Northern Brazil and the Amazon. 15th August - 7th September.
15th August. Teresina. 406 miles.
I got up early this morning ans went out to the cash machines on foot before breakfast. I tried another bank, which wouldn't accept my card, then a cash machine at a petrol station that would have but was switched off. This was getting annoying. After some breakfast I rode around the city and eventuallyfound one outside a shopping centre, by which time I had lost half the morning.
Finally getting under way I was heading west and inland all day. Rocky hills rode out of scrub covered plains. Parts of the road were badly pot holed and the going was sometimes slow. I arrived in Teresina just as it was getting dark and had a lot of difficulty finding somewhere to stay. For some unknown reason the town seems to be full of hospitals and specialist medical clinics. I eventually find a place, expensive but comfortable. I was very tired and not the least bit hungry, so I skipped dinner.
16th August. São Luis. 315 miles. Passed 32,000 trip miles.
This morning I got moving without any delays. It was sunny and hot all day and despite drnking lots of water I felt almost constantly thirsty and dehydrated.
Arriving in São Luis I was supposed to make contact with Rosane, another friend of Vanessa's with an offer to stay at hee place and leave my bike while I go up river. I hunted round for a shopping centre to call from, so I could also get out of the heat. She wasn't in but I was told she would be about nine tonight, so I played safe and booked into a hotel.
I wanted to check with Vanessa that she had warned Rosane about my arrival. Brazil's phone system is not easy to figure out at the best of times, especially long distance, and it doesn't help when the hotel staff were feeding me incomplete information. Three trips to reception, one to an outside payphone which at least had good instructions, and half an hour trying to figure out what the various noises coming from the phone meant (busy or unobtainable?), and I finally figured out I had to start with two zeros instead of one.
I spoke to Vanessa, she called Rosane, Steve called me back, then I phone Rosane, who almost speaks no English, less then ny Portuguese. It turns out that she doesn't live in the city but further into the interior. Where exactly I couldn't catch, in part because it was a bad line but also because the phone just makes it harder to understand people. She gave me the number of another friend who does live here and who would be able to help me – I think to explain how to find her, but I'm not sure. I tried the numer she gave me but got what I now knew to be an unobtainable signal. It was all getting very complicated, and also, I could see, time consuming with lots of back and forth calls poorly understood.
So I decided it would be easier and quicker, if not cheaper to go it alone. I talked to Vanessa again to explain and she said she would talk to Rosane. I feel like I'm being ungrateful, turning down the hospitality and offers of help from complete strangers even though at the same time I'm relieving them of the obligation to look after me. Though I know most Brazilians look on that as a pleasure rather than an obligation. But I've got use to working things out on my own when I need to, and all of this planning on my behalf, though it is for me perceived benefit, just doesn't feel right – I'm not in control. So though I do appreciate all the effort, I'm turning it down, Which makes me feel bad now, although I am sure it will pass tomorrow.
17th August. Capanema. 416 miles.
I got up early fully intending to spend a long day on the road. Breakfast this morning was extensive, the usual buffet fare but with cheese and ham ommlettes instead of scrambled egg and filezinha (little bits of steak in a sort of onion gravy) instead of sliced franfurter sausages. And lots of pão do queijo. I feasted yet still got moving by seven.
For the first two and a half to three hours I made good time, but then the road suddenly disintegrated into pot holes that slowed me and everybody else to a crawl. For over a hundred miles I barely got out of second gear. These are not your average English pot holes either, a minor inconvenience that will shortly be filled in. There were giants, the kings of pot holes a foot or more deep that swallowed practically the whole road, albeit with little strips of asphalt to either weave around them or ride across, bucking like a donkey. This was a convention of pot holes. It was much worse than there not being any asphalt at all when at least the road is often relatively flat. It is the undulations and the very unpredictability of this half (and often more) destroyed road that makes it hard work. You have to choose a path and it is easy to make a mistake. What looks insignificant from a distance suddenlty turns out to be a huge hole when it is too late to go around it.
One such hole caught me out that I hit it so hard the front forks bottomed out jarringly and the zip on my right side tank pannier broke. So it is now strapped on top of the rear box. Stoppng to sort that out I also noticed that the chain was loose – the rear wheel had clearly moved – so I pulled into the next service station to re-adjust it. While I am doing this a guy comes up and starts talking to me in very good English.
Jack it turns out lived in the US for 10 years. While there he had a honda fireblade and was interested in my journey. He also translated for a gathering group of mostly truck drivers, one of whom then pointed out that the pot holes had done more that break a zip. My front rim was slightly buckled on one side. Not enough for me to have noticed while riding, but enough I am sure to have weakened it, if only a little. At the inevitable borracharia (tyre workshop) the service station had the guy had a go at bashing it back into shape with a hammer and a piece of wood. Perhaps he makes a small improvement, it is hard to tell, but we agree the damage is minor and as long as I take things carefully I will be fine.
The main problem of course is the mental effect this episode has. Along with the wheel, my confidence in the relative indestructability of the bike has been dented. It becomes one of the growing number of niggling issues that really should be expected given the number of miles I have put on in a short space of time. I'll readily admit that this decreased confidence is a factor in the general feeling I have now that it is time to go home.
Countering this, some what surprisingly, is the town I find myself in tonight. Not where I expected to be but after the delays, where I ended up as the sun was setting. It is a reasonably sized town, maybe comparable to Leatherhead, but crucially very different from the tourist places I have been to in the last few weeks. As a result my hotel is basic but much cheaper than I have been paying. I am sitting outside a restaurant now on what appears to be the main square. Lots of people are riding around on little bikes, mostly 125s or 250s. What strikes me about the place is how relaxed and natural it all is. There is not the intensity of a tourist resort, and I like that. As I rode into the town it seemed a poor place to me, wholly unappealing, but now it seems different. This is the sort of place where Brazil's ordinary people live. They are not the poor in the cities' favelas, or the rural poor living in little more than roadside shacks. Neither are they the rich with their condominiums and security guards, and who holiday in all the resorts I have been visiting. This if you like is middle Brazil, which maybe I am really only seeing for the first time, and I like it. Maybe if it weren't such the divided society it is, more of the country would be like this. Or maybe it already is and I just have been looking in the right places.
Earlier in another place smaller than this one, I stopped for a drink and was approached by a guy who had spent a few months in Italy. He spoke no English but clearly hoped I knew some Italian so he could practice. He was being friendly and curious, also reminding me why I like this country. Its that spontaneous friendliness and offers of help that come by, that are so much more rewarding than the kind of organised hospitality that Vanessa, with all her great intentions, had set up for me.
If I were to come touring here again, knowing what I do now, I'd like to think that maybe I would avoid the beach resorts, cities and tourist centres and just spend time travelling to places like this, where Brazil really is. Although I'd hate to think that I would appear to be like one of those American tourists in small English towns going on about how quaint it all is.
18th August. Manaus. 145 miles (by bike anyway).
I woke up, had a very brief breakfast and got on the road. After about 20 miles I noticed my map was missing from the map pocket which I hadn't closed up properly. A careless mistake that is perhaps also a Freudian slip, symptomatic of my desire to go home I am unconsciously cutting off my return. Of course I went back looking for it, as far as the petrol station where I was sure I still had it, but no luck. I've actually got another one anyway. Though not as detailed it will do if I need it.
So I arrive in Belem, port city at the mouth of the Amazon, around 11 am. It is swelteringly hot and humid. I head straight for the airport. After some investigation I decide it will be relatively safe to leave the bike here for a few days, parked right outside a guard house which is manned 24 hours a day. The parking attendents were friendly and interested so that helped as well. So I buy a ticket to fly up river to Manaus, a city in the heart of the Amazon jungle. My flight unfortunately is not until the eveninghowever so there is plenty of time to kill. Though the airport is small it caters for the sport and TV obsessed Brazilians so I can at least spend some time watching olympic volleyball. I also discover that the betteries on my camera are completely flat. Unable to recharge them I have to splash out and buy some regular ones.
19th August. Manaus.
My flight was delayed an hour and I didn't get into Manaus until well after midnight. I shunned the taxis and took a bus to the centre, thereby saving myself at least 95% of the taxi fare. I checked into the nearest hotel, even if it was a bit expensive, and crashed out.
I spent most of the day today just walking round the city, organising a jungle/river trip and finding another, cheaper hotel. There is something instantly appealing to me about this place. There is a market near the docks, the main produce seemingly being bananas. There are huge piles of them, very frashly harvested, still on their main stems. The part of the dock that caters to the cargo is run down, dirty and bustling with people and boats. Its great. Though the water looks filthy there are men, boat and dock workers I assume washing themselves in it, soap and all like it was a giant bath.
The floating dock in Manaus
It is very hot and humid here (I keep saying that but it keeps getting hotter), must be well over 30 degrees in the middle of the day and not much less after dark. There is a big tax free shopping zone, packed mostly with electronic goods. This is very much a working, trading city, where tourism though, not insignificant (more gringos here than anywhere I have been in a long time, you can tell because all the tour operators speak very good English), comes in second place and fits in where it can. The cargo comes from all over the amazon basin – including Columbia, Peru and Bolivia. It has the feel of a frontier town, which in many ways it is.
There is also a grand opera house, built during the rubber boom, with a huge dome tiled in the design of the Brazilian flag. Clearly the cultural centre of the city, I am there in the early evening and some sort of musical performance is about to take place. A sax player is attracting people , though there are more insturments waiting to be played. The sax is a kind of jazzy blues and very enjoyable. In the square there are horse drawn carts, for the wealthier tourists no doubt.
The Opera House.
Clearly this is a very musical place and leaving the opera house I make my way to the Praça da Matriz, the central square with cathedral of course, and follow my ears to another performance. This one is clearly a kind of evangelical gathering, much more animated than the politely seated listeners soaking up the sax. This has real audience participation. The band sound just like The Doors with a female singer, thanks mostly to the guitarist. They are circled by a clapping crowd and in the middle a number are dancing in what is clearly a religious trance. They shuffle and stumble about, only vaguely in time to the music and seemingly lost in their fervour. Each is accompanied by a helper of the same gender, whose job appears to be to keep the dancer from falling over or into the crowd, an ever present possibility with most. One very big bloke suddenly starts up, pogoing around; another woman breaks in and starts rolling around on the pavement, to be picked up by a couple of the helpers. These helpers too just seem to be part of the crowd, the nearest person available when the dancer becomes gripped by the need to move. It is fascinating stuff and the music is very good, though of course I understand almost nothing of the lyrics. All of a sudden though it is over, the crowd rapidly disperses, and I am not much the wiser.
So I find myself in a restaurant where in the corner is a guitarist with more music, very much more traditional Brazillian MBP – which is really a kind of easy listening, folky soft jazz with a bit of a samba beat.
20th August. Somewhere in the jungle.
My pick up from the hotel was a little late but no real worries. I met Chelsea and Zhen, two American girls just arrived in Brazil, and we were taken to the docks to get on a speedboat. After picking up some supplies and some petrol – at a floating petrol station – we headed out to the meeting of the waters, where the Rio Negro and Solimões meet to become the Amazon proper. The rivers are two different colours, the Negro being black from the tannins of rotting vegetation as it is acidic, and the Solimões a sandy yellow from the mud as it is also faster flowing. The waters take several miles to mix together, partly due to the acidity, differnce in speeds and also temperature. The Solimões starts in the Andes in Peru and the Negro in the Columbian jungle basin, so the latter is much warmer. As we cross over the boundary between the two, with a hand in the water you can easily feel the instant change in temperature.
Meeting of the waters.
From there we go out to a tributory where there is a lake of Victoria Regina lillies, about 4 feet across, and a couple of well fed alligators. Then it is up river to meet with the double decker river boat that will be our home for the next few days. As well as the crew there were three Spaniards on board who had already been out a couple of days.
We go further up the Rio Negro (which is much more pleasant to explore because the acidity prevents mosquitos breeding) then stop at a little beach for swimming and lunch. Although the swimming mostly consisted of diving and bombing off the top deck . IN the afternoon we take a tributary to a small village where we transfer to a canoe. This we take up ever smaller water ways through the floating forest. The level of the water can vary by as much as 15 metres throughout the year, covering and exposing hundreds of islands and sandbanks. These are all covered in trees adapted to spending half the year partly submerged. The high water mark can clearly be seen on the trunks, but even though the water is quite high at this time of year, that is a good three or four metres above the current water level. There are more water ways open at this time of year than in the low season, but even so some of the ones we take are very narrow, with trees crowding the boat, underneath as well as to each side. We come to a stop at a little waterfall, and here we make camp for the night, just by slinging up hammocks and mosquito nets. We have a fire and barbequed chicken with rice, served on leaves with just our hands for cutlery. There is caipirinha of course, made in an ice bucket which goes round the circle and we start singing. It's one of the Spanish guys birthday, so he gets Happy Birthday in three languages. Fireflies weave in an out of the trees. Frogs make the most noise and with cicadas and various other insects it is far from a quiet night.
I got to play tarzan on a real vine.
21st August. Boa Vista - a village on the river.
I didn't get much sleep last night what with the noises of the jungle, the sticky heat and the unfamiliarity of the hammock. I mostly dozed in short light bursts with lots of vivid dreams. I think it was pretty much the same for everyone, except our guides of course. So we were all moving around soon after dawn. We packed up the camp and made our way back to the big boat for breakfast. The rest of the morngin was spent trundling up the river to the small village of Boa Vista. There we had lunch and shortly afterwards the Spanish got back on the main boat as they were heading back to Manaus, so I was wrong abour the boat being our home for a few days it seems.
In the afternoon, Chelsea, Zhen (who I discovered was born in China and emigrated to the States only when she was nine, Chelsea mentioned at one point she was of Polish descent, though a couple of generations back) and I, along with our guide Reinaldo, a good likeness to Bob Marley though all the locals called him Bin Laden as they tend to do anyone with dark skin and a beard at the moment so I'm told, took a small canoe through a few waterways, then went for a bit of a jungle trek (Wow, that was a long sentence, but its over now). Not much wildlife but we did learn a bit about the various trees, plants and their uses. We spent the night back in the village. The caipirinha was mixed again, but as neither Reinaldo nor Zhen were big drinkers (Reinaldo had a recent bout of malaria which weakens the liver, or so he claimed!), I did quite a bit of the drinking. There was another guy there wearing a Flamengo football shirt and I told him I was a fan. So (he was the village drunk and I was not wholly sober) he took it off and gave it to me. I felt the need to reciprocate, and gave him the t-shirt I was wearing, which was actually the one that Steve and Vanessa gave me for my birthday (not being ungrateful guys, I loved that shirt, it was a spur of the moment thing). Our hammocks were slung up in the bar (great), which closed when they turned off the generator for the night (not so great).
Squeezing through gaps that were hardly there at all.
22nd August. A beach on the river.
I woke up with the sun and after breakfast we took the canoe, this time with engine, out to some half submerged islands in the middle of the river, where we went fishing for piranhas, which prefer the cooler shaded waters of the floating islands. With simple bamboo poles and hooks with chinks of beef on them we tried 4 or 5 different locations, always stopping the boat within the shade of trees. Reinaldo caught two big ones, the boat driver caught the most, I managed only one medium sized one. The fish bit all the time when they are there, but to catch them you really have to react quickly to pull on the rod to get the hook in. Not exactly difficult but there is a knack to it.
Lunchtime we retire to another island with a beach and cook the fish. We swim here too but the water is very shallow and protected from the currents by a line of trees, so it is as warm as a bath and not too refreshing. In the afternoon we make our way to the other side of the river (its about 20 km wide at this point) to another village for another jungle trek. As before we pick up a local to act as our guide on the little paths through the trees, with Reinaldo acting as interpreter. We have to wear shoes and long trousers on these treks, which makes them very hot and sweaty work. We see some monkeys but quite a distance away in the trees over some water.
After we get back to the village there is a short storm. The wind blows up making the water very choppy, so we can't go anywhere until it dies down, but as soon as it does the surface immediately returns to glassy smoothness. As it gets dark we go cayman (crocodile) spotting. You can shine a torch in their eyes and it reflects back, which is how you find them. They are also hypnotised by it, so we draw up alongside one, and Reinaldo just picks it up out of the water. Its only about 18 inches long, about a year old, but full in tooth and claw.
Croc wrestling, sort of. I did wriggle a bit.
Later that evening we camp on a small beach, slinging the hammocks between trees. It is a picture of paradise. There is even a bar.
23rd August. Manaus.
It was actually a little cold during the night and I woke up with bites all over my feet which itch like crazy, which is unusual for me. Back into the boat we tried to see if we could spot a sloth, which spend most of their time in the tree tops. We covered much the same area as we had last night but though we saw monkeys, kingfishers, falcons and various other birds, there were no sloths.
We went past an expensive hotel on an island. It was made up of a sprawl of 3 or 4 storey towers on stilts all connected by wooden walkways through the forest. It didn't exactly look luxurios, but it had a heli pad, a luxury cruise boat parked out the back, and the boats ferrying the guests about were generally bigger and faster than the average. Their wakes setting our little motorised canoe rocking. We had passed the back of it last night, all lit up, and as Chelsea had mentioned at the time, it looked then like a scene from Apolacypse Now when they come across an army base in the jungle.
We then crosse the river back again to Boa Vista village for lunch and to wait for out boat back to Manaus. Another group who had been on a week long tour also showed up. They included a Canadian Sikh who loved to be the centre of attention and a couple of professional musicians from Barcelona, complete with guitar. So the journey back to Manaus was quite a lively one.
We had to shelter a while halfway back from a breaking storm that was whipping up the waves, so it was well after dark when we arrived at the city dock. We all went out for a meal together and it was a good evening.
24th August. Manaus.
I spent a little while this morning inquiring about boats back to Belem. I quickly established that they will all leave tomorros so I decided there was no need to buy a ticket in advance – there were plenty for sale by various touts around the dock and tomorrow I can check out the boats before I commit.
I spend a little time wandering round the markets, and buy a new cap as my last one blew overboard in the wind on the journey back last night. Lost to the river. I then went to the Museu do Indio, a small place run by missionaries with quite a number of artefacts from more tradtional jungle life, but it was not particularly informative. They also had some rather badly stuffed animals all with bug-eyed expressions like they just been given a good kick on the nuts.
It was bakingly hot and last night my room, which had been part of the jungle package, had only had in fan in it, which had not been sufficient. So I moved hotels again, back to the last one I had stayed in. The rest of the day was pretty much wasted.
25th August. On the river.
First thing this mornging I went to the docks and bought my ticket for the ride to Belem. Hung around in my hotel room for the last gasp of decent air conditioning for a few days, then checked out. Went to the Museu do Homen do Norte, which was much the same as the Indian Museeum, but a bit better. It has a time line for the history of the region, but only going back to the first landing by Cabral in 1500. There was an interesting legend about the invention of the hammock and how the Tucan got its beak, just like a Kipling Just So Story. I'll write it out one day.
I boarded the boat around 11.30, earlier than most, to try to get a good hammock spot, which really just means away from the toilets. Then it was just down to waiting. The boat moved docks and the bult of the passengers started arriving around one. The deck got very crowded as I soon realised that despite my best efforts to occupy as much space as possible, without appearing to deliberately do so, the nights at least are going to be very close. During the day there is some outside deck space where it is possible to escape the crowds. Along with the passengers came the wandering vendors – selling watches, sunglasses, hats, cds, and video games as well as the more obvious food and drinks.
According to my ticket the boat was supposed to sail at four, but I never had much faith in that. It was more like six when we finally cast off. All meals are included in the ticket price, plus mineral water, and dinner was a stew that by the time I got to it was more of a soup, with all the meat gone. When the sun went down the easiest way to pass the time was doze off and get as much sleep as the conditions allowed.
Packed in little cattle. Mine is the white one with turtles on it.
29th August. Belem.
Time on the river passed slowly but not entirely without event. It was difficult to get a full night's sleep in the hammock, with the effect that it was easy to spend a lot of the day dozing as well. I had a good position near a window, which meant both a cooling breeze when we were moving and a view of the river without having to get up. On the second day I also managed to get a little burnt up on the top deck, so that was another reason not to venture out too much after that.
On the evening of that day, after docking for 20 minutes or so at a small town called Juruti we stopped again after dark at a customs point. There all the foreigners had to get off and show their passports, then a whole bunch of customs officers came on board and started a search. It seemed to me to be much more than routine, as if they were looking for something in particular. It was not just luggage that got searched, very thoroughly though they passed on my small backpack, but storage areas of the boat as well, including the piles of life jackets. They confiscated a bag full of watches but it was difficult to see if they arrested anybody for that as well. Even so I don't think this is what they were after. With Manaus as a major distribution centre for cargo from Peru, Columbia and Bolivia you have to suspect drugs, but I'll never know. Whatever it was I got the distinct impression that they let us go dissatisfied with their meagre haul.
About 3.30 in the morning of the third day, Friday, we docked in Santarem, the Amazon's third city after Manaus and Belem, about halfway between the two, but not a big place really. We spent the whole day there, with both people and cargogetting off and coming aboard, though the net effect was, thankfully, a few less people in my paricular area. I stretched my legs a bit, for an hour or so in the morning, but even at nine o'clock the heat was unrelenting and there was not much to see beyond the docks. So I spent most of the day on the boat trying, and failing, to stay cool. We cast off about five and the accompanying breeze brought welcome relief.
Mobile petrol station in Santerem.
The food on the boat, was ample if repetitive. Breakfast was coffee, or for me hot sweet milk (they serve it that way) and buttered rolls. Lunch and dinner were essentially the same – rice, spaghetti, farofa (dried, ground manioc root) with either chicken or beef. Sometimes dry, sometime with a stew and sometimes with some green salsa for vegetables. Sometimes there was also watermelon.
Most of the time there was not an awful lot to see beyond trees on either bank and the occasional isolated buildings suggesting villages deeper in the forest. Every so often, if I was looking in the right direction I'd catch sight of a dolphin just breaking the surface. Most were grey but I am sure that one or two were of the pink variety that are sometimes called Ingleses.
On Saturday afternoon we went along a narrow channel that was quite heavily populated, for the region. Lying in my hammock I could see these little canoes coming out towards the boat as we passed and wondering what was going on I got up to investigate. There were two ditinct types in these canoes. The first were women with one or two very small children, or sometimes just children, and by that I mean easily less than ten years old, they are practically raised in these boats after all. These were looking for hand outs, which I discovered people were throwing overboard for them. Mostly I think clothes wrapped in platic bags so they would float.
River traders tied up along side.
The second sort were traders but even then mostly teenagers rather than adults. They would row right up close to the boat then hook the big tyres used as bumpers with a long metal rod. Then they would haul the canoe in and tie it up so the bow was right up out of the water and just the stern trailed in the river, often gettgin swamped. Then they would start selling their wares. The first one had cooked shrimp which seemed to go down well, others had bananas, plam hearts (sometimes an expensive delicacy) cocomuts and other stuff I didn't recognise. They were mostly paid in cash but got a few gifts as well. At one time there were as many as six canoes tied up. As the sun came down there was a brief but intense rain storm including lightening which made quite a spectacular end to the day.
I woke up this morning to find we were in a major channel so wide at times you couldn't see the far bank. The real mouth of the river is some 200 miles wide and, a little factoid, someone seems to have calculated that enough water flows out into the ocean every day to supply New York City with all its water for ten years. For a while all that water got very choppy, more like the open sea, and I have to confess to feeling a little seasick for a while. The best cure I found was to return to my trusty hammock, which despite swaying irregularly and sometimes quite wildly, was was nevertheless more relaxing on my stomache than standing on deck.
We pulled into Belem around midday though not at the main dock my guidebook had told me to expect to arrive at. I could see that the centre was not far away so decided to walk, against the advice of all the taxi drivers waiting alongside the boat. With the result that I ended up walking a mile or so through what was clearly a waterfront favela, but though I was on guard at no point did I feel threatened. I stood out in this neighbourhood like the proverbial sore thumb, but people barely gave me a second glance.
It being Sunday a lot of the city outside the favela seems deserted. My initial plan was to find a hotel with parking then go to the airport to fetch my bike. I walked around for a bit with no luck then came upon one of the main city squares which was bustling with people. Almost immediately I was asked, clearly by a passerby rather than a professional tourist hunter, but in very good english, if I needed help. I explained my situation and they tried to help, even driving me to the one place they could think of. But being Brazilians of course they only knew the best places, and it was well out of my price range. So I changed tactics and decided to leave the bike at the airport for another night and just checked in to a cheap place near the market and close to the waterfront. Not entirely surprisingly, while on foot later, I found two perfectly good looking (ie probably acceptable price) hotels with parking right round the corner from where I was when my helpers first stopped for me.
The market area is mostly deserted now, again it being Sunday and this is largely a working part of the city, so as I go out in the evening I see no reason to take my camera. So what happens? I go along to a gentrified part of the waterfront where I not only see some kind of clown act performing for a crowd, but while I am sitting down with a beer a costumed procession goes by, complete with giant papier mache heads and pantomime bull, with brass band accompaniment.
There is a micro brewery here so I stop to sample their wares. They are of course called Amazon beers, and the blakc one turn out to be quite a good stout. To compensate for this and the last few carbohydrate heavy days I have a shrimp salad for dinner, and although it is huge, it is also 95% lettuce. Tasty nevertheless with some slices of mango thrown in.
30th August. Governador Nunes Freire. 222 miles.
I woke up early this morning and took a walk round the market before breakfast. All varierties of fresh fish, açai berries, vegetables, fruit and coconuts, but at this time it was mostly the fish from the night's catch, being sold wholesale in huge wooden boxes balanced on heads. One was so big it took two to carry it.
View over Belem 'Ver-o-Peso' (see the weight) market from the roof of my hotel.
I caught the bus to the airport and was happy to find the bike just as I left it. At the airport I was able to fax off my customs document to the shipping agent so they could begin work on the apparently complicated task of clearing my bike to leave the country. I also picked up a new road map. Then I decided there was no need to spend another night in Belem and got out of the city, backtracking on the road back to Fortaleza. It was a relatively uneventful journey, aside from getting pulled over by the police for a document check – the first time that has happened in a long time. They were perfectly friendly though.
By early afternoon I was feeling very hot and tired. I stopped here just short of the long pot holed section I remebered, and this time was marked on my new map. It is a very small town, barely a couple of blocks deep either side of the main road by the look of it, and a very cheap hotel. It turned out I stopped just in time for two reasons. First it started raining soon after I had parked in the garage, and second because a serious bout of diarrhea decided to start up. I was a little sick along with it and as a result have kept pretty much in my room. I just went out briefly to get some water and pick up a packet of crisps, which did not stay down. I don't know if it was the salad last night or breakfast this morning – bread, eggs and watermelon. Either way with rough toilet paper and a toilet that doesn't flush well, its a pretty miserable end to the day. At least I am getting some desperately needed laundry done.
31st August. Outside Caixas. 297 miles. Passed 33,000 trip miles.
No real improvement this morning and I thought about staying put for the day. The lady of the house however gave me some kind of herbal infusion that seemed to do the trick , at least temporarily. Still I had to wait for my clothes to dry so it was nearly eleven before I got moving.
I don't know if it was because I was expecting it, or my memory had buiolt up the difficulties, but the road didn't seem as bad as it had been on the journey out. Still it took me four hours to cover 120 miles, and for about half that distance I was reduced to an average of 20 miles an hour. In the early afternoon I came to a fork in the road where I had to make a choice. Take a longer, faster route, or a more direct road that according to a bloke at a service station was full of more potholes. As the former was one I had already been on, I chose the latter. A good decisionbecuase it wasn't as bad as the guy had made out. I also found myself behind a local biker for the worsdt bits, so assuming he knew the best routes to take round the holes, I played follow the leader with him. Then after a petrol stop I suddenly hit brand new road and made good time. Still, even driving after sunset I didn't get as far as I had wanted to. With lightening flshing in the clouds ahead I pulled into an isolated and run down little pousada. My stomache was playing up again, the herbal tea had obviously worn off. I tried to eat something , but despite having had only a couple of dry bread rolls at breakfastI was not hungry, and very tired.
I turned in early but got a fiarly sleepless night. The room was crawling with bugs, some of the biting variety, the trucks rushed past all night, and the storm arrived with gusto. From the sound I reckon there was even a short burst of hail. The little bathroom had a single layer of tiles for a roof and no ceiling and at one point the rain was heavy enough to give me a light indoor shower in there.
1st September. Teresina. 75 miles.
I was awake early anyway to quickly got moving, skipping anybreakfast option there might have been. When I got here fiarly early in the morning I managed to get a lot of things done pretty quickly. Money from the bank; a new front tyre, long overdue, from the Yamaha dealer; and a post office for my last postcards to Auntie Pam. Most of this was aided by some very helpful police officers who pulled me over to look at my papers as I arrived in town. The second time in three days. The Brazilian police have a bad reputation in the biker community, but in my experience it is largely undeserved.
I hadn't intended to stay here but the other thing that I really needed was to check my email for confirmation that my fax had arrived okay on Monday. I had none and despite sending off another email got no reply. I decided I needed to stay and wait as I was unlikely to find any more internet access in the next few days and if something had gone wrong and the fax hadn't arrived, I need to know so I can re-send it and not suffer a long wait in Fortaleza.
I found a much more reasonable hotel than the last time I had stopped here (actually right opposite the internet house). My stomache is still not good and despite eating only one sandwhich all day, which I didn't even finish, I am not hungry tonight so trying to catch up on the web site stuff, so I can at least be in a position to post it all before I get home.
2nd September. Parque Nacional de Sete Cidadades. 122 miles. Now 40,000 miles on the bike in total.
I wasted a lot of the morning today waiting fro the email but it never came. Frustrating but there is no point in hangin around any longer. If it comes down to it I will just have to sort everything out myself when I get to Fortaleza at the beginning of next week. So I left Teresina at midday and it was a fiarly uneventful ride along straight, flat, easy road. I had clearly passed the park going in the opposite direction but ignored it then. Reading about it in the guide book however I decided it was worth a visit.
Leaving the main road I took a hard packed dirt one to the park entrance. I was a little late to view the sights as it closed as five, so I cam straight to the little hotel a further five miles into the park on a narrow gravel track. I think I am their only guest and I spent most of the remainer of the afternoon and evening just catching up with the web site (it is well behind the note book still).
Its evening now and I'm sitting alone in the restaurant with a beer, waiting for my food and listening to the cicadas. Plus I think those are bats I've just seen flitting about in the trees. Dinner by the way is caldo de carne, practically oxtail soup, and chips.
3rd September. Jericoacoara. 231 miles.
So I got up fairly early this morngin and after a light breakfast went to the park visitor's centre. There I discovered that I could go round by bike or walk, but either way I would have to pay for the services of a guide. So I cleared the pillion seat by leaving some stuff in the centre, and Hugo jumped on the back. The Sete Cidades (seven cities) are a series of rck formations given names according to their appearance. So there is the tortoise, the elephant, kissing lizards, Arc de Triumph, map of Brazil etc. Some look so deliberate that it was once thought they hade been carved rather than be formed by entirely natural processes. Some of the rocks have ancient paintings on them, theories of their origin even include the Phonecians and Vikings, but local tribes are deemed more likely. They include human figures, geometric patterns and hand prints – one appearing to have been made by someone with six fingers. I only had the short version of the tour which took a couple of hours or so, following a series of gravel tracks.
The Kissing Lizards.
Map of Brazil.
There was one that even looked exactly like my bike. The Dragon is in the background.
A panorama of the park.
By eleven or so I was back on the main road. Just after the town of Sobral I turned off to head north for the coast and Jericoacoara. Jeri, as it is more familiarly known is famout throughout Brazil. An isolated beach surrounded by a preserve of enormous sand dunes. Its relatively low key atmosphere is maintained by the fact that there are no defined roads in or out.
I rode into the village of Jijoca, end of the asphalt, and was immediately mobbed by, mostly self-appointed, guides. My book specifically says that you can't get to Jeri by bike without some expertise on desert conditions. The guides begged to differ and offered to lead me on their little 125's. I was tempted but in the end decided against it. My bike probably weighs three times as much as any one of theirs, which makes for a huge difference in handling that they simply can't appreciate. So I stuck to my original plan, which was to park up and cath a lif in a 4WD. After some time and effort, plus a lot of help from English speaking Mauro, I managed both for less that the motorcycle guides were charging.
The ride in convinced me that I had made the right choice. Though there were clearly well used tracks they were still pretty soft in places. I'm sure I could have made it, but it would have been hard work, I would almost certainly have come off more than once, and would have taken longer than the truck.
Jeri is a pretty cool place, all one and two storey buildings with streets of sand. The most common car is the beach buggy. The wind is quite strong most of the time so wind and kite surfing are big here. I asked about kitesurfing lessons, but was told it would take 4 days of tuition and cost around $200. I had neither the time nor the money for it, having decided to only stay a couple of nights.
Though It has a low key feel to it now, I fear for the future of this place. Since my guidebook was written it has been hookled up to the national grid and there are at least three internet cafes (so I could unexpectedly get confirmation that all was going well on the customs front). Someday soon someone will decide that what it really needs is a proper access road, and then maybe they should at least cobble the main streets. Then the high rises will come and all will be lost, except the promise of what the place once was drawing the crowds. I hope not but its almost inevitable that the profit potential will eventually outweigh any concerns about preservation. So get here soon folks.
Jericoacoara, nestled amongst the dunes.
4th September. Jericoacoara.
I had a relaxing day walking, lying on the beach and swimming a little. The wind blew pretty hard all day taking the edge off the hear, but making it very sandy to boot. As the day drew to a close I, along with almost everybody else, climed to the top of the biggest dune right at the high tide level, called the Portal do Sol, to watch the sunset. It was big and steep enough for sandboarding although it looked like only a couple of the local experts, rather than the tourists, were having a go.
Sun worshippers wishing their god goodnight.
And this is what we saw.
As the light was dying I went back down to the beach for what turned out to be an excellent capoeira display. Despite the fact that it was getting very difficult to see, two or three of them were moving very fast and coming very close together.
Yesterday I only had a little breakfast and today just some bread first thing this morning as my stomache is still playing up. However this evening my appetite has returned with a vengenance for the first time in days. I took this to be a good sign and so am having steak with what amount to all the trimmings in Brazil. My only real complaint being that it was served with indecent speed to all have been freshly prepared. The only thing they were slow about was bringing my change.
5th September. Fortaleza. 193 miles.
A slow start this morning. I spoke to a guy about getting a lift back to Jijoca around ten and agreed to meet him again at midday. In the end I was a little early and he easn't there, but I walked past a truck clearly about to head off, and he gave me a lift back for five reis – half what I paid on the way out, and the same price as the bus which didn't leave until two.
So I made it back to Jijoca in good time and was soon back on my bike again. I took a series of side roads to avoid the pot holed section of the main road, and on the way decided I might as well head all the way back to Fortaleza. So I arrived around sunset and checked into the same hotel as I had before.
And that is about it for the journey. I have a few days to wait here before my bike can leave, then as soon as it does I'll follow.
7th September.
Today was Brazil's Independence day. I saw a small flag raising ceremony in the morning but the main event seems to have been a parade along the beach road in the afternoon. Of course I knew nothing about it until I stumbled on it already in progress. I think its the first time I've seen an independence parade up close. What I saw of it was overwhelmingly military, which is kind of ironic considering they actually didn't really have to do much fighting. Unlike Spain who forced most of the other South American countries to fight for their freedom, Portugal pretty much handed over the keys without a fuss.
There was an enormous array of uniforms on display. The strangest thing was when a troup of what could have been SAS soldiers marched past. Dressed all in black, big knives strapped to thighs, machine guns looking all to ready to fire, and balaclavas covering all but their eyes. The crowd cheered them more thany any other group. Especially weird because they were marching with the Policia Militar, which in reality are just the local uniformed police, and not the armed forces. It all could have been a bit more sinister except for one thing. The way they all marched was like something straight out of the Ministry of Silly Walks. An exagerated, knee raised parody of a march, and almost everyone was doing it. The main exception was the women in skirts that prevented them from lifting their knees up too high. Once or twice I had to laugh out loud which I am sure got me some funny looks.
What I did find a little disturbing was the large numbers of children and teenagers belonging to various groups that had them dressed up in quasi-military style. I'm including the scouts but also a range of what I can only assume were military schools of one sort or another. I couldn't help thinking they were being trained to follow orders and obey authority unquestioningly. A liitle bit too Hitler Youth for my liking. I do have a very strong anti-authority streak though so maybe its just me.
And thats it. I'm just waiting now to ship home. After being away for a little over ten months I am actually looking forward to it, which surprises me. I don't expect much more of interest to happen so this is the end.