31-Dec-2020 --

The trip began driving 648 km north, starting in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. I drove the day before until Arrais, a small town, still part of Goiás state. The next morning, I started heading the 12S 048W confluence, the first target. Driving north I reached the state of Tocantins, where the confluence is located, and the landscape changed a little bit, with more forests and less human presence.

After I crossed the town of Paranã and left the asphalt road, the challenge really begun. The road was bumpy and rocky and crosses a small mountain range. The landscape in that region alternates forests and a few fields, most of them without cattle.

I drove west along 40 km and just see a few houses, and the road turned to a gravel pavement. After that, at approximately 1.5 km south from the target I left the main road and crossed a gate and drove across a field with cattle. When I got to the farmhouse, I saw 5 dogs circling the car and although I was afraid, I left the car and met a lady who was watching me from the door. She authorized me to continue on my path even though she didn't quite understand what I was really trying to achieve. I realized that in the next hunt for coordinates I should print some material from the site in order to facilitate the explanation for people with less knowledge of the subject.

At that moment I was almost 500 meters south from the confluence and crossed another field and after entered into a small path beside the fence and finally entered the forest in order to reach the exact point. The photos inside the forest are very similar in all directions but this part of forest already seemed to be altered by the human presence as there was little organic matter in the soil, although there were no fire marks in that area.

In general terms, the region is included in the “Cerrado” biome that covers a region of 2 million kilometers in Brazil, but in the area of CP, I observed only 2 phytophysiognomies called “Cerradão” and “Mata Seca”. The Cerradão (big savanna) is a forest formation with xeromorphic aspects, it is thinner and weaker. It is characterized by the presence of species that occur in the savanna and also by species of forest. From the physiognomic point of view it is a forest but floristically it is more similar to a savanna.

Mata Seca (dry forest) includes forest formations characterized by different levels of deciduous (leaf fall) during the dry season, depending on the chemical, physical, and mainly soil depth. Dry forest has no association with water courses, occurring in interfluves in soils that are generally richer in nutrients.

Talking about the fauna, I didn´t observed animals in the area near CP except for locusts that occupied the whole area. I saw hundreds of them as I walked and also perched on the roads.