There are very few certainties in the Amazonian rainforest - a fact that has caught numerous scientists here off-guard. It is impossible to make plans, or even priorities. Time and temperature are equally unpredictable - while there may be a correlation between spontaneous changes to vehicle schedules and rainstorms, it is impossible to guess whether a rain event will last for 10 minutes or for two days - and thus whether a truck will be able to leave for Manaus on time, or be obliged to delay overnight. (Note, the truck that was supposed to leave this morning make over nine tries to get up the steep hill in front of the lodge before giving up...). Animal sightings are frequent but not guaranteed. I have seen several snakes while a German colleague has seen none (though he attributes this to my ability to speak in parseltongue). There can be thousands of mosquitoes in the jungle, but no one will be bitten except one girl, Qi. And electricity will be constant in the container with the advanced instrumentation producing 60A fluctuations, but collapse under one too many lightbulbs in the lodging.
But there are several things that we can say with confidence: 1. Lunch and Dinner will consist of spaghetti, rice, salad (grated carrots and beets, sliced cucumber, greenish pepper and tomato), beans and some form of meat. 2. It will rain today. 3. The puppy will bite your ankles and chew on your shoes (he seems to have a particular affinity for Hugh's Crocs - in my opinion, a chew toy is about all those shoes should every be used for, but Hugh disagrees).
Everything else, we bet for beer: whether the pasta will have fried garlic or onion mixed in, are there going to be grated beets, at what time today will it rain (person closest wins), if instruments are working, how many tries it will take for the vehicles to get up the hill...
That tends to result in the one other certainty: that there is never enough beer. Perhaps there's a correlation...
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