To the End of the World

[jfink]

Jumping ahead a little, I made it to the Dakar yesterday. Here is a picture of Berrada Bort (the first rider through):


Cyril Despres goes by:


Under the title of "c-mon man", what were they thinking? It is like we named a bike "ca-ca":

[jfink]

I am going to just start posting randomly in order to get caught up. I will also try to include some appropriate pictures, but it will take some thoughtful examination first! First let me tell you a little story about Chuck. He will not like this!

We were in Trinidad and a HUGE frog had come into our room. I cornered it and was looking for a way to get it out of the room. He said; "here, wait, let me go get the woman!" I said, shocked "No! we aren't going to get woman!" and picked up my boot, loaded the frog and threw him outside. Now, when there is any trouble of course the first comment is; "here, wait, let me go get the woman!"

I am sure he will have something to say ... stay tuned.

The following are excerpts from notes to my wife:

Cordoba: I made it to Rosario, Argentina and found a hotel with a little help from local folks who were very nice. My Garmin picked today to give up the ghost again, not sure why it does this. Anyway, it could not find satellites and therefore could not tell me where the hotels were that I had picked this morning. Oh well, I met some very nice people.

I hope to get on the road tomorrow but not too early. It is about a 3 hour ride to Cordoba so leaving early will probably do me no good. I have some work to do before the Bronco game, I will probably not get on Skype tonight, unless there is something you would like to talk about.

Dakar: I sent a check in when I got back, but apparently it did not go through. It was a good day, went out and watched some of the bikers go by. I stopped at a Shell station to get some gas, and you would have thought that I was a participant. People crowded around, I let one guy with his kid get on and take pictures while I went to check the gas situation. When I came back he handed me his kid so he could get a picture of the baby and me on the bike. Isn't that funny? At the event, I got my exercise; the parking lot was at least 2 miles from the viewing area, including climbing over two wire fences.

I came back and got a shower and went and got something to eat, a dried ham and cheese, not so good! But they had wine and a couple bottles of water, good! Sorry about no phone call, I came back and crashed.

Today, I am going today to watch the bikes leave. I don't know if I have a room tonight here or not, just yet. They said they were full when I asked to extend one more night, but that they expect to have a cancellation. I don't know, maybe there is something lost in that translation.

Brazil: Well, we had planned to stop earlier but the town Cascavel was huge and there wasn’t a clear choice on where to stay, so we just went on. After a little trouble with Chuck’s bike, we made it to a little town called Corbelia in Brazil last night. Chuck had the same problem as I had a while back where the fuel filter clogged and we spent about two and a half hours on the side of the road (under a shade tree at least!), changing it out. The internet is pretty good although the power keeps going off and on which brings everything down. We are going to try to make some longer distances the next few days.

The country here is very pretty, very pastoral, but after you have seen a few nice green crops and fields, the road just goes on and on. We don’t see much sense in stopping, there isn’t a lot here to stop and see. The small towns are much nicer than the big towns in my opinion. The people seem more friendly and in less of a hurry. We are running into more police, yesterday right as we came into this town we are, the local policia were on the side of the road and a very impressive electronic system of cameras and radar was mounted on a tripod catching scofflaws. Fortunately they missed us!

[jfink]

Because of changes in plans and direction we were passing by Iguazu Falls. Laura, my beautiful bride and I had already visited Iguazu a week earlier. But, since we had the time, I thought it was only right to actually stop and let Chuck see this magnificent work of nature. Here are some pictures from that visit.

Looking into the Devils Throat


The Devils Throat from the power launch



Looking down river from the Devils Throat. If you could see the boats would be down there.




Chuck getting ready to Jump???


From the Power Launch




Pretty isn't it?


These boats would actually drive right into the water fall, but those pictures don't usually turn out

After Iguazu, we had little adventure with the frog that I mentioned earlier. Now, whenever there is something that may be a little difficult or scary, we all call for the woman! J

We crossed into Brasil with little trouble. The border crossing guard did say that when we originally crossed into Brasil from Uraguay that they didn’t give us the right papers. There should be four different sheets and not one, like what we had. But that was quickly cleared up with no problem. We are getting somewhat cavalier about crossing borders. When we went into Iguazu we had to go from Paraguay, to Brasil, back into Argentina. We didn’t even stop at the exit to Brasil and didn’t get much paperwork at the Argentina border. This proved to be no problem, as the Brasilian police officer said; “we don’t care about that!”

Rinopolis (pronounced “e” nopolis)
First let me say, that if you are traveling through Brasil, STOP IN RINOPOLIS. Our visit in Rinopolis is what I was thinking of when I thought about a good experience in South America. Rinopolis is a small town of about 10,000 people, who treated us like dignitaries. We stopped in Rinopolis after a couple days travel into Brasil. We were told of a nice hotel by the attendant at the gas station, but what we found looked like an alley entrance about 2 feet wide. But, like so many South American surprises this small entrance opened into a very nicely remodeled hotel, which was just put in service, with nice rooms and facilities. We did good!

The owners of the Central Hotel with the Bikes. The Entrance is the tiny alley way under the Hotel Central sign.

We talked briefly with the owner until he finally raised a finger and took off. He was gone for five or ten minutes and returned with a young man named Eduardo. Eduardo is the teacher for a locally operated English school in Rinopolis. Eduardo was very bright and articulate young man who fortunately had a little time to spend with us Gringo’s because it was summer vacation.

From L to R: me, Alan, Eduardo, Jorgie, a supervisor from Yamasa and Chuck
Eduardo told us Jorge (pronounced Jor’ gie) and Alan who wanted to do a story and pictures for city newspapers.

They apparently don’t get a lot of Gringos there. We took photos and had conversation with Jorge and Alan while sitting and having a couple Cervaja (it’s Sir-Vay-Ja in Portuguese).

That night we had dinner at a local restaurant called Cana’a, Brazilian for Canaan I believe. While we were there a very nice man came in who spoke great English. He talked a while and then paid for our dinner and invited us to drive around town with him. Here is a sequence of e-mail from my phone that what I wrote to my wife about this:

From Joe to Laura;

We are being chauffeured around thus little town of Rainopolis Brazil by somebody named Joseph Robert. Its been interesting so far.

Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™ 4G on AT&T

From Laura to Joe;

Hello? Imagine if you were me receiving this rather um, barely-intelligible message from South America.
What is your middle name?
La Senora no esta aqui, no tengo dinero

From Joe to Laura;

Sorey

Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™ 4G on AT&T

From Joe to Laura;

Sorry, I must say I was a little bit nervous and typing on my phone in the back seat
as someone we didn't even know was driving us around in the dark. I just wanted somebody to know where to start looking for the body. All is well now; we are back in the room.

By the way your Spanish won't work very well in Brazil, it's Portuguese.

Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™ 4G on AT&T

It turns out that my fears were totally unfounded. Joseph was the town welcoming agent, very friendly and known by everyone. We had a very enjoyable tour with Joseph and invited him to join us the following day. Turns out he had other commitments and could not make it, which I felt was very unfortunate. I liked Joseph.

The next day we visited the Mayor and the vice Mayor, then a local egg farm, a company (Yamasa) which makes egg washing and sorting machines and sells them worldwide. We then visited Eduardo’s Fisk language school, he was busy upgrading and adding additional capability for computer training. Finally we were invited to a traditional Brasilian BBQ dinner at the home of one of the local families. During dinner the mayor dropped by with his wife to deliver two shirts from the city. Chuck and I stayed late and ended up leaving the shirts on the counter. Eduardo promises to send them too us.

L to R: The Mayor, Eduardo, Chuck, The Vice Mayor and me


L to R: Chuck, The Vice Mayor, The Mayor and me


Chuck and me in front of an Ariel picture of Rinopolis


One of what will 16 "chicken coups" that hold 160,000 chickens each


Alan pointing out one of Chucks relatives?


L to R: me, the owner of Yamasa and Chuck


Daughters, Son and a few of us at the home where the Brazilian BBQ was held.

Jorge was the organizer for all of this. He was in touch with everyone, the Mayor and vice Mayor, Alan, the family who hosted the BBQ and Joseph. Jorgie has a passion for Rinopolis. It is nice to see someone who is so involved in promoting his community. If anyone ever had a question about one person making a difference, needs to visit Rinopolis and meet Jorgie.

*** If you pass by Rinopolis without spending a night at the Hotel Central, you are missing a great experience. ***

[cas446]

Very nice Joe keep the pictures coming.

[jfink]

This is more or less a place holder for more information and pictures later. As I write this we are in Belem, making arrangements for the ferry to cross the Amazon. We are on our return trip home. We have been through this drill before, once we turn the corner to head back we are like old stable horses, heading toward the barn. We have traveled over 18,000 miles and have less 7,000 more to do. We have been on the road since September 21st, 2012 with a respite of about 2 months to attend to personal matters from February to April..

This time would probably be different if we didn't have people at home, or a home to return too. But we have things to do, and it seems we have reached a point where we have grown tired of "seeing things". There are few sites we want to see as we return, but in general, we are trying to get home as fast as we can. For this reason, blog entries may be fewer and less complete. When I get home, I can come back and edit and add; it will give me something to do.

Santo Amaro
After we left Rinopolis we traveled some of the worst roads of the whole trip. We choose this route to avoid Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and all the traffic. On a back road to avoid even this road we ran into Nino riding a CB600. He stopped us to see what we were riding and where we were going. He did not speak much English and we spoke no Portuguese. But somehow we conveyed that we were looking for a hotel.

Santo Amaro was essentially closed for celebration. But, Nino led us through the streets and talked some of the police into letting us through to a hotel that was the best in the city at the city center. The hotel staff told us the hotel was full, but again Nino talked them into extending us a room somehow. We have been very fortunate.

After getting settled, we invited Nino to dinner. After food and drink and meeting some of Nino's friends while we sat watching the celebration, there was sudden commotion, someone yelled 'pistola' and Nino and his friends scurried us away to the back of the restaurant for safety. We are gringo's and very large targets! Later we heard it was only a fight. The kind of thing in the states everyone rushes towards instead of away from.

The next day we rode with Nino to Fiera de Santana to met Geraldo. Geraldo is a professor teaching English literature at one of the colleges. Geraldo is part of a motorcycle club that Nino belongs too and thinks of Nino as his son. Geraldo and I have become good friends since meeting and share e-mail on almost a daily basis. Some day I will try to get back to see Geraldo again.

Geraldo is restoring a 1979 Yamaha RD350. He has many parts acquired from sources all over the world to rebuild his bike. He isn't quite sure where he will find the time to finish this lengthy project, since he is still working and has many other interests to pursue as well. I will post some pictures when I have a little more time.

Aracaju / Penedo / Maceio
We left Santo Amaro and headed for the beach town of Aracaju. Our plan was to spend a week or so there relaxing and enjoyng the beach, the sun and the culture. But frankly after a little of all that, it became boring, so we left after five days. We took some small trips up the coast and stopped at some small communities which was more interesting in one day than everything we did in Aracaju in five.

We started by traveling to Neopolis to catch the ferry across to Penedo. We were amazed to watch what was probably a 5 ton delivery truck get stuck while trying to board the ferry. It took two hours of re positioning the ferry, jacking the truck and using wood and stones for leverage to get it unstuck. This is something I suspect you would never see in the US. Then it was a wild scramble to get onboard. Moto's last because they had to get the cars on first. We were barely able to get a spot on the ferry even though we were first in line, because all the locals knew the process and were scrambling before we got a clue.

Penedo is what you think of when you think of small South American towns on the coastline. Lots of church steeples, beach side bars and restaurants. We were there on one day but we had to keep moving on.

North of Maceio we then stopped at a pousada called Arco-Iris. If you are passing by way of Maceio, I would highly recommend this place. Clean, not far from the beach, a pool and good food.

The last day we made it to Jaoa Passoa. This is where Chuck's friend Marc lives. We spent a few days there getting our bikes serviced. Chuck's wife Karen came down and I returned to Houston. During the time I was in Houston, there was a death in Karen's family. Chuck and Karen returned home and I changed my return flight to Brazil to be as late as possible and still get the bikes out on time. Vehicles are only allowed to stay in Brazil for 90 days maximum.

[troyfromtexas]

Epic gentlemen Epic!

Don't ride home too fast. The more slowly you ride, the more stories we'll hear.

Que te vaya bien.

[jfink]

So below is a note I wrote to my wife. It fairly well explains what has happened, except that our plan was to divide the ride from Campina Grande to Belem (1,360 miles) into three equidistant days. But on the second day my bike developed a deep loud sound that I thought sounded kinda cool. But there was something obviously wrong. The KTM had blown an exhaust gasket between the header and the muffler.

Why it would do this can only be faulty assembly. We tried a make shift gasket with tin cans but we apparently didn't have enough cans on the wrap. It was a good temporary fix, but still leaking exhaust. It needed something more. In the next sizable town Alto Algre we actually found a motorcycle shop that had many different exhaust gaskets sizes and who did the repair there in their shop. All in all, they charged my 30 real or $15 US for about 2 hours of work and parts. I threw in an addition 20 real for Cerveja (beer). So this necessitated a longer third day.

We made it to Belem, but not without trials and tribulations. It was about 600 miles we rode in 13 hours, to make up for the day before when my bike broke down. We went through at least four separate rain storms and I think one of them messed up my cruise control because it stopped engaging. I had to shut it off, turn it back on, reset the speed and every time I hit the brake for a truck or speed bump (lambada) I had to go through it again. After a while, even shutting it off stopped working. The problem with that on a motorcycle, especially on long days like yesterday is my right hand starts hurting from holding the throttle open. BUT, THE GOOD NEWS … another rain storm came along and fixed it. Ha! Well for the time being anyway.

Belem, for being a city I had never heard of is remarkably large. We had bumper to bumper traffic for the last hour into the city. It was dark by the time we got to a hotel Chuck had found the day before. Fortunately, it wasn’t like most of our searches for hotels; go here “we’re full”, go there “we’re full too”, end up in some little hotel at the side of the road. They actually had a room with two beds. SCORRRRRRRRRE!

Tomorrow we will board the ferry for travel north across the Amazon to Macapa (pronounced “ma ca Pa’” emphasis on the P). The trip is supposed to be a day and half. We are going into the downtown area today, to the ferry building. We need to find out what we will need to bring with us on the ferry; food, water, and of course beer (or what passes for beer here). Fortunately we have an air conditioned cabin because no matter what time of day it is here, it is HOT and HUMID! This is like what people think of when they think of the Amazon. Once we arrive in Macapa we have 400 miles of mostly dirt north to the border with French Guiana. We have to be at the border by April 22nd when the bikes need to be out of Brazil.

In Macapa, we will cross the equator for the second time. The first time was in Ecuador, but we were late getting into Quito, it was dark and we didn’t realize we were crossing the Equator. This time we plan on stopping and taking the perfunctory pictures.

[jfink]

Originally Posted by troyfromtexas

Epic gentlemen Epic!

Don't ride home too fast. The more slowly you ride, the more stories we'll hear.

Que te vaya bien.

Thanks Troy, I am sorry our paths didn't cross during your epic adventure. But I very much enjoyed your ride report. One of the best I have read. Hopefully, when we are back, we can get together sometime over a couple beers and swap lies ... errrrh ... stories.