Yuku free message boards

Google: Survivor Amazon (by date).

Some info on weather, locale, flora, fauna, and food:

www.epcommunitynews.com/archives/2003/sl011003.htm

Lastra's back; so is sis – from Amazon!
Lastra at Large
Steve Lastra
January 10, 2003

After a brief vacation during the holidays I'm glad to be back once again writing my column. It was the first time in a while my wife and I had time off together during Christmas and we took full advantage of it.

Spending time with the kids, getting the Christmas shopping done on time, and even a trip for my wife and myself to New York City. More about that in upcoming column.

It was nice to change the routine. To not have to do certain things and enjoy the time itself. I guess it's that way when your on a summer vacation trip but around Christmas makes it all the more special.

But now it's January and we are almost two weeks into the New Year so I want to wish everyone a belated happy and healthy New Year.

Travels with sis

I promised a few weeks back an update on my sister Marybeth's latest adventure as a CBS executive who travels with TV show "Survivor."

Of course, she never divulges how the show is unfolding or any details about the contestants.

As an executive with Program Practices, the censors, she oversees the day-to-day activity pertaining to her area and acts as a liaison with the show's producer and the network. She is present at all challenges and tribal councils. The work is demanding but the locales are unbelievable. The last episodes seen on television was the one shot in Thailand. But that is not the latest one.

In mid December she returned home having completed the next episode — "The Amazon."

On this trip Marybeth journeyed to Brazil and deep into the Amazon jungle on a tributary of the Amazon River.

This time her living conditions were a marked improvement over Thailand's M*A*S*H-like compound.

She had a room, with air conditioning, a bathroom and a bed. What more could a girl ask for!

She explains, however, that the "hotel" was in a tree with dozens of little squirrel monkeys everywhere.

"They just walk right past you," she said. She also said that the parrots and other species of birds would perch all along the boardwalk of this hotel.

The macaws would squawk at you if they were in a bad mood and sometimes allow you to hold them if they were in a good mood.

She encountered sloth and saw from a distance the black caiman alligator.

Sounds like she was filming Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

But it wasn't all cute birds and playful monkeys. Marybeth said the heat was brutal and it was very humid.

And the beach where some of the filming was done was "hot, hot, hot with lots of huge wasps that hovered right over us. And the bees were extremely huge as well."

But this seemed like small potatoes to the veteran of Thailand.

Her subsequent e-mails continue to fill me in on life in the Amazon.

She writes of the amazing thunderstorms on the river and attempting to travel in knee-deep mud.

She nonchalantly mentioned that she had not seen any jaguars or anaconda's but some of the film crew had and that she dare not put her feet in the water because of the "millions of piranhas."

She said that the Brazilians were exceptionally friendly people and was enthralled with watching the river rise and witnessing the land submerge under water.

She also said that after witnessing the challenges and tribal councils this would be a greatshow this season.

So what did Marybeth miss the most during the six weeks spent in the heart of Brazil?

Was it the comforts of home, which happens to be in a beach town in southern California?

Was it that car-crawliong freeway lifestyle that Californians have to endure? Was it her brother, who dutifully chronicled her trip? None of these!

"As exotic as all this is I'm craving a Starbucks," she writes. " I can't believe the coffee here is awful. Who would've thought? Maybe someone ought to tell them about Juan Valdez. He's just like, around the corner in Columbia."

Only my sister, folks, only my sister. Glad your home sis.

You may reach me by e-mail at: hennyman@ptd.netor by writing me at: Steve Lastra EPCN 511 Lenox St., Stroudsburg PA 18630

Looks familiar...

Piranhas? Grove group sells jungle to `Survivor'
BY CARY DARLING
cdarling@herald.com

Fire up the rats and piranhas, the next edition of Survivor -- which hits TV screens next month on CBS -- takes place deep in the Amazon rain forest. And a South Florida company can take credit.

The Valorem Group, a Coconut Grove hotel sales/marketing firm that represents the Ariau Amazon Towers hotel outside Manaus in the heart of the rain forest, approached the show's producers about considering Brazil.

''[Survivor] had been all over the world but they'd never been in the Americas,'' says Valorem Group Vice President Joseph Ramirez. ``So we thought the Amazon would be ideal.''

Ramirez says he was, at first, met with reluctance. ''At first, they didn't take us for real,'' he says. ``We're not a known commodity in the production world. We just kept persisting.''

Using the hotel as a base for the crew, producers felt the area nearby would be perfect for some good, ol'-fashioned reality-TV bellyaching and back)stabbing.

But they didn't want actual bloodshed. 'They had all kinds of questions like, `How dangerous is it?' ,'' Ramirez says. ``There were piranhas everywhere.''