Uruguay 19th March – São Paulo, Brazil 3rd April 2004
19th March. Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Forgot to note the mileage today, maybe around 150.
I stop off at Dakar Motos this morning to pay for the work and say goodbye. Sandra says she hates this time of year as all the travellers are leaving. In a few days only Pete will be left, waiting for his bike to be fixed so he can ship it to Vladivostok for the next leg of his trip, across the Russian steppe.
Jason and I are heading in the same direction and will catch up with Maarten in a few days time, who left BA on Monday. We head west and north through the delta of the Rio Plate, managing to avoid the police who are notorious in this area for stopping bikers and trying to extract money out of them with bogus fines.
A long bridge over the Rio Uruguay and we cross the border. There is a Canadian family there trying to take an Argentinian hire car into Uruguay. The teenage daughter speaks a little Spanish but they are having trouble with customs so I help out. It turns out they did not tell the car company they wanted to cross the border, so have no permission documents and no idea that they need them. I explain that what the customs guy is asking for is perfectly normal. It looks like they will have to turn back but I get out of there before I get too involved in the problem.
Uruguay is about the size of England and Wales (i.e. Small by South American standards) with a population of about 3 million, half of which live in Montevideo. The landscape changes immediately from flat to rolling hills. The country side is pretty empty, the majority being given over to farming, but there are trees, bushes and birds, so its nothing like Patagonia, maybe its a bit like rural Sussex, only warmer.
We reach Colonia in the late afternoon and head for the campsite to discover that Maarten was here too a few days ago. Its a beach resort but now is the end of the season so its very quiet. Dinner is a cool little jazz restaurant with no other customers, but I think the guy on the keyboards is also the chef. As we arrive he stops playing and only reappears after our food has been served.
20th March. Montevideo. 120 miles. 30,000 miles on the bike.
Having breakfast outside a cafe this morning a guy on another table asks me where I am from. Jason is inside , the bikes are just on the street. The bloke opens up a metal brief case and I think he is going to try and sell me something, instead he gives me his business card and pulls out a tape recorder. The card is for a local radio station, and he starts interviewing me – where have I been, how long for, what's my favourite country. All in Spanish. So sometime soon my stumbling ums and ers will be heard over the Uruguayan airwaves. How cool is that? And I'll never get to hear it.
Its a short ride to Montevideo, a tiny place compared to Buenos Aires. Uruguayans are very friendly and helpful. Near the centre we stop to consult guidebooks and maps, and immediately someone walks up speaking excellent English, and gives us directions to where we need to be. They love to talk though so its very difficult to do anything quickly.
Montevideo is a very tranquil city. Its Saturday afternoon and the streets are very quiet, though not deserted. There are lots of very old cars here as well, like from the 30's through to the 50's, and not show cars either, just for everyday use. I think it was like Cuba for a while, no cars were allowed to be imported, so people just had to keep their old ones going.
Central Montevideo.
We wander around for a while and get hungry so stop at a restaurant for a very late lunch. I want something light so order a ceasar salad, but end up with a huge plate of chicken, cheese and lettuce. Its very good but too much, especially when I top it off with a chocolate desert.
Later in the evening we go out for beers and end up in a games hall, with ten pin bowling where the pins are on the end of strings and the balls chipped so they roll badly; the light above the table football keeps going out; and the air hockey has blocked air jets. Its great fun though and we get very loud and boisterous, I'm sure annoying the management and other customers who all seem very reserved. They have a cool football video game where you kick a real football attached by a sensor arm, to pass and shoot on the screen.
21st March. La Paloma. 176 miles.
Its an uneventful morning. We stop at Punta del Este for a seafood lunch. It was a recommended overnight stop but its a very expensive beach resort and closing down for the winter anyway. At the campsite at La Paloma we catch up with Maarten and in the evening go to the cinema to see Matrix Revolutions. Its a tiny theatre, only opens up for the film and there are no more than half a dozen people to watch it. They've got a couple of old English projectors on display from the 30's, but I'm not sure the one they are using is much more modern. The sound disappears a couple of times and the picture is not exactly digital quality. The sound system is a pair of speakers just sitting on the floor either side of the screen. Maarten is trying to buy a t-shirt with the Uruguayan flag, he has collected one from each country he has visited, but he thinks they are over charging here and gives us his views on the damage it does to the local economy when tourists push up prices.
22nd March. São Lourenço do Sul, Brazil. 316 miles.
We pack up camp this morning and ride up to the Brazilian border at Chuy. Leaving Uruguay the woman at immigration insists that Jason and I should have had a piece of paper given to us at the border. Maarten has one but we were not given it. The woman insists that this is impossible and the we must have lost it, and therefore have to pay a fine. She is holding on to our passports. An argument ensues, as we explain that it would be impossible for both of us to have lost the same document. Eventually she gives in and stamps us out.
It is a strange place because the border actually runs through the middle of town, but the controls are outside. So after having officially left Uruguay, we ride into town for lunch and to change money. By crossing the main street you enter Brazil and the name of the town changes to Chui. Brazilian customs takes a long time as we have to have permission documents for the bikes typed up, but they are all very friendly about it. While its going on I go to the tourist office nearby and pick up a map of Rio Grande do Sul, the state we are entering, as well as a couple of city maps and advice on where to stay.
Immediately after the crossing the road, which is flat and straight, runs through a wetland reserve occupied by capibara, a strange looking animal something like a mix between a pig and a beaver, with a hippo's backside. Very difficult to catch on camera though as they are either in the water or the long grass, but we do see a few.
São Lourenço is a small town on a lake. We get there are the sun is coming down and don't find the campsite until after dark. Going out for dinner we stop at a small restaurant that looks okay but no English is spoken. A nine year old kid, Gustavo, who was admiring our bikes comes in and helps us out. We end up trading him a dinner for a Portuguese lesson. He was pretty smart and it was a fun introduction to the country. A journalist also stops by and wants to photograph the bikes, so they might be appearing in some local paper sometime soon.
The impromptu English lesson.
23rd March. Porto Alegre. 135 miles, passed 24,000 trip miles.
Filling up at the petrol station in town this morning we got invited to go to a local bike rally taking place this weekend. Then having breakfast at a cafe we got another Portuguese lesson from the bloke working behind the counter. He was a student about to go for an exchange year in either the USA or England. So we traded him English lessons and he even went and got his textbooks out and sat down with us. It was pretty cool but meant we didn't get away until nearly eleven.
We hit Porto Alegre a couple of hours later, looking for a place to park so I could call Tania, who was a friend of Vanessa's back in London. We end up in the centre outside a military museum. Lots of soldiers about so very safe for the bikes. We get invited into the museum and get a quick guided tour. There is a phone there and one of the soldiers helps me dial as the codes are pretty damn confusing. I leave a message on Tania's mobile and we go to a cafe round the corner for something to eat. About twenty minutes later a soldier comes up to us, and with a bit of gesturing we figure out that Tania has called back to say she is on our way, and he has come to tell us to wait. I don't think they would do that back home.
My, that's a big gun.
Its been nearly ten years and I have to admit I'm worried about not recognising Tania, but when she turns up I spot her immediately. We all follow her back to her parents house, where they had a meal prepared for us (oops – but it was nearly three by then). They hadn't been waiting to eat though thankfully. Tania said afterwards that it felt like she had a police escort as we rode behind her car through the crowded streets. There are quite a lot of motorbikes in Brazil, but most are no more than 250s, so we do kind of stand out.
I'm staying in the family home, whilst Jason and Maarten get a whole empty house to themselves, which they own but are trying to sell.
24th - 29th March. Porto Alegre.
I've had a fantastic time here and been made to feel like one of the family. Tania and her older sister Adriana take it in turns to show us round the city, although its not really a tourist town so not an awful lot of stuff to see. I am fed two cooked meals a day for lunch and dinner, and in the evenings we go out drinking with friends. We arrived on Tuesday, Jason and Maarten leave on Friday, but I stay for a full week. There are tours round bars with great views of sunset over the river, and one in a slightly dodgy area where the air was thick with the smell of marijuana smoke.
The boys you've seen before. The girls left to right: Tania, Gigi, Adriana.
Saturday night is the city's birthday. Tania has an exam for a new job Sunday morning so stays in but I go to the party with Adriana and a couple of her friends, there are fireworks, caipirinhas, then we get some rain. In one bar there was an enormous tattooed bloke who I immediately guessed was English (and turned out to be right). He was alone and I was trying to avoid looking at him because I think he'd spotted me as English as well, and could here that we were talking English. When you're out for the night with three Brazilian women, you don't feel very charitable towards your countrymen. Later Adriana and I went to a nightclub where she knew the owner and we got in skipping the long queue. More caipirinha, absinthe, and dancing til the wee hours.
Amazingly enough this is not a car park but Porto Alegre's main cemetary.
Tania likes to play backgammon (or she is extremely patient knowing I love to play) and we spent some long hours playing, one night until after four in the morning. I have to say, without crowing, that I won heavily over the week, racking up around 150 points. I really need the practice though as Steve plays much more than me, so this is really just a warm up.
Losing again.
Sunday is a big Kowarick family lunch. The other sister Claudia is there with her husband and two boys, Eduardo and Fernando (in fact the boys are often around the house during the week). Issa and Alex are the heads of the family. Alex cooks up a BBQ and I pitch in with the wine. Fernando is at an age to be really impressed by the motorbike, and before I leave I even have to autograph his English book.
Busker in the Sunday market. He is playing a tune on a leaf in his mouth.
Monday night is my turn to cook, and I decide on shepherd's pie as something reasonably traditionally English that I can do without too much difficulty, although in the end Tania helps with half of it as well. As each day goes by I feel more at home here, and it gets harder to think about leaving. He says he wants to do what I do (he is nine), which earns me a few looks that tell me I shouldn't do anything to encourage him too much.
30th March. Torres. 133 miles.
I wasn't allowed to leave until after lunch, and both Tania and Eduardo got a quick spin on the back of the bike. But eventually, and a little reluctantly, I got under way.
It took me about 3 hours to get to Torres where I had the number of a friend of Tania's, Joca, who could help me with a place to stay. Two days ago Torres was hit by Brazil's first ever hurricane (or cyclone, there was lots of debate about which it actually was, but thats pretty academic when the winds are blowing at 95 mph). Thousands of homes had been damaged or destroyed but they appeared to have done an amazing job of clearing up as I approached the centre. I could see trees blown down and a few damaged buildings, but all the roads were open.
I pull up at a public phone to call Joca, but before I can a Brazilian on a Yamaha Tenere pulls up alongside. This is Rafael from Porto Alegre, who had spent a year and a half living in London and speaks excellent English. He said he had ridden up (100 kms on the straight flat beach) to see about helping out in the aftermath of the storm and take some photos, as he had nothing better to do and is a keen amateur photographer. He offered me his mobile to call Joca's mobile, but the line was terrible (probably due to downed aerials) and I couldn't speak to him or hear anything.
Instead Rafael stopped another bloke in the street to ask about a local hotel for me, Rafael would look for a cheap or free option. It turned out that the guy he stopped was also a biker and owned the cafe we were parked outside. So not only did I get a good hotel for a local price, we were invited in for coffee, caipirinha, and chips on the house. It was a cool hour or so just hanging out and talking with some of the locals about the storm and other stuff. Rafael even met a guy who might be able to offer him a job, so he was happy. One of the blokes there had even been to Guildford before, on a conference about mushrooms of all things. Its a very small world.
After a shower Rafael and I have dinner. He reckons he could get me a driving job in London when I get back if I wanted it, and then I get another language lesson, this time concentrating on just about every motorcycle part and tool we could think of. Sometimes we would describe or draw it to make sure we were talking about the same thing, before we got to the Portuguese word. Great fun.
31st March. Florianopolis. 204 miles. Bike passes 30,000 miles in total.
Rafael turned up before dawn this morning to see if I wanted to watch the sunrise. I sent him away. I didn't sleep well last night, I had a lot of stuff going through my mind.
He was there again for breakfast, which he scammed for free. He'd spent the night at the local fire station, said that in most towns they will usually let you camp on their site for free and its very secure. Useful information.
We went up one of the hills that give the city its name. It was a slightly hairy ride over grassy tracks, rocks and skirting round some fallen trees. It was also steep for my fully loaded bike, but the views from the top were worth the effort. Rafael is a really great bloke and offered me the use of his place in Osorio on the beach near Porto Alegre, should I ever come back down that way again.
View south of Torres. The coast is dead straight for over 100kms.
It was a good journey to Florianopolis, but I have to confess my mind was not fully on the road most of the time. I found myself dwelling increasingly on the prospect of returning home and what happens after that, something I'm not really ready to face yet. I did notice the destruction caused by the hurricane though, downed trees mostly.
Florianopolis is a city on a small island connected to the continent by a bridge. The island is dotted with little beach towns and is a very popular holiday destination in the summer, but now is quieter. I had the phone number of another one of Tania's friends – Duda - staying here and just before crossing over to the island, pulled into the tourist information office from where I called her. She told me to come to Morro das Pedras in the south of the island then call her again while she tried to sort me out a place to stay.
It was a nice little ride over the island, on tiny roads that were a welcome change from the dual carriage way that had brought me here, but very hot and sticky. When I spoke to her again she said she couldn't help much, she was on her way back to Porto Alegre and her friend Gabi, who had put up Jason and Maarten in her empty house, was moving into it now and couldn't take me. No problem, she directed me to a campsite nearby, which was perfectly pleasant if very quiet. Mine was the only tent there and only one of the half dozen or so cabins was occupied. It was a quiet night but at the supermarket I bumped into a Swiss couple who were travelling RTW on a pair of F650s. We had a brief conversation, mostly focused on the poor quality of Brazilian fuel and its effects on performance, then went our separate ways.
View from the top of the island.
1st April. Bombinhas. 92 miles.
It rained on me last night so I had a slow start while the tent dried out in the sun. I then decided to ride around the island for a while and because it was so hot and the roads neither busy nor fast I opted for shorts and t-shirt over the bike suit. I pottered around for a while and stopped for some lunch at a beach cafe, where I just has some fried fish. Then I got back into full riding gear and got back on the main road north.
I didn't last long however. A couple of hours and I was baking hot. I also didn't want to spend the night in a city so before the road left the coast I pulled over and brought myself to Bombinhas. I arranged a hotel through the tourist office, and when I got to it, up a steep and rutted dirt road, I almost went to look for another one. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was a bit out of the centre. But I just couldn't be bothered.
The one guy running the place was nice enough and managed to make me understand that an Italian couple on a bike had stayed there not long before. Their picture was even in the local paper. I parked in the lobby, which was also the restaurant, and it was one of those places which is just posh enough for me to feel I shouldn't, or worry about marking the floor, but he was totally cool about it, and there didn't seem to be any other guests anyway.
The town was very quiet both as I wandered round in the afternoon and then again later in the evening. I wasn't very hungry so just grabbed some snack food from a shop and have an early night.
2nd April. Guarujá. 437 miles.
An early start today, I was in a great mood for riding and the road did not disappoint. As soon as I got away from the coast I was in mountains thick with tropical vegetation. It even remained relatively cool for most of the morning, although by lunchtime it was extremely hot and sticky.
The roads were mostly dual carriageway which was a good thing as most of the traffic was lorries. In a lot of other countries on this trip the trucks travel at night so you rarely see them, but clearly not here. In some steep uphill sections there was a third lane, and this was often deeply rutted (though it was all still asphalt) from the combined weight of all the lorries crawling up. Coming down you can often smell their burning brakes losing the battle against gravity. When the wheels start smoking its best to give them a wide berth.
I was able to keep moving however, which is more than can be said for some of the traffic coming the other way. Crossing into São Paulo state there were roadworks forcing trucks coming towards me to cross the median strip while going from two lanes to one. This was a very slow manoeuvre, one truck at a time, and I counted at least six miles of solid tailback, after I noticed how long it was going on. And 95% of the vehicles where trucks, with the very occasional car sandwiched in between. The tailback ended strangely abruptly at one point, with no new vehicles joining the end. Then a few miles later and accident had caused a further blockage with another 4 or 5 miles of queuing. I reckon some of those people would be stuck all night. I passed at least two more overturned trucks that looked like fairly recent accidents but where pulled over to one side letting traffic through.
Guarujá is a seaside resort directly east of São Paulo, and its here I will rendezvous with Steve tomorrow so he can guide me into the labyrinth of the metropolis. The odd thing about this place is the seeming lack of hotels. I rode around for ages before I saw even one, and that was full. One or two signs for hotels just seemed to send me down a road which would end with no further indication of where to go next. Eventually I found one but was forced to pay the extortionate price of 100 reis (about twenty quid), and even then I had to bargain them down. I will take this up with Steve tomorrow.
3rd April. São Paulo. 61 miles.
I had a couple of hours to kill this morning so developed my sun burn with a walk along the beach. I am sitting in the aquarium with a beer when Steve turns up, with his mum Lynda who is over from Portugal for an operation for carpal tunnel syndrome. It was great to see my old mate again.
I followed him into the city. As we left the coast we were back in mountains shrouded in fog. It was a fantastic little stretch of road, in turns elevated over huge drops and plunging into tunnels through the peaks. Then we come down again, the sky clears and São Paulo's traffic begins. Its aggressive stuff, every man for himself, but doesn't last long before we are home. Vanessa and the boys, Alex and Chris, are all at home. Both the boys immediately have to try on my helmet. Alex wants to put my gloves on as well, until he discovers how sweaty they are.
In the evening we have home made pizzas in Steve's pride and joy pizza oven, and Glauco drops by, who I also knew back in London.
On the balcony of the flat: Glauco, Steve, Vanessa, Lynda (and pizza).
Its great to be here, and it immediately feels like home. After five months of pretty much non-stop travel I am ready just to rest for a while – duration undetermined. I plan to have some Portuguese lessons then begin a real tour of the country, but that is all for the future. My daily diary will finish here too for a while although I will try to record any interesting events.