Central and Eastern Brazil 20th May - 20th July
São Paulo 20th May - 4th July
Its been another long break. Longer than I had intended, but that was more a matter of timing than anything else. Life settled down to a routine. I would write or laze about doing very little during the day and in the evenings we would go out – to clubs, the cinema, dancing lessons (sometimes I got roped in unknowingly, but it was fun). Or we wouldn't. There has been a lot of backgammon, fairly even handed stuff but I have just managed to come out on top at the end of it, much to Steve's frustration as he always used to beat me more often than not.
There have been weekend jaunts. To Sorocaba a little West of the city, where Robson and Isabella live. Bella is a dentist friend of Vanessa's who sometimes stays at the flat when she comes to work in the city. Robson is a musician, mostly occupied playing weddings and stuff but just about to bring out a CD. On the Sunday we all went to the nearby town of Itu, famous for a number of giant models of everyday objects around the town square – a telephone, chair, guitar, some traffic lights and though we didn't see it – a petrol pump. It was actually a bit of a half hearted attempt to attract tourists, with a few shops selling a range of out sized and comedy souvenirs. We all agreed they could have tried a little harder. We spent the whole afternoon, back in Sorocaba, at a restaurant, slowly gorging ourselves on feijoada, a very Brazilian dish of black beans in a casserole with various different types of meats – sausage, ribs. Very tasty. The restaurant also had frozen caipirinha, which no-one had seen before (think alcoholic lime flavoured slush puppy), which was delicious and free with the buffet. There was a band playing, friends of Robson, and he got up and sang a few numbers with them as well.
Giant telephone, Itu.
A couple of days later they came to the city and I cooked a curry. There are apparently only two half decent Indian restaurants in the whole city (we'd been to one of them), and popadoms are unheard of. Steve has a small stock, maybe the only ones in the whole country!
On the same day Steve and I went to a gathering of bikers that happens every week, its a big party with live band, and some two to three thousand are usually there. Bikers clubs are very big in Brazil. Almost everybody belongs to one, with stickers, badges sewn into jackets. The go riding together at weekends. There's no sense of rivalry between the clubs however, its all typically laid back and Brazilian. They are nothing like gangs. Some clubs are just local, others have members all over the country. As soon as we arrived, this guy parked next to us and started talking. He was a policeman and vice-president of a big club. He introduced us to a load of different guys. One of them, who won a prize in Japan as the world's best Honda mechanic, also happened to know Maarten. Small world. Some spoke a bit of English, for others Steve provided translations. It was a very cool evening out.
June has a major festival, the Festa Juninha, which is a little reminiscent of Harvest festival. The boys school had an open day, the kids were all dressed up in peasant clothes, people bring along food to give to the poor, there are games like at an old country fun fair. There were also dance displays, and a passion play of a shotgun wedding. Alex took the role of the policeman who has to catch the groom when he tries to escape at the alter. Next weekend there was a festival at the condominium as well, where I learnt about another part of the tradition. They have a jail where you can pay to have someone locked up for ten minutes. I wasn't supposed to know about it in advance but Cris spilled the beans (neither of them are very good at keeping secrets), but it didn't stop me being one of the first to get slammed in there. It was a mixed blessing however that the jail was run by a bunch of easily corruptible kids. I paid my way out and made a bargain with them not to lock me up again for the rest of the night. It worked when Steve got dragged away and he tried to get me re-arrested, but they kept up their end. It didn't work so well later when I paid twice to get him locked up again, but they didn't do it. They learn young in this country.
English bobby abroad.
At the end of the month the boys finished school for a month and Vanessa took them north for a visit to their grandmother. It is also a business visit as they are planing to move up there later in the year to open a franchise dental business. So for a long weekend Steve and I went out, got drunk and watched all the sci-fi movies that Vanessa hates. On Saturday afternoon we went to a famous bar, Bar do Leao in the city centre. I had gone to it last time, and its a really cool little place, but unfortunately has gone a bit upmarket in the last few years. Still we ran into Klaus, a biker we had met at the gathering before. He was there to meet with his band so we spent a while mixing it up with them for a while. Its amazing how you can just bump into people. We got drunk with some friends over another curry that night, and spent Sunday recovering. Tomorrow, Monday, I set off.
View of central São Paulo from Ibirapuera park. There is a big fountain ahead in the lake, ut just my luck it wasn't on when I took my camera.
5th July. Ubatuba. 186 miles. Crossed the Tropic of Capricorn
Got up and had breakfast with Steve before he went to work then packed. Typically its the first cloudy day we've had in the last couple of weeks. As I leave the city and head into mountains there is some fog, and as I reach the coast it starts to rain. I'm taking the coastal route to Rio, one because its supposed to be one of the most scenic in the country, and because I had hoped to get e bit of beach time. What little colour I had has mostly gone after weeks in the city.
So with low clouds and wet roads the only bit of the mountains I notices is how steep some of them are, as the road winds up and down. The white sand beaches look grey and devoid of life, the sea angry and uninviting. It reminds me a lot of my ride down the Californian coast north of LA. Still, its good to be on the move once more though my travel muscles will need a few days to re-tone. So its a relatively short day. A good morning ride, lunch in São Sebastião, then another hour and a half up to Ubatuba for a mid-afternoon finish line. As its out of season and still raining, if only light and sporadically, the hotels are half price. The downside is that the place is practically deserted and there is little to do. Still it is warm enough to be in shorts and t-shirt, even after dark. The hotel manager spent some time in England, and decided he wanted my photograph on his website. I am also being quoted on the website of the school where I took my Portuguese lessons, where I am admired for my views on Picasso. My fame spreads.
6th July. Rio de Janeiro. 222 miles.
It rained through most of the night and was raining when I got up. It rained through most of the day, though there were a few dry patches. I rode through a few very forlorn, poor looking places, interspersed with guarded entrances to what I can only assume were private beach resorts for the rich. The day was uneventful. I stopped for fuel and brief rests, but not lunch. As I entered Rio though it was dry. It seemed to start about ten miles out form the centre, appearing much more spread out than I remembered from before. The Corcovado was shrouded in cloud. When I got to the Zona Sul it began to look more familiar. I tried a couple of hotels in Copacabana but they were very expensive. So I'm staying in Flamengo, which is only slightly cheaper. For the first time in ages I was almost paying English prices.
Rio feels different from São Paulo. Its more relaxed, more hedonistic, this is one of the world's party capitals after all. But there is more. I think its the balance between rich and poor. Poverty is more obvious here, the balance shifted, though I can't really explain how I can tell this. I read today that Copacabana in particular is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Maybe thats it. Maybe here the rich and poor are just squeezed together a lot more, between the green mountains and white sands. Its in the graffiti everywhere, in the mosaic pavements in disrepair, and of course in the favelas staring down at you from the hillsides. In São Paulo poverty and the poor seem a little out of place, like they weren't quite meant to be there. Here its the rich that seemed to have stumbled into the wrong neighbourhood, but tried to make it their own anyway.
7th July. Rio.
No miles on the bike but plenty on the feet. I wandered aimlessly as a turtle, which has some purpose but gets distracted and easily lost. The sky was clear blue all day and by 9 o'clock the temperature was in the mid-twenties. I lay out on Copacabana beach for a while, but after that just went walking. By the afternoon I had developed a nasty muscle pain in my back from the pack I was carrying, containing my guide book and camera, which stayed there all day. So I lay down and got absorbed into cable TV world, staying there until the evening and it was time to eat. Relaxing if not exactly exciting.
8th July. São João del Rei. 221 miles. Passed 28,000 trip miles.
A bit of a tough time getting out of Rio this morning, some of the road signs were a little ambiguous if you didn't already know where you were going. I was heading inland and soon hit the mountains. It was a very pleasant winding road and as I climbed higher it became noticeably cooler in the shade, a welcome relief after the coastal heat. I crossed the State border into Minas Gerais and the roads began to deteriorate, though never too bad. The only serious hold up was some road works that stretched for a few miles, otherwise the traffic was light. São João is a colonial mining town – the whole area used to have very rich mineral deposits, and lots of gold, but it has mostly gone.
The town centre is very pleasant with big, well preserved buildings lining the central streets, separated by a small stream which, from the size of the bridges crossing it, looks like it used to be much bigger. Its a slow, quiet town after Rio. I'm sitting outside an almost empty restaurant where the staff are a bit thick. They forgot my beer which I had to re-order after my pizza arrived, which was not very good either.
A typical colonila church in these parts.
9th July. São João del Rei.
Rain last night and this morning. It remained overcast all day. The town suddenly reminded me of another one I had been in before, also with a river dividing it down the middle, and in the mountains. It took me most of the day to figure out it was in Ecuador, and even then I had to check my diary for the name. Loja, which in Portuguese means 'shop'. That however was a more modern and non-descript place.
Today I took a nineteenth century steam train (though the carriages where 1930's) to Tiradentes. The lines were built in the heyday of the gold rush. It took half an hour to go 12 kms and was a great little journey. The only really modern addition to the station was a loudspeaker which blared out the theme tune to 'Chariots of Fire' as we pulled away. Tiradentes (which by the way means teeth-puller, the nickname for a local dentist who tried to start the first rebellion against the Portuguese, but was killed and became a martyr to independence) is a small colonial village which has been hardly touched by modern times. The streets in the centre are made of big rocks laid down like crazy paving on the hillsides, not even cobblestones. The most impressive feature is the main church, with an interior attesting to the rich excesses of the gold rush. The alter and surrounding statues and walls are covered in so much gold leaf that is it clear an ostentatious show of wealth, rather than any sense of taste, was the primary design influence (no photos of the interior allowed). In the graveyard however the majority of headstones tell a different story. Even some late 20th century ones are little more than homemade wooden crosses, dates and names crudely painted on by families that couldn't afford the skills of a professional.
Smoking Mary – the train to Tiradentes.
I wandered round streets where souvenir shops, bars and restaurants outnumbered tourists today, and grabbed a beer in one place with a distinctly bohemian air to it. There were pony traps ferrying people about. At first I thought it was a little hokey, even though you see the occasional working mans model, but on reflection, with the uneven surfaces they are probably very practical. The wheels however wouldn't look out of place on a Fiat Panda.
Tiradentes.
I was back in São João in the early afternoon and visited the main church here too, which has a much more low key interior by comparison, but uses the gold fairly liberally nonetheless. One the train I noticed a couple of small scale gold mining operations, panning the river. So there are still pickings to be had.
10th July. Ouro Preto. 100 miles.
A relatively short but good ride on winding country roads. The traffic was light, the sun shining and the road surface in generally good condition. Ouro Preto is even more in the hills than São João and the cobbled streets are steep and narrow. The gold rush in the sixteenth century didn't start here but this became the state capital for a long time, until the surrounding hills prevented further growth. The grand architecture and baroque, heavily gilded churches have all been preserved as a national monument. Its a bit of a tourist trap - and expensive with it – but probably deserves to be. I had trouble finding my way around at first, I don't like riding on cobbles as it is, and the steep one way streets didn't make it any easier, but in the end resorted to the tourist information office, with a good listing of all places to stay, to sort me out a room with garage. The latter being the difficult part at a reasonable price.
The martyr Tiradentes is buried here along with the dozen or so Inconfidêntes who began the rebellion. Tiradentes was hung in Rio as their leader, the others exiled to Angola, their remains only repatriated long after their deaths. There is of course a museum to them here. St. George seems to have a significant place in Portuguese culture. There was a statue of him in the museum today, and I have seen a couple of paintings I believe depicting the slaying of the dragon.
In the afternoon I just got back to my room when the skies opened, and it has been raining ever since. I have ended up in a much posher restaurant than I would otherwise have chosen, simply because I wanted to get out of the rain. There is some sort of winter festival going on here at the moment. A stage has been set up in the main square, Praça Tiradentes, and the tourist information guy said there would be Brazilian pop music on tonight. I'm wiling to be proved wrong, but I think I know Brazilians well enough now to hazard the guess that if the rain continues, no one will turn up and it will be catcalled.
I said the restaurant was quite posh – with a guitarist crooning in the corner, candles on the tables and all the customers are clearly tourists. But if I told you that my meal when it arrives includes a fried egg, sausage, beans and pork scratchings – you just wouldn't believe me.
View of Ouro Preto from hilltop church.
11th July. Ouro Preto.
We'll never know if my judgement is right or not. In the end the rain cleared and the crowds gathered. However it was after midnight before the band came on. The were an Axé outfit called As Meninas, which just means The Girls, and girl power definitely reigned, as the male musicians were kept for backing purposes only. There were three singers, a girl on sax and another three on bongos. Axé is a very high energy music, with lots of running, jumping and wiggling about being an important part of the show. Its kind of a mix of samba, two tone and reggae, on speed. Fun when played well, and these girls were good, but a little bit relentlessly cheery. There were a couple of songs I recognised from the radio but it was much too fast for me to really understand the lyrics. I left about 2am when it was still in full swing with no indication of ever letting up.
Today was a very lazy one, wandering around town a little in the morning – which is pretty knackering with all the hills, but the weather was overcast and a bit miserable. Compared to yesterday there were very few people about. In the afternoon I worked on this installment of the website, then there was a football game on TV – Brazil v. Costa Rica in the Copa America, which Brazil won easily 4-1.
Its evening now and I'm just sitting in a quiet bar. Earlier on they were packing down the lights and sound systems on the stage, so I assumed it was all over, but as I walked past a few minutes ago there was a low key show going on, a female singer with a single guitarist, very much in the ballad mode. There are drum kits set up though, so maybe it will get more energetic later.
There is a strange guy walking around. I noticed him yesterday as well, wearing some sort of costume, like a poor imitation of a chain mail suit made from what looks like the bottoms of aluminium drinks cans. He doesn't look like a crazy, but nor does he act like a street performer. He just walks around. Everybody seems to ignore him.
12th July. Mariana. 10 miles.
Its got to be the shortest ride to change locations I have made. I came here to visit a gold mine, but it was very disappointing. The best part was the ride down on a cart, winched up and down on rails by a cable. I got unwittingly tagged onto the back of some big school group of teenagers, but it wouldn't have made any difference in a small group. It was basically a short stroll through a tunnel-come-cavern with a lake that was more of a pond at one end. After the Potosi silver mines, I was not impressed. The only real echo of that experience was that I ran into some French people. It was all very tame.
Mariana is much smaller and less hilly than Ouro Preto. There is little to see and I'm really just marking time here.
Last night, going back to the Pousada after dinner, the music had been replaced by a group of street performers, acting out some sort of play. About what I have no idea, especially as I only caught the end of it, but it was clearly quite funny. Tonight the same people are here to a smaller crowd in Mariana.
The Pelourinho in Mariana. A monument to justice, but it still has the manacles where slaves were tied and whipped.
13th July. Belo Horizante. 85 miles.
Another short ride to the modern capital of Minas Gerais. The main reason for coming here is that I have a free bed for the night, courtesy of Andrei and Paula. Andrei is Vanessa's cousin and I also met them before in London, and last time I was in São Paulo. I arrived at lunch time and Andrei used his lunch break to collect me on his bike, a Honda 250, and lead me back to their flat, after which he had to rush off again, back to work.
I spent the afternoon wandering around the city centre. Its much more relaxed than either São Paulo or Rio, a modern, planned and wealthy city. I imagine it is a nice place to live if not exactly exciting. I watched a bunch of old boys playing draughts in the central square. I also walked past a sports store, that had a whole load of guns on display as well, not just hunting rifles but hand guns, including a semi automatic. Not something you see on your average English high street.
In the evening when Paula and Andrei came back from work we all went out to a chopp house, got drunk, and Andrei and I (Paula speaks little English) talked mostly about football and my trip.
Earlier in the day, before arriving in BH I stopped off by a lake called, Lagoa dos Ingleses, and a town called Alphaville, though I later learnt it was more of an extended condominium complex. A very strange place. Wide, empty streets; Avenida Princess Diana was bisected by Avenida Wimbledon. It looked brand new and almost totally unused, all of it. A big office building with a few cars that looked more like they were there for display purposes rather than for actual employees; a big business hotel; an empty shopping mall, those shops that were not just shells were closed and dark. Totally different to anything else I had seen here in Brazil. It was like a ghost town in reverse, one that hadn't been born yet.
I had stopped to buy a phone card to call Andrei. I was unsuccessful but as I was preparing to leave, the first person I had seen apart from a statue-esque security guard approached me. He was interested in where I was from , and began asking me questions in Portuguese, which I mostly understood. How long had I been travelling for? Did I like Brazil? What was my profession? What did I think of Tony Blair and the war? I answered falteringly, but I think getting my point across. He then called his daughter on his mobile, she worked nearby and spoke English, was a civil engineer. She arrived a few minutes later, and he then asked her to translate his questions again, and my answers, which this time were a bit more detailed. New questions came and by now a few others had joined us, maybe half a dozen curious people were gathered around the bike. Football questions (inevitably); What do my parents do? What was my religion? To this I replied that all I believe in are my motorbike and the road. It got a laugh and the guy said that he had been told the same thing by a German once, and as a result seemed to have decided that Germans (and now presumably the English) were all godless heathens.
Am I married? Have children? What do I think of Brazilian women? The daughter who was probably in her mid twenties and very attractive, was clearly a bit embarrassed to ask this last one in particular, but did so faithfully, even though I didn't need it. Then it was quickly over, curiosity was satisfied. They moved away to let me leave, but remained huddled in a group not ten feet away and waved me off.
This was not a unique experience, particularly in Brazil where people are naturally friendly and rarely shy about approaching me, but it felt somewhat surreal nonetheless. Perhaps because of the deserted surroundings, perhaps because though I usually get two or three of these questions (and they are usually the same ones) but not all together and fired in such quick succession, with little sense of any links or reason behind them. It was like being faced down by an interview panel.
14th July. Diamantina. 200 miles.
I got up this morning in time to say goodbye to Andrei before he went to work. Last night they had insisted my bike would be safer parked at Andrei's grandmother's house a couple of miles away (though I thought their own apartment parking was safe enough) and Paula, who was not working this morning, drove me over there. I was on the road by ten and out of the city heading north, further into the interior. It was a big, busy road at first but as I got off the main route it quietened down. I was heading into drier, higher territory and the lush green gave way to brown scrub and bare outcrops of rock, the first time I can recall seeing such a landscape here. Thought the mountains are everywhere I was used to them being covered in dense forest. This was like the Penines, only warmer, though with a wind and cloud not hot. Trees were sparse and stunted.
It was a good ride, my longest in a few days. Very enjoyable and the main purpose for my trip here. Diamantina is another of the historical cities in these parts, and as the name suggests here it was, and apparently still is in a small way, diamonds. Its also the birthplace of Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who built Brasilia, and something of a folk hero due to his humble beginnings. According to my guide book his former home is now a shrine to him, but though it was marked on the map I got from the Pousada I am staying in, I couldn't find it. On the site where it should have been was a sports centre. Kubitschek died in a car accident during the years of military dictatorship, so of course there are still people who believe it was no accident at all.
View over Diamanitina.
15th July. Guarapari. 489 miles. Passed 29,000 trip miles.
I was up early expecting a long day, but not quite the 12 hours of almost non-stop riding that it turned out to be. The first couple of hours was good road through hills and I made some great time. I was on back roads through open countryside and occasional small towns – Serro, Sabinopolis, Guanhães, Virginopolis, but I got lost at one point following a dirt road and had to turn back. Then in the next town there were no signs, and I had to ask 3 or 4 times before I got on the right road. Then somewhere I missed a turning that would have taken me on another dirt road, but a more direct route to the main highway. This left me for a long time on a very heavily pot-holed road that slowed me down considerably for a couple of hours. I couldn't stop because I had to to to Guarapari to meet up with Vanessa and the boys, with Steve also flying in for the weekend.
By the time I hit the main highway and could make more speed it was getting very hot, I knew the damage was done and I would not get there before dark. I thought about calling ahead but didn't. By the time it began to get dark I was still up high enough to feel a chill, so stopped to zip everything up (during the heat of the day I generally let as much air as possible into my jacket to keep cool). Again I almost called ahead but decided to just keep going thinking it wouldn't take me much longer. For about half an hour I had to cope with a light mist in that not-quite-dark-enough light, making it difficult to see and again I was forced to slow right down, being much more cautious than all the cars that zipped past me. However approaching the coast it cleared up and also got warmer again as I dropped out of the hills.
The final delay was a huge traffic jam caused by a convoy of extra wide trucks carrying what looked like sections of a bridge. Before this I came across this convoy I was wondering why the trees overhanging the road were heavily beaten up, with lots of branches and foliage on the tarmac, because the loads on the open bed lorries were much taller than the usual goods traffic. I was at least luckier than traffic coming the other way, which was completely blocked off – they were in for a very long night.
So I eventually pulled into Guarapari after 8pm, though luckily the flat was relatively easy to find, right on the beach front. I was exhausted but greeted by a whole group itching for my arrival so we could head out. I just had time for a quick shower before being bundled into a car. There was Serginho a dance instructor Vanessa works with in São Paulo, his girlfriend Priscilla, Roseanne an old friend of Vanessa's I had met before in Rio on my last visit, and we also picked up another girl, Josey.
We stopped at a beach kiosk (spelt quiosque, but pronounced the same, now try saying “ouisqui”) for some snack food, then drove to the airport to pick up Steve. It was now around 11pm, so we went straight to a night club complex. It was a closed courtyard with a number of different bars and themed restaurants, but all working together (or singly owned) so that you can move around, build up a tab on a slip of card, and just pay once when you leave. This card-tab system is very common in bars here, and seems to work very well, at least preventing queues at the bars. We left sometime after two I believe, an early night by Brazilian standards.
16 July. Guarapari.
Okay, so its a beach resort, near the city of Vitoria. Vanessa's mother, Regina and her partner Jacques have a weekend flat that we are all staying in, its a little packed. Its hot and sunny so we spend the morning on the beach. The boys are having surfing lessons, and are very good, very light on the boards which I am sure makes it a bit easier. I would have had a go myself, but the surf was really too small for a full sized gordo.
Lunchtime we went out to a seafood restaurant and with some very strong caipirinhas whiled away the afternoon. We went out for dinner around 9 pm, Alex came with us as a bit if a treat (Cris was already asleep). Earlier in the day while playing a card game, I had broken a jinx (Steve had taught them how it worked, and they find it very funny but are not very good at it). Alex decided that my punishment for this at dinner was to drink a whole caipirinha down in one (not easy, but not entirely unpleasant) and then eat a couple of very hot red chillies, but he was disappointed by my lack of serious reaction. I had a very good stuffed crab thing with a side order of chips.
Alex was taken home and we went out again. At first to a dance bar, but it was a terrible place, a bunch of weird looking old people, no atmosphere and a strange looking guy playing keyboards and singing, both badly. The Brazilians would have stayed because they will dance to almost anything, but at Steve's insistence we left. In the end we found another much better bar with a live band playing Brazilian rock. I got drunk and jumped around, singing along even worse than usual because I only knew a couple of words from the chorus of a couple of songs.
17th July. Guarapari
Today we had a churrasco party for Alex's birthday. Lots of people, meat and beer from 12 through most of the afternoon. It was hot and sunny but by the evening the clouds had gathered and it started raining. We went out to another club complex to see a tribute band to Urban Legion, a big Brazilian pop-rock band of the eighties, whose lead singer died of AIDS. They were playing in an open courtyard, but with a giant tented roof, that did nothing to protect us. The rain poured down and the wind picked up as the band got into their set. We were all getting wet, the courtyard was filling with ever bigger and deeper puddles. The crowd started getting smaller as people fled for the cover of the surrounding bars. We stuck it out, I started jumping seriously into the puddles as I was wet anyway, but in the end even the band gave up. So for the rest of the night we went around the various bars with different music. Vanessa, Roseanne, and Josey all got very drunk and ended up being sick in the toilet of a pizza place, emerging out to great rounds of applause of course. Got to bed sometime after four.
An almost perfect sky.
18th July. Vitoria. 29 miles.
Raining again this morning. Sat around the flat playing cards with Steve and the boys, then packed up the flat and moved over to Vitoria, first to Regina and Jacques home to drop off my bike, then I got into an already very crowded car, to go to another BBQ, and another birthday. That of Luis Carlos, one of Jacques many sons. They are a great family and it was a fun afternoon despite the rain. I talked Portuguese as much as I could, but most of them knew English as well, so we swapped as necessary, mostly talking in English. There was a live band and a bunch of Japanese guys who stuck to stereotype and got into some karaoke for a while.
Later Rosanne, Serginho and Priscilla were all dropped off at the bus station. Steve, Vanessa and I went out for dinner then took Steve back to the airport for his return flight to São Paulo. One f the funny things about Vanessa is, when she is in charge, that she never fully fills me in one the whole picture. Often in São Paulo it was – lets go – and we would go out to something that had clearly been planned, but I would know little about it before hand. To make things interesting I tried to get into the habit of not asking too many questions, just going with the flow. Anyway, here we are sleeping not in Regina and Jacques house in Villa Velha, where both the boys and my bike are, but in Regina's own flat here in Vitoria, which spends most of the time empty. There is an awful lot of property in this family. I have now idea how wealthy they are, but they are. There are at least two more houses, one of which will become the dental business when it starts. The point is I don't know why we are here and not at the house with the others, there seems to be plenty of room. My guess is that there wouldn't be quite enough room for me without using a sofa, and Vanessa would think it impolite to leave me in the flat on my own, as well as impractical.
19th July. Vitoria
Vanessa and I spend the morning today trying to sort out my paperwork. I need to extend both my visa and my bike permit to get all the up to the Amazon. In São Paulo we were told it could be done when I have less than 30 days left. Here we are told, after some toing and froing, that I have to wait until seven days before the expiry of my visa, and can only do the bike permit at the same time so the expiry dates match. Apparently there are different laws in different states, which seems crazy to me for what is after all an immigration issue. I can sort it out in almost any major city, but its just going to be harder doing it on my own.
I'm also on the lookout for a new rear tyre and we stop at one shop we see, but they have nothing in my size – even my bike is lardy. The rest of the day is pretty much wasted. Guillerme, one of Vanessa's cousins, who I was supposed to have seen in Belo Horizante, turns up in the afternoon. I had met him before in London. In the evening Vanessa and I go for a few drinks and a snack dinner. Its still raining.
20th July. Vitoria.
My original plan had been to leave today, but it was changed for 3 reasons. One my clothes were washed yesterday and were still not dry this morning. Two Guillerme had suggested that we go out for some beers today if I was still around. Three it is still raining.
I laze around playing games with the boys, but generally doing nothing. The problem with Brazil is that its an outdoor culture, and when its raining your kind of stuck. In the end we don't go out with Guillerme because he is going to the birthday of another family member that Vanessa is not talking to at the moment. It all seems very complicated. Instead she and Alex take me to the shopping centre for a new and very interesting culinary experience. DIY Italian. You choose the type of pasta you want, the sauce, and then up to eight other ingredients from a range of about 30. Then its all thrown together in front of you. Its a good idea for fast food and I think it would do well back home too.