I knew this leg of the world ride was over when I disconnected the battery and had a glass of bubbles yesterday.
So many wonderful people helped make this a memorable and successful adventure. Thanks for the emails, and many suggestions of places to go.
We did just over 3 months, 21,000 km and I looked forward to getting on the bike each day. Riding in the big cities and fast motorways was an adrenaline rush only matched by the gnarlier of the rough sand and rock roads.
I have to thank the BMW workshops that squeezed us between their regular customers to keep us on schedule, especially the Buenos Aires shop that found the stones in my fan unit (this was causing an over heating issue), and the Sao Paulo shop that surprised me with a mirror to replace my taped up one – gratis.
I have missed the arrival of my 4th grand-baby, Oscar, and the graduation ceremony of my baby,Ruby.
Brazil is mid 30s and humid so I will find Wellington weather invigorating to return to but all worth while to be back with friends and family.
Gareth has started the planning for the next leg already, he has to be thanked for such meticulous planning and being such a great companion on these adventures.
Bye
Jo
Bikes both serviced by Ferdinand and team at Caltablano Motors, Sao Paulo
We’ve finished, parked the bikes up and are getting ready to return to NZ. 21,000 kms of South America completed, great taste of the Andes and then followed by Uruguay, Paraguay and half of Brazil. All good, no worries with bikes – they’ve been serviced, stored and await our return in a few months when we’ll tackle the Amazon and Guyanas, Venezuela and Columbia. So you could say we’ve done the sanitised part of the Continent and the going will get a lot harder on our return – roads for instance are far more of a challenge in the tropical zone.
The ride took 3 months, the first two of which we had good riding mates along so were a team of five, and the last month just the two of us. Hard to pick highlights there being so many, but riding the Carretera Austral in the south of Chile would definitely be one, getting to Terra del Fuego another, and Bolivia is always a great ride. In the second part of the ride, getting to Paraguay was a real experience and what we’ve experienced of Brazil so far has just whetted the appetite for more.
So the worldbybike challenge continues, by this time next year we will have knocked off South and Central America and be set to change continents. Until then we just anticipate eagerly what the Amazon and Central Americas will have in store for us. Thanks to everyone that helped this happen – from our suppliers Icebreaker, BMW, Spidertracks, and Crombvie Lockwood, through to the IT support crew back home of Mike, Jaspreet and Dave – and of course to our riding colleagues Brendan, Tony and Chris.
The state of the wild animal life in a country is judged by the road kill as far as I am concerned. America lots of animals and lots of diverse road-kill, Russia no animals on the roads, dead or alive.
South America the dogs are winner , or really the losers, of the “dead by the side of the road” competition. They are closely followed by skunks, pretty little black things with distinctive white stripes which were most common in Uruguay. Guanaco, a type of llama was a large deer sized hit in southern Argentina, the tiny head of this animal didn’t give it much chance for a brain size able to compute traffic. We were often scared on the bikes by the unpredictable and stupid reactions of the guanaco waiting at the side of the road until you were close then racing across in front of you.
In the same areas were the Rhea, a small ostrich type bird that tended to be fast and unpredictable reaching speeds of over 60kph running along side the road, often seen dead in the mornings in the pampas areas.
The heat and humidity of the Missiones area meant lots of small silver snakes pressed into the seal and the occasional hawke trying to get lunch payed the ultimate price.
My favourite is still the soft grey owl from Argentina and close second place to the huge lizard from Uruguay. I would have liked to be here to see when the tarantulas all swarm and driving along is quite crunchy. The occasional big hairy spider was a wonderful sight though, and the best trier award goes to the snake that lunged at me as I rode past.
The haul back across Paraguay was made more memorable by the rain that bucketed down turning all but the one strip of tar into a red bog and then a close encounter of a truck passing head on into Gareth’s path causing him to divert into the verge wasn’t particular unusual but a huge “Jesus” emblazoned across the wind screen followed by smaller words “guides me”. Not particularly faith inspiring.
An unusual critter the size of a possum but with a rat like tail and a foxy face, and little fine pink ears was my road kill thrill for this day, I don’t know what it was, any suggestions ?
Then the big haul through traffic to the 3rd largest population area in the world, 18 million, Sao Paulo. Motorway started 400 km out of town and had more trucks than cars. Hazards included huge slips from the rain, being rear ended by a speeding Merc or going into the rear of a truck crawling along.
We did a fair share of passing on the yelllow lines as all the faster vehicles do. One of these manoeuvrings got a bit tight and I took out a couple of traffic cones getting back between trucks, and I realised I need a closer thrill to get adrenaline going these days. That did the trick and I felt a bit remorseful later when I saw a mangled bike still on the road and a truck with paint scratches on the bumper. Size matters and I must remember it.
The mainly small bikes jostle us to get a look, and one went past me lying flat out with his legs extended behind, a few inches from me, looking me in the face and beaming proudly. All at 120 kph in very dense traffic.
Death rate for small bikes is about 6 per day, downtown Sao Paulo but anyone knocking one off will be set upon by the throngs of others, so cars show a bit of respect.
Our day in Asuncion with the UNICEF staff again made us think of the poor and vulnerable, lack of education and poor health often means the adults can’t care for the children as well as they would like to. The much loved little ones are carried everywhere and given lots of love but there are material needs that need addressing here in Paraguay. Hopefully the improvements to the lives of the poor that have come about through the recent government change will continue, but until then UNICEF will play a big part in improving things for the most needy.
The government has come to an agreement with a group of indigenous folk, the Guarani who have a separate language, widely spoken in this area. These folk were taking their babies to the street as a begging tool, totally poverty driven. The deal is now:: no babies or children on the streets and a “community pot” will be provided by the government. So we saw the store room of food and the huge community pot of government provided chicken, spaghetti and beans bubbling over an open fire.
Kids are wanting to go to schooling programmes as food is provided so change is happening. The filth and sewage in the streets wasn’t acceptable so lets hope some fill is brought in to clean up the tracks and hopefully get rid of the smelly puddles that breed the dengue fever mosquitoes.
Mind you with only one main sealed road though the country standards are not what we are used to. Once off the seal you are into deep red mud when ever it rains. We took an excursion into the countryside on the bikes yesterday and had to give up after 25 km and go back. This was a blessing in disguise as if we had stayed out there we wouldn’t have got back today as it rained overnight. We had a struggle getting 200metres from our hotel to the seal in the red squishy stuff.
Writing this in Cuidad del Este McDonalds, the shot-gun totting guard outside minding our bikes or maybe he is here to dissuade folk from doing a runner at the drive through. Paraguay photos here
Always a highlight of these rides is spending time with UNICEF folk on the ground and looking and learning about the work they’re doing. Today we spent in the capital of Paraguay visiting projects that are focused on getting kids off the streets, lifting their hygene standards and in short making their life better. Life here is very tough for the very poor and when you think that in 2008 for the first time this country had a President that wasn’t Far Right and militarily focussed, Paraguay has much underdeveloped social services available for the needy.
So we saw a few projects today including one set up to look after the children of an indigenous Guarani community. they live in appalling conditions but managed to strike a the with the good citizens of Asuncion who just wanted to see these children off the streets – they didn’t care where they went they just wanted them out of sight. When the authorities first started to oblige, the children were taken away and in effect locked up in institutions. It tool the parents huge efforts to get their children back.
But with the arrival of humanitarian Fernando Lugo as president things have improved dramatically, even though there is a long way to go. A deal was struck with the parents who agreed to take their children off the streets so long as the local authorities provided a school and teachers and food. The whole community is centred around the school building and everyone including parents gets their lunch form the kitchen pot located in the middle of the community. As they are Guarani they speak their own language rather than Spanish.
This was just one of a number of visits including one to a community who lived next to the city tip and spent their days crawling over the rubbish finding anything that is recyclicable and getting a few pesos for their efforts. All in all a pretty harrowing day but we’re told things are on the improve it’s just that for these folk health, sanitation and education services are starting from Ground Zero. You’ll find the photos pretty awful.
They are great to visit and certainbly deserve thei ranking as amongst the world’s most spectacular (and largest). I remember them mainly from the movie The Mission and those scenes where Jeremy Irons as the Jesuit priest was leading the Guarani to land above the Falls, climbing the cliffs beside them and being pursued by Robert de Niro and his band of Paulistas who wanted to capture the natives for slaves. Anyway we found the wildlife and ecology of the surrounding subtropical rainforest equally spectacular. Well worth a visit and photos are here
The world’s largest hydroelectric power station at Itaipu. What do you say about these types of projects – over our lifetimes we’ve seen heaps of them – starting with the dam at Arapuni, then the big one at Arrrateatea near Taupo (got a tour of that at primary school in 1965) and then stepped up to Manapouri in 1995, then the Hoover dam on the Colorado river (in 2006) and now this – the largest dam in the world.
Here’s some comparatives just to get your juices flowing –
More dirt dug out than 8 Eurotunnels; 2 Sugarloaf mountains (Rio de Janiero) of dirt moved, more iron and steel to build it than 380 Eiffel Towers, more concrete used than 210 soccer stadiums of 70,000 seating capacity, and the spillway can shove more water down it than 40 Iguazu Falls (we’re coming to them, we took a walk around these this avo. Oh God still haven’t caught your attention – well this mother puts out 14,000 MW of energy – the Clyde, our greatest endeavour piddles out 432 MW. America’s Grand Coulee, its biggest, spurts 6,500 MW.
Don’t you love engineering stats? Our riding buddy Tony Armstrong does – he gets positively orgasmic over this stuff (and red wine). Frankly it leaves us nonplussed, but we’re citing all this rubbish for Tony’s edification – as he had too many commitments to make it up here, we feel we have to try and impress everybody with the sorts of things he gets off on. Let’s keep going;
40,000 people were employed in its construction; it took 10 years to build; the resources committed were equivalent to the build of a 22 storey building every 55 minutes; the bloody thing generates 14,000 MW of power (NZ has total capacity of 9,380 MW), Brazil uses 18 of the generators, Paraguay the remaining 2 – and it’s a 50/50 venture so generates a hell of a lot of revenue for Paraguay each year), and it cost US$ 25bn to build over that 1975-1991 period. Dam photos here
It is about dinner time in NZ but I am sitting in a lobby looking out at the skateboarders and staggering happy drunks, it is around 3am. Gareth sat in the lobby and did his computer work earlier as it is the only place the WiFi works here and then I woke when he came to the room about midnight. I haven’t slept since and decided to watch the world go by here.
We went to the Jesuit Missions ruins (1660’s) in San Ignacio, Argentina today and saw the remains of the huge compound where they housed more than 2000 of the local jungle tribes and tried to “civilize them”, protecting them from the slave traders was quite an inducement.
It was a fairly grotty place outside the security fence, with lots of street kids, so we went and parked our bikes behind the local police station, and later gave the police a big bottle of coke for the parking security.
So getting here to Posadas meant a trip on a barge across the big Uruguay river that divides Brazil from Arg. at the thumb shape at the top end. Then a performance to get through the border as they wanted to close for siesta time. Funny thing having shops and services close from 12 noon to around 3.30 then open again until 8.30pm, then the restaurants open.
A group of bikers from Florianopolis Island off Brazil was on the barge across the river and gave me a nice white T-shirt with their logo on it, so I look clean tonight in my whites.
It is very humid and warm and the trees are lush and have huge leaves, the soil is blood red and the bike is caked in the red dust, parts where they have planted Eucalyptus trees are very like out-back Australia.
We will get to the Iguasu water falls today, meant to be a spectacular sight, but first we will cross over into Paraguay for the first time. Our photos of the Jesuit Missions at San Ignacio Mini (Argentina) and at Trinidad (Paraguay) are here
Jo
Central and northern Uruguay is home of the gaucho – boots, breeches, belts, buckles and berets – the Basque influence is heavy and these guys dress like this every day for work. Indeed we passed one that was also wearing a black cape. the pace he was galloping along at, all that was missing was the mask and I would have mistaken him for Zorro. And the preferred beverage of the Gaucho is whiskey – not your single malts but the cheaper blends like Gold Times or Dunbar. Not heard of them? Probably because they’re local products made for local folk. Gauchos are like that – keep pretty much to themselves while those seeking modernity all move south to Montevideo or Punte del Este. But there are Kiwis moving into gaucho territory! Our Gaucho album is here