mountain bike tourists from Japan. Lunch, I phantasize

I have never seen a Catholic priest or nun in Miranda. Where are they? I have got to tell the pope. They should be doing something to stop this. There are so many new gospel churches materializing in the little town that I think something is wrong. My neighbors are good example of what is happening. The situation is weird and is similar to a collective brain washing operation. These people live in Miranda – an old town (over 200 years, old for Brazil) existing on top of a fantastically beautiful land. These people know nothing about this land. In the meantime they spend their days and whole nights singing about Jerusalem, Israel, Hebron and Mount Zion. Why don’t they sing instead to the Bodoquena Mountains, the Miranda and Salobra Rivers, the Cerrado, the Carandá Palms and the flowering Paratudo forests? Aren’t these also part of the creation of God? How can a people live on a land so long and know so little or care to know so little about it? Not care about how to protect the loca