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These water depth measurements will give us an insight into the problems the port of Imbituba is facing with sedimentation. One could say our first working week has been a real test on our memory banks and on our sanity levels.

After a tough beginning we decided to clear our minds and take a trip to the Port of Imbituba, hoping to get a better understanding of the area we are investigating. This was also a great opportunity to shoot some nice pictures with our state of the art drone to use for our study concerning the port. Instead of using trains, the people from Brazil are used to taking busses to other cities. We discovered that, in contrast with the Netherlands, a train network as we know it doesn’t exist in Brazil.

Worried about the huge amount of data we received, we got help from an unexpected but welcome visitor. Our contact from CB&I showed us how useful matlab can actually be, and after a short time of programming we had a working script. We can now accurately map the surface of the port of Imbituba and compare yearly depth measurements to obtain the differences and calculate sediment transport rates.

After a week of steady progress it was time to go for some drinks with a few students from the university. When you agree to meet at 21:00, this actually means you’ll start preparing at that time. The same goes for the weekly churrasco (BBQ). When they say it starts at 13:00 it means you start thinking about it at that time. In the beginning it takes some getting used to, but at least we’re always ready when they are ready.

A nice thing to know about the churrasco is that each one has a churrascero, which translates to king of the BBQ. He/she will take care of preparing the meat, and people here are ranked according to their skills. If you’re good with the meat you are high up in the hierarchy.