Riding the brown train to Venezeula...

A bus ride along patchwork roads..perhaps put together out of pieces of other better, worse, and unrelated roads. Landscapes en route that didn't make any sense. Massive paddocks with too many random trees to be used for farming. Fields of trees that were too haphazard and spare to be orchards. Fenced paddocks with nothing but arching palm trees being contained. They didn't seem to want to escape the palm party anyway. Areas with big black rocks growing out of the round, and trees growing out of those rocks. Forest. Jungle.
All observed through the concentration filter of a woman trying desperately not to shit herself on the bus. I am that woman and I'll freely admit that, while engaging, taking accurate mental notes of the landscape wasn't perhaps my number one priority. Pretty sure all of the above is true though.

The day before we were in Boa Vista. I didn't leave the hotel, peferring instead to allocate my time between the bed and the toilet.

The evening before that an overnight bus from Manaus. The bus had a toilet. And sleep was a welcome distraction.

Our first day in St Elena was spent fairly quietly and still both in recovery more- although we did manage to book our tours for the following days and started eating again. I even managed to rip one of my favourite pairs of underwear to shreds on the fan in our hotel room. And get one more wear out of them. Because I am that classy.

In attempt to raise the tone of this entry, I'll also note that we walked to the St Elena Cathedral. Through and past the small town, along an almost-jungle area broken up by some rather flash houses, to a brick cathedral. The entrance way bore the scars of some historic (but recent enough) burning, but the statues above were still (or again) pristine white.
The inside was, perhaps, incongrous. Very clean, bright, and white inside. The ceiling was wooden with brass fittings akin to the studs on some african doors that are intended to deter elephants from busting through. Shining tiles with a number of paintings including an actual image of god as an elderly man in the clouds in a triangle akin to the eye on a US bill. Cherubs with haircuts that must date from the 50s. And your standard assortment of well made statuary.

No monkeys or babies were harmed in the making of the bodily functions obliquely referred to in this post.

And for the less bright, or less attuned to classy parlance among you,- there was no train.