I think it all started when I watched Brother Bear, in my first month living in the US, on the boat. The two moose were the comic relief of the film, and I fell in love with them. The two actors, who made the moose’s’ voices, looked each like his respective moose. Or the other way around. I found that absolutely genius. In the film, the moose have a Canadian accent, and they do yoga – “salutaaaaations to the sun”. They apparently have more legs than they need, and don’t seem to know to use them elegantly. They are a little lanky.

I kept the moose in a drawer in my mind, and kept on living in California, among seagulls, seals and pelicans.

Until I moved to Texas. Here, some friends laughed like crazy when I said “that thing is enormoose”, meaning “enormous”.  Pure Brazilian accent. I think that made me open the moose drawer and it all started again. I kept saying to myself, as a frustrated biologist – “I need to check those guys in person, some day”.

Well, the day has come. And when it rains, it pours! I decided to make a trip to Maine last weekend and here are a few stories and photos. If before I liked moose very much, now I do love them. I have never seen a moose that I did not like!

More moose photos at the end of our trip, or here.

CONTINUE READING HERE.

Thank God for my friend Cristina. I had made up my mind to go to Maine on this “moose safari”, anyway. I was decided to go by myself. I found this link on a slow day at work, and kept dreaming about it – http://www.maineoutfitter.com/adventures/wildlife.html

Then I commented with my friend. She said “I will go with you!”. Next weekend, we both had our tickets bought. Now we only needed to do the countdown: 3 months.

We bought our tickets to Manchester,  240 miles away from the area where we planned to go, just because the flight was incredibly cheaper. And who would not want to drive a few miles in New England? All set.

I got busy reading about the region and thinking about the lakes. Of course I got ambitious and decided to squeeze in one day at the Acadia National Park, which I don’t regret. God laughs when we make plans, so I don’t want to give HIM a good reason to crack up at me… I just decided where we were going to spend each night and got good deals. Cristina agreed with everything and just kept repeating that her only must-do was eating a lobster.

So the day arrived: Saturday, May 28th, 2010. I flew out of Austin, Cristina flew out of Dallas.

…and that is because of a pain-in-the-ass Professor that I had that insisted in reminding us every now and then of the time that he had spent in the U.S., and he always started like “When I was in Baltimore…”.

The dude ruined that city for me forever.

Anyway, the airport didn’t need to be black. Anyone has any explanations for that?

No matter how bad they turn out, you always need to take a photo from the airplane.

Welcome to New Hampshire! Oh, yeah, I feel welcome!

Cristina arrived and we started the drive. It was already 6pm, and we had both woken up at 4am, but life is short, and who cares? Modest Mouse was blasting on the stereo, life was pure indie rock’n roll.

We asked for information about the roads in the airport and noticed the different accents and attitudes. Definitely we were not in Texas. People wanted to know where we were from. Well, Brazil, but we live in Texas. Crazy people. Cristina was definitely the darkest person in a 10 mile radius.

Cristina’s GPS had a hard time to find out that it was not in Texas. Then we found out that Cristina does not like maps and could not care less about them. We had still 300 miles to go, and numbered minutes in daylight. But who cares.

We made it to the highway and decided to make a quick detour to see the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, we supposed it could be quick. We exited to Kennebunkport (where Bush-the-Father had his summer home) and tried to follow directions to the beach. Seemed pretty easy, Cristina opened the windows and marveled at the smell of the sea. At this point I was tired of trying to read maps and iPhones, and told her “you know what? Let’s just follow our noses!”.

That’s when we found ourselves in a cul-de-sac, at the Sewage Plant of the town of Kennebunkport.

At the Sewage Plant

We saw the ocean. Cristina was disappointed. It was cold and smelled like sewage.

I was just cool as a moose, but dying to get back on the road because we were going to stay in a hostel. The guy had already called to know when he should expect us, and we were running waaay behind our schedule. But who cares.

I asked Cristina in the car if she had eve stayed in a hostel. She said no. For some reason that I can not explain, I busted out laughing, laughing so bad that I had to open the windows to take air. I was tired and aching and all I wanted was a bed, in a quiet room. I knew that the chances for all that in the next day were zero, and I regretted the day I decided, as if I was in my 20′s, to stay in a hostel. As time advanced, I called the hostel dude to inform him of our schedule, or lack of it.  But when he answered I dropped the phone on Cristina’s lap, and she told him that we were 10 miles south of Bangor. Excuse me???! We were more like 250 south of Bangor, but all that matters was that the password to the backdoor was given to us, and all was good again.

We made it to the hostel at 1am, took a shower and probably woke people up, although a bunch of folks were still chatting in the living room. But not to worry, because next morning it was their turn.

I need to say… I am pretty excitable. This was a trip that I had been dreaming of for a while, and I needed not to waste time sleeping. I needed to do it all all the time. Let’s put it this way: Cristina had to cope with me. Thank God she is a social worker and I guess that dealing with weird people is her life. She also knows my dog, an absolutely lovable and hyper-active, obsessive-compulsive Border Collie, Truffles. So every time I was about to get to Cristina’s nerves, she would say “calm down, Truffles” (in Portuguese, it translates like “calma, Trufolina”). Things could have gotten more colorful in this trip if it wasn’t for my friend’s understanding of my collie personality, because at times I felt like in an Agility field.

So I woke up before Cristina at the hostel, with what I call rat-noises from other people (girls opening and closing backpacks, putting make-up and looking for clothes, jumping from the bulk-beds and the like). I grabbed my bag and took it downstairs, to the car. I was ready to go. Then I went back inside to look for some coffee, and ended up in conversations with people in the living room: a nice couple from Massachusetts and a German girl (who Cristina had absolutely hated the night before, for some unexplained but understandable reason, for friends understand everything).

Half an hour later, Cristina comes downstairs with a funny look on her face. “Where’s your bag?” she asked. Well, it’s in the trunk already waiting to get to Monson, I answered.  “Merda”, she said. She woke up and saw the German girl by her bed, messing with a blue bag. I have a blue bag. Fearless and ready to protect my belongings, she told the girl “hey, that’s my friend’s bag!”. The German girl said NO, to what Cristina answered YES, and it seems that the conversation went on like this until the girl showed her the stuff in the bag. Oooops. Big mistake, entchuldigung! but then the relationship between the girl from Frankfurt and Cristina was forever ruined.

Who cares.

The night before we went to Monson, with the perspective of seeing whales and puffins and moose, I dreamed, during my brief hostel night, that I was seeing a platypus.

It’s probably my third dream with platypuses, ever since I named my small business  “The Blue Platypus”. This dreamy platypus, however, was a flying one.