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Brazil

After the 8 hour ordeal at the border, all we could do was drive from the border and find a camp site before sunset. As Brazil would not allow us to bring any fresh food into their country - they are frightened of us bringing in fruit flies (they even sprayed the inside of our truck with insecticide) - we had to buy tinned goods (back in St Helena, Venezuela), so the evening meal that night was rather unpleasant (I was in the cook group, so it was my fault).

Inflation

During our visit to Brazil, their currency was effected by very high inflation - 48 % per week . So changing money , from the stable and ubiquitous, US dollar to cruzeros, had to be done in small chunks. I only changed as much as I needed for three or four days at a time. I once tried to pay a restaraunt bill with my credit card, I was advised of a 40 % surcharge (by the time the money would have been transferred, its value would have gone down by that amount), so I paid by cash. And in supermarkets the prices were shown by code letters. The translation of these letter codes , into prices, was shown on cheap paper signs, which were changed every couple of days, as the currency further devalued. Because of this ramant devaluation of their currency, even the largest bank notes soon became worthless, so every 9 months or so a new set of bank notes were introduced. The old notes could still be used simply by knocking off three zeroes from their face value.

I'm glad to say that since my visit, some 10 years ago, the Brazilians have managed to get their inflation under some sort of control.

Continuing south the roads were all mud tracks, even though we were on part of the Pan American highway (paid for by the Americans, who paid for a four lane tarmacadamed road, but thanks to local corruption all that was made was a dirt track). Our progress, on some of the hillier parts, was slow. Night's were spent in impromptu bush camps, which I must admit were great fun. You simply had to make the best out of what was at hand, a true adventure. After three days we reached Manaus.

Manaus was setup to cater for the rubber trade. It became rich thanks to the monopoly that South America had over the production of rubber. This ended when English botanists smuggled rubber tree plants out of Brazil and back to Kew gardens. From Kew the plants were taken to the more furtile soils of Malaya.

Manaus is a wonderful cross between jungle frontier town and metropolitan city. Naturally we all took advantage of the city's amenities, eating (in airconditioned comfort) good food, and drinking ice-cold beer.

The Amazon

We then, leaving the truck and most of our kit in the hotel, went on a 4 day jungle trip. First a ferry took us across the amazon river, then a bus took us to a village, then, after buying several crates of beer, a leaky boat took us to our temporary home - a floating ex-brothel now on a tributary to the Amazon river. Our new home floated on three huge (9 feet diameter and 45 feet long) cedar logs and was connected to a second floating hut by a walkway, both of these were moored in a small inlet. Toilet facilities were very basic, the river we floated on was used when we needed to get rid of the beer we were drinking, while a little paddle canoe was needed to get us to the shore to make use of a hole in the ground.

Washing was a pleasure, just jump into the black tea coloured water, climb out, lather up, and then jump back into the warm river to rinse off (river water in the Amazon basin is one of two colours, either opaque milk chocolate or transparent black tea. The reason for this is the opaque (white) water comes down from the Andes and has picked up a lot of sediment on the way, while the transparent (black) water comes from the rainforests and is coloured by the tannin in the fallen leaves).

After a day and a bit of lazing around by the riverbank, a small river boat came and collected us. This was to be our home for two days in the flooded forest. We motored further up the river and then tied up to a half submerged tree. We then took a dugout canoe (two to a canoe) and explored the flooded forest.

Alligators

That night, after eating the chicken rice meal that was prepared for us by the boat's crew, we went alligator hunting. Leaving our moored floating home we set out in a small wooden motor boat, armed only with a torch. We cruised along the reed beds at the edge of the river, shining our powerful torch into the gloom, and there shining back at us were pairs of red eyes. Judging the size of the animal from the distance between the eyes, our guides would drive the motor boat into the reeds and grab the alligator. Two such baby alligators were brought back to our floating base (the larger boat) for us all to see.

Let me set the scene. It's dark, the only light comes from the candles burning on our boat. Towards the rear of the boat is a table. On the table are the candles. Around the table we are gathered to look at the two baby alligators. Jonesie (the co-driver in the first part of the trip and now are trip leader) and Tony (fellow Englishman and traveller) had an alligator each in their hands. Tony, then decided that he'd like to tickle his alligator under the chin. To do this he needed to change his grip around its neck and head. As neither alligator was showing any signs of being bothered about being held, he released his grip, so as to take hold of it again. The alligator, realising that only one hand was now holding it (by the lower body), started to thrash its head around. Tony was left with a small (about 3 feet long) alligator in one hand, that was thrashing around trying to bite him. So he dropped it. It landed on the table. The alligator, simply trying get away, knocked over the candles. In the last guttering light we saw it slither off the table onto the deck. The same deck that we were all stood on in our bare feet. Jonesie, seeing this, dropped his alligator. So, there I was, standing on a wooden deck in my bare feet, in the dark, with two alligators with sharp teeth scurrying around. So I did the only sane thing, I jumped up on the table. At that same moment, the boat's crew turned on the electric lights. The light came on just in time for us to see the alligators slipping over the side back into the river. It also came on just in time to see me standing, scared, on top of the table. It reminded me of Tom and Jerry cartoons, where the maid screams and stands on a chair when Jerry the mouse is around. In an attempt to save some face, I stretched, yawned, and climbed into my hammock, which was situated just above the table. I don't think anybody bought it.

Piranha

The next day saw me in a small motorboat fishing for piranha. Armed with a 6 foot long bamboo pole, a length of fishing line, with 12 inches of copper wire at the end and a hook, I fished for piranha. For 6 hours I fished, or should I say "fed" the fish, before catching one. I found out what the copper wire was for. The piranha was trying to use its huge teeth to bite through the line. Unhooking it, I threw my catch into the bottom of the boat. Another error. It flapped around in the bottom of the boat, gnashing at our bare feet.

All to soon our jungle trip was over and we motored back to Manaus. Here we had expected to spend the weekend enjoying city life (showering, eating in restaraunts, drinking cold beer, enjoying airconditioning), before taking a ferry down the river, to our next stop. No, our ferry was due to leave about an hour after we got back to Manaus. We collected our stuff from our hotel and rushed across town to the ferry port.

River boat to Porto Velho

The port was in chaos. Twenty plus ferries were all trying to get access to floating dockside with room for 7 or 8. We had planned to get to our ferry (a wooden two deck boat, with open sides and four "first class" cabins) early, so that we could sort ourselves out and hitch up our hammocks in prime spots. Now we had ten minutes to do this. Down the steps on the quays and onto the bow of our ferry, and then up the stairs to the top deck, showed us that all the hammock room had been taken. This was not going to be fun. Then someone said that the ferry moored along side was from the same company and going to the same place (Porto Velho) , so we all piled across onto it. Most of the group went back the way they'd come (down to the bow and back up onto the quay then across to the next ferry), but Greg (American fellow traveller) and I went for the fast easy route. We jumped across from one ferry to the next. By the time the rest caught up we had already bagged the prime spots and were stringing up our hammocks.

The first class cabins turned out to be little more than wooden boxes with doors. As the two middle-aged American women on our trip (who were not enjoying themselves) had been planning on taking one of these, rather than roughing it with the rest of us on the ferry, they both turned around went back into town and flew to Porto Velho instead. I must admit that I didn't miss them one bit.

Half an hour later, we cast off, our space at the quay being quickly taken by another ferry. A quick trip around to the other side of the quay saw us taking on a car. Planks were laid between quay and ferry, and the car simply drove onto the bottom deck of the ferry. Then we motored off into the night, down the Amazon.

First thing we did was moor up, in mid river, with the other ferry from this company. Drinks and food were distributed between the two ferries, as were, quite unofficially, some passengers. When it came time to separate, we found that we had a woman passenger from the other ferry left with us. She was on a similar truck trip (with Encounter Overland). She was able to get back to her ferry and friends the next day when both ferries stopped at a village. But in the meantime she had none of her stuff, so was thankful for the help given by the women in our group.

As the ferry we were on was not large enough for our truck, and as the road (the Pan American highway again) between Manaus and Port Velho was not passable, our truck was travelling by barge. Andy, our co-driver, travelled with the truck, and saw it safely to Porto Velho, where the road restarts.

The next three days passed in idle bliss. My hammock, slung from beams, gave me a perfect view of the passing rain forest. I lazed, reading a book, occasionally getting up to wander the decks. Cold beers were available from a well stocked large chest freezer. The food was provided by the ferry operators, and, despite warnings to the contrary in the Rough Guide, was quite good. Breakfast was very sweet white coffee, with hard tack biscuits (the sort that my grandfather would have been familiar with during his service in World War 1) and jam. Mid-day meal was the same sweet coffee (they had an urn of the awful stuff, so you could help yourself at any time during the day) rice and beans, and evening meal was the same again but you also got a helping of mystery meat.

The toilet facilities were basic but quite good, and a cold river water shower was available. Even though the water contained a fair amount of mud, it was still great to get the sweat off your body. When it rained, we would all dash up onto the roof and shower in the the downpour.

When we first boarded our ferry, I noticed that the other (local) passengers were storing their bags on fork lift pallets that had been laid on top of the wooden decks. I couldn't, at the time, work out why they were doing this, but "when in Rome..." , so we all followed suit. On the second day it started to rain. A real heavy tropical downpour. The crew rolled down plastic sheeting over the open sides of the boat, but rain water still sluiced across the wooden decks. It was then that we saw what a good idea it had been to raise our luggage above the, now water-logged, decks.

At various points on our river boat trip down the Amazon and the up the Rio Madera rivers we passed gold dredgers. Sometimes these dredging barges were moored singly, while at others (obviously at a good spot) groups of up to a dozen were moored together. The process of gold extraction was simple, river bed silt was sucked up and then allowed to settle of a number of gently tilting trays. Yet again, mercury was used to trap the gold, and so these barges were slowly poisoning the river.

All to soon the journey was at an end and we were at Porto Velho. It was here that I bought, and sent, perhaps the most boring post-card I have ever seen. It was an aerial shot of the town (a dozen uninteresting buildings, next to a river, in the middle of some fields).

We joined up with the Andy and the truck, and after a days sorting ourselves out and getting drunk in the local bars (we decided that the Brazilian Portuguese language was in fact really only drunken bad Spanish, and found that, for a short period during our drinking, we could make ourselves understood to the bar staff), we set off again.

40 bites on one cheek

First stop was the Pantinal area in the matto grosso. This is a wild life reserve (16 44 50.77 S, 56 51 23.88 W) in the middle of some steaming hot wet lands. With perfect timing I came down with yet another case of the trots. At one bush toilet (i.e. a hastily dug hole in the ground, behind some convenient bushes), while attending to an urgent call of nature, mosquittoes from miles around made a" B " line for my bum. Later, in the shower, I counted over 40 bites on my left butt cheek alone. The mosquitoes were huge and ferocious. Not only did they bite (and suck your blood) during the night, they also did so during the day. The only respite was under a mossie net, as DEET had little or no effect on them. As well as the mossies, the night air teamed with insects of all sizes and shapes. This made cooking (my cook group again) next to the truck, in the open, a challenging affair. I spent most of the time trying to keep giant (3 - 4 inch long) cicadas out of the food.

Aligator swim

We stayed in a simple hotel for the two boiling hot days at the Pantinal. A river ran slowly passed the site, and one of our group (Ted, an Aussie computer guy) decided to go for a swim. He first asked the locals if it was safe, they said it was, and then jumped in. He quickly made the other bank, and then swam back. 20 minutes after he got out, a long dark shape bobbed to the surface. An eight foot long alligator! Apparently, or so we were told, Alligators don't attack in the heat of the day, but lie torpid in the water.

The surrounding wet lands were full of wildlife, and one evening we went for a quick truck safari. But I must admit that, thanks to the sapping heat, I did very little during our stay but laze around. I did manage to catch up on some of my laundry, my sleeping bag liner was really stinking at this point.

The crew (plus Glen) replenished our truck's water tanks from the river. First they filled jerry cans with the brown water, then decanted this unsavoury stuff into our cooking pots, placing them on a fire to boil. After boiling for a good 10 minutes, the still brown, but now drinkable, water was poured into the truck's tank. The usual silver nitrate was also added. I must admit that I only used this water to wash my plates with, certainly didn't drink it (we emptied our tank and refilled it with clear water at the next big town).

Thankfully we left the matto grosso and its stifling heat behind and made our way towards Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. On the way we bush camped each night. One night we stopped at a disused petrol station. A perfect place to park the truck and setup camp. In the distance, across the darkening pampas, a lone radio antenna mast was being repeatedly hit by a lightening storm. It was being hit every 10 or 15 seconds. Next to us, 100 meters up the road, was a cattle auction. That's the best description that I can give to the farmer's get together, that was happening. Happily there was a bar there, with ice cold beer, and the rain stayed away, so a good night was had by all.

Brasilia (15 46 59.23 S, 47 54 11.60 W) was conceived in the late 1950s. The idea was that, like the USA, Brazil would have a purpose built capital. And so, like the USA, they cleared some swamp land and built it from scratch. The architecture was ground breaking at the time, but reminded me of Marineville from the TV puppet series "Stingray". Their cathedral had what looked to me like a fried egg on the stained glass windows.

There is absolutely nothing to commend Brasilia apart, perhaps, from the MacDonald's, where you can get a salad burger (which means that you get lettuce and tomatoes along with your beef burger!). It is, like so much of today's architecture, not built for human beings actually to live and work in.

Gold mine

We were now on the final leg of the trip - to Rio De Janeiro. We first visited the gold mines at Oro Preto. After the horrors of the silver mine in Bolivia, this was a joy. The decent into the mine was by cable driven trolley cart, which quickly took us down the 45 ° track into the mine. Being more or less at sea-level there was plenty of air and the workings were high and wide, so no crawling through narrow spaces. At the very bottom of the mine was a pool of clear blue water. This colour came from the chemicals that leached out of the surrounding rocks. Some of the more hardy members of our group even took a swim.

Minerals and gems of all sorts were dug up in this area (Minas Geras) and it was quite common to be approached in the streets by people selling gem stones. I decided against buying any cheap emeralds, as I wouldn't know the difference between an emerald and a piece of coloured glass.

Rio - the end

Entry into Rio saw us all in a joyous mood, some sat in the rear roof seats, dodging the low bridges, while others sang along to "Flying Down to Rio".

We stopped outside our last accommodation of this trip, two apartments facing the beach at Copa Cabana. Here we all got off the truck, some, like me, for the last time. The views from our balcony were magnificent. The only downside that this location had was the Samba school that had setup on the road outside. As it was carnival time in Rio, samba music was played from about 9 pm through the night until dawn. It's amazing how you can teach yourself to sleep through just about anything.

The Rio carnival is, nowadays, a tourist rip-off. For the duration, most of the locals who can leave the city do, and are replaced by hordes of "rich" gringos (westerners, mostly Americans), who are prayed upon by thieves (some of whom come to the city each year for the easy pickings). The samba schools who parade up and down in the Sambadromo, as part of the carnival, sell off spaces in their troupes to rich Americans. While the "parties" (red and black, transvestite's, ...) are full of hot bored people, trying to get on the local TV coverage of the event.

Wandering around Rio's shops was great fun. Although I love being in the wilds, it's always a pleasure to be back in a large city with all of its facilities. A lot of the shops along the Copa Cabana were jewelry outlets. Outside each was someone trying to get you inside. These people would size you up as you walked towards the shop, decide which foreign language to use and go straight into their sales pitch. For some reason I appear to Brazilians as a German, so at each shop I'd have to put them straight and get them speaking English.

Rock climbing

Greg, American fellow traveller, a professional rock climber, took me climbing up Sugar Loaf. Well, I say "up", really it was only 100 feet up. I chickened out after that far, and abseiled back down. Greg continued on to the very top. A day later we, accompanied by two Brazilian climbers, did climb all the way to the top of a much easier climb - called Paradise Lost. It normally takes about 2 hours to do, four after starting we finally got to the top. Here we met a party of young Christians having a picnic (you can walk up the other side of the peak). They offered us cake, which I did my best to eat, but I had such a dry (cotton) mouth from the climb, that I had no saliva to deal with it.

Afterwards, drinking a cool beer at a bar, I noticed that my fingers tips were blue, from the lack of skin, and they freely leaked sweat (the sweat capilliaries had all been rubbed away).

Hang gliding

In the guide books we saw that hang-glider flights were available, provided that your body weight was below 80kg. Well, mine was, after all of the cases of the trots, down from 100kg to 86kg, so I thought I'd give it a go, as I was close enough to their weight limit. Five of us decided to give it a go, we were driven, in a very old car, to the top of one of the mountains that Rio is famous for. Here we were taken through the take off procedures - I was told to start running, when told, and not to stop for anything. Then, after getting into the harness, my pilot and I walked the glider to the take-off ramp (22 59 17.61 S, 43 16 44.28 W). This was a wooden ramp, about 40 feet long, at the end of which was a ten foot drop, followed twenty feet later by a 300 foot drop. After waiting a few minutes for the right wind, we started down the ramp. I ran as fast as I could. Before hand I had watched a couple of the other gliders take off, and they had been airborne part way down the ramp. We reached the end of the ramp still running hard without being airborne. Then there was nothing under my feet and I fell forwards into the flying position. From the top of the ramp, I'm told, it looked like one of those world war two aircraft carrier launch film. We dropped, disappeared from sight, only to be seen staggering back up into the air.

I don't remember seeing anything at the time of our launch (a sort of sensory overload, I suppose), but I do remember hearing my pilot shouting woh! as we just missed the edge of the cliff.

The rest of the flight was great fun. Looking down I could see all of the houses below with their swimming pools. At his suggestions, I and the pilot put our arms out at the side of our bodies, "like Peter Pan," he shouted. The glider flew itself.

We flew on, over the apartment blocks along the beach front. It was only when I looked down the sides of these tower blocks that I got any idea of the height we were at, laying in a harness suspended by a single piece of webbing from the glider. Then we were out over the sea and preparing to land. The pilot reached back and released the straps holding up my legs. We turned back into land and then parallel with the beach. Lower and lower we flew, the pilot telling me to keep my feet up. Lower we flew and my toes started scrape along the sand. "Don't run 'til I say," the pilot shouted. Then, when we'd slowed enough, the nose of the glider was pushed high and with two quick steps we were back on Terra Firma.

My landing was much better than Greg's. His glider was chased along the beach by a yappy dog. And in an effort to avoid the dog, the pilot left his slowing down manoeuvre too late. They piled into the sand face first, bending the glider, but were both unhurt.

The group split up

During the week or so that we stayed over in Rio, slowly but surely the group split and went their separate ways. Some flew off home, others continued travelling. The truck , with a few of "my" group, continued on its way around South America. On the tiled pavement outside our Copa Cabana apartment I said my goodbyes to the group, and waved as I watched them drive off along the beach front.

Then it was a taxi ride for me to the airport and my flight home. I paid the driver all the local currency I had left (it was becoming worthless in my hands, thanks to the inflation), which was like giving him a 200 % tip. He wished me "via condidos" and shook my hand. I was probably his best fare of the day.

The flight from Rio started in 32 ° C heat, I flew, Alitalia, to Rome, where it was a freezing 10 ° C and then onto London Heathrow (on a 200 hundred seat Airbus with 10 passengers on board) where it was 6 ° C. I put all of my clothes on, in an attempt to stay warm. It didn't work, I froze.

Yes, I was back in England alright. A cold February England, with no job, little money, but with amazing memories and a great tan!

The group

Hover your mouse cursor of their face, to find out their name.