Sao Paulo, day 2

Day 2 in Brazil was shaping up to be a big one. Alecia and I got up at 6:30, had breakfast, and headed back to the Butantan institute. We met Rafael at his office and we all headed down to the venom production facilities. Silvia Candoss took us around the snake rooms. I’ve never seen so many snakes! They have about 1,000 that are milked monthly, with their venom used to produce all of Brazil’s anti-venom. We have lots of photos, but they might have to wait until later. We spent a few hours looking at an awful lot of beautiful (and deadly!) snakes, then had lunch at the university. We’re now abusing our friendship with Carlos 1 by using his lab’s computers to write this stuff. We’re going out to dinner with Carlos tonight, so we want to stay in his good books. So I’m going to finish this here. More later.