The açai (ass-eye-ee) is a tropical palm that grows mostly in swamps and floodplains. This palm can be as tall as 30 meters (about 90 feet) and produces a small, round, black-purple, and very hard fruit, known as açai berry, which contains a seed that occupies almost three-quarters of the fruit.

We're crazy.

"We" being those of us who work in the Amazon chasing monkeys. Of course, we don't think so. We think it's perfectly normal to get up before dawn, put on heavy long pants, long sleeves, hats and boots in 100% humidity and up to mid-90 degrees and go slogging through various habitats, covered in biting insects and mud.

The Amazon is an incredibly beautiful, magical, glorious place—if you are looking at our pictures with a cocktail in your hands. If you are in it—well, sometimes you have to keep telling yourself how beautiful and magical it is while a nest of ants is biting your chest under your shirt or the water surrounding the barco is such cloudy varzea that it's hard to tell if your filthy jungle pants are maybe cleaner than the water you are washing them in.

I have personal swarms.

Sometimes they are in the form of a mosquito cloud that follows me around the rainforest. Sometimes they are in the form of piyums, a small nat-like, big-toothed biting fly thing that are relentlessly filling the boat in clouds, all day, every day—biting and biting and biting. Sometimes it's at night in my room when the piyums are finished, but the small mosquitos and night wasps come on.

First of all, my name aside, I do not love a swamp. There is the challenge of walking through muck and water and gluey muck, and more water, and then over bridges of fallen almost supportive trees and dodging super prickly palms and underwater tangly vines -- and sure, that can be fun. But yesterday, I was almost killed by a tortilla (yes, the edible kind) in the swamp. And I did not love it.

Expeditions are amazing and exciting projects that capture the imagination of scientists and laypeople the world over. They promise tales of daring and survival and of new discoveries and confirmation of creatures.

OK, OK, this isn't exactly a blog.

But hey, this is Rachel speaking, not Laura.

Watch the videos below for a recap of what happened in November, 2016 as Lísley, Laura and Alejandra worked with Capitão to get ready for the expedition!

Whenever I meet someone new, say at a Christmas cookie party, the conversation typically goes something like this: “I’m a realtor here in town. What do you do?” “I work in the rainforest and study monkeys. I’m going on expedition in January to Brazil.” “Really? Monkeys? In the rainforest? Wait—doesn’t that mean lots of…bugs?”

Since it is my Divine Birthday Right to say what I want to today, I offer something personal.

In countries like the United States, going to the gas station means driving up in your car. It means that in Brazil too, but for much of the traffic in Amazonas, the travel is by boat on lots and lots of rivers of various sizes. And that means having gas stations that float on the water.