Greetings Everyone

Yes it has been a very long time since I posted anything on the trip. No, I didn’t get run over by a bus, or kidnapped by a terrorist gang, or thrown into a gaol cell. But I did end up having to go back to Oz for a while and after coming back I just lost interest in writing and it’s taken me this long to get back into it.

This is going to be a shorter post than normal. I’ll explain why by the time you get to the end of the post but for now, on with the travels.

Leaving Argentina

Buenos Aires and Argentina is on the southern side of the Rio de la Plata; and Montevideo, Uruguay is on the northern side so another ferry trip was destined to be in my near future. Luckily for me before they left on their trip, Ed and the lovely Elise were able to give me the details on where to book and how to get there.

To get to the ferry port I needed to ride through the centre of Buenos Aires which is a great way to wake you up in the morning, especially riding fat Kitty.

After completing the Buenos Aires Formula One (or as it’s locally known, the morning peak hour) and getting to the port, the usual immigration and customs formalities happened and then it was a case of playing the waiting game. Eventually we boarded the ferry and after making sure Kitty was properly tied down it was off to Colonia in Uruguay.

From Colonia to Montevideo is about 200km so it was a relaxed days travel. I spent a couple of days in a hostel to sort out sending some items back to Oz and a brief sight seeing trip in Montevideo before heading north to the Brazil border along the coast.

I met some unintended friends at the hostel. You might have heard of the phrase

“Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” ?

I can tell you that when they do bite the little fcukers hurt. The next morning I showed the bite marks to the people running the hostel and they were not happy to find out they had extra guests. They ended up vacuuming and fumigating the room, I don’t know how well it worked but I had no other surprises while I was there.

The road from Montevideo runs along the coast and is not an exciting ride apart from when it becomes an aircraft runway. In Northern Australia during the war they built aircraft runways next to the main highways, in Northern Uruguay the runway is the main highway.

Into Brazil

The town of Chuy is on the Uruguay/Brazil border. The day was hot and it was a madhouse. I’m not sure how it works but the town appears to be a duty free zone for everything from fruit to fridges and everyone was buying or selling something. Along the main street on the north side were Brazilian run businesses and on the south side of the street are Uruguayan businesses. I needed to get some  Brazilian currency and more importantly this was going to be the last opportunity to get a full tank of non Brazilian fuel. I wasn’t sure what a diet of high ethanol fuel was going do to Kitty and I wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

Eventually Kitty was full to the gunwales with fuel and and I had a wallet full of cash so it was time to play the border crossing game again.

This was no problem in Uruguay and less than no problems in Brazil and that worried me.

The Brazilian immigration was normal but when I went to sort out the paperwork at customs for Kitty there wasn’t any. No customs officers or required paperwork. I found a couple of guys from the Federal Police and they had a look at Kitty’s registration paper, my drivers licence and said “Go”.

No forms, no nothing and that’s very unusual, every country I’ve ever been to always wants to check vehicles in and out at the border.

There wasn’t a lot I could do, apart from ride off into the sunset and hope it didn’t bite me on the bum when I tried to leave Brazil. Did I mention that in Brazil they speak Portuguese?

In terms of language skills I’m a cunning linguist in Spanish, compared to my Portuguese, but only as a comparison. Communicating over the next few weeks was going to be more entertaining than usual.

Heading north along the coast from the border there are very few towns for the next couple of hundred km so I needed to make tracks as it was getting late in the day.

This was another plan doomed to failure. The road was built along a canal and along the water’s edge I saw some Capabaras so I had to stop for photos to add to the critter count.

A Capabara looks a bit like a giant guinea pig and just like a guinea pig is supposed to be quite tasty, or so I’ve been told.

After my photo op it was time to get moving. I planned (how I laugh) to get to Pelotas that night and I still had at least two hours riding ahead and it would be dark when I got into town. As I got closer I could see lightning filled storm clouds approaching from the west and I knew it was going to be a race to see if I could get myself sorted for the night before the deluge happened. Riding at night around a strange city during a tropical storm, looking for a hotel is not my idea of fun.

But fortune smiled on me that day. My GPS aimed me toward the centre of town where there was a large park and opposite was the sign for a small hotel, just what I was looking for. My luck continued when I met Alexandre who was looking after the reception that night. Alexandre speaks perfect English and was very helpful telling me where I could park Kitty for the night and helping me unpack and take everything upstairs.

The next day I continued north and soon I was going to have to face my big challenge for the day.

Fuel for Kitty

Now you may be thinking that getting petrol for the bike can’t be that difficult and that I should stop whining and get on with it and you would be correct, but there are a few more challenges than normal. The first being my complete lack of Portuguese language skills. Ok, that can be overcome by hand waving, sign language and other general silliness but communication is important.  As I mentioned earlier Brazil has very high levels of ethanol in its petrol compared to the rest of the world. I knew that Kitty would be very unhappy on a diet of 100% ethanol.

As it turned out I was stressing out for nothing –  I had a choice of three. Ethanol, Commun and Aditivada. I knew the Ethanol was definitely out and I got to talk to a guy who was filling up, he owned a Harley and when I asked him what was the difference between between the other two were he pointed at the pump and said;

“That’s shit (Commun) and that’s less shit (Aditivada)”

Ok, he wasn’t happy with the local offerings, as it turns out all gasoline in Brazil has 25% ethanol. Commun is 87 octane,Aditivada is 91 octane. And very occasionally I found some (very expensive) 95 octane. And how did Kitty enjoy her new diet? On the open road with the high octane there wasn’t a lot of difference power wise, however….

In the morning when she was cold it was another story. Kitty was difficult to start, then she would stall, backfire, hiccough, fart, had no power and was generally a pig to handle until properly warmed up. It made riding through the morning traffic in the towns more entertaining than normal and I was always glad to get out on the open road.

One last thing about my first Brazilian petrol stop was when nature called and I went to spend a penny. I don’t normally take photos inside men’s toilets, it can lead to misunderstandings but this time the wall decorations were novel.

The title translates to “Sports Trivia” which wasn’t much use to me with my lack of language skills. It would be an interesting exercise in psychology to see if there was a pattern to which stall guys would pick, and no I’m not saying what I did and you can keep your smart arse magnifying glass comments to yourselves!!

My next goal was to head north and eventually travel inland to visit the Iguazu falls at the border of Brazil and Argentina. On the way I wanted to ride through the Serra do Rio do Rastro, a mountain range with a fun windy road which sounded like a plan. But first the ride up the coast turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected.

The BR-101 runs along the coast and is one of the major highways of Brazil. The road itself isn’t exciting, just wide and straight with toll booths every so often. That changed when I discovered what Brazil calls “torrential rain”. In the distance I could see black clouds with a grey wall of water underneath them. No problem, there was enough time to stop and get into all the wet weather gear. This was going to be a Def Con 1 rain clothing alert.

Covered in plastic, Goretex and leather I was ready for anything or so I thought. Riding through rain doesn’t normally worry me too much, just slow down take it easy. This time that grey wall I mentioned earlier hit me like a fire hose. It was like the heavens were suffering from a terminal case of incontinence (a polite way of saying it was pissing down).

Many cars had stopped in the breakdown lane but some cars just pulled up in the outer lanes, meanwhile other cars were still flying past me. I have no idea how they managed to see any obstacles in time (Did I mention that Brazilian drive seriously fast? I’m sure they’re channelling Ayrton Senna). By this time I’ve slowed down to about 40-50kph and  all visibility stopped about 100m in front of me. I can remember a big intercity bus slowly passing me, the rear of the bus was lit up like a Christmas tree with running lights but it completely disappeared as it was swallowed up by the grey wall of water. I’ve never seen anything like it. Eventually I come to a bridge crossing the motorway and took shelter with some other soggy motorcyclists. It never stopped for the rest of the day, it just varied between rain and deluge so there was no choice but to keep going on.

The next day the weather cleared up and it was brilliant sunshine, I felt like I was in a different country. I was planning to head inland and ride into the mountains on some fun roads and it looked like it was going to be a perfect day for it.

The Serra do Rio do Rastro mountain range isn’t very high as mountains go but as you can see from these photos it’s a great road for a motorbike.

The road runs along the side of two converging valleys where it eventually wiggles up to the top, great fun on sport bike, maybe not so much on fat Kitty but still fun. It was a good ride, the only thing that spoiled it was the terrible gear change Kitty has between first and second gear. When it’s cold, no problem but after the bike warms up changing gear sounds like dropping a box of spanners.

At the top of the Serra do Rio do Rastro is a car park and viewpoint so it was time for a snack and some photos of the valley below.

While I was having a snack I made friends with some of the local wildlife, these critters are called Nasua’s and are part of the raccoon family. There was quite a few of them around the car park and they knew that tourists mean food.

From here I continued west for a couple of days crossing back into Argentina to see the Iguazu falls.

I’ve never really understood the appeal of trikes, they’re as wide as a car but have none of the benefits of a car, plus everyone thinks that when you grow up you can remove the training wheel and ride a motorbike. But I was very impressed when I saw these trikes on the way to Puerto Iguazu.

I’ve managed to lose their details but they were from Brazil and had a business designing and building these trikes. They were over 5 metres long plus the trailer. it wasn’t powered by the usual beetle engine but some water cooled four cylinder effort.

Back to Argentina

Remember how I talked about entering Brazil and no one wanted any paper work for Kitty? Well as it turned out no-one cared on the way out either. This meant you could leave a vehicle in Brazil for as long as you liked, as it turned out it would be very useful.

On a different subject and going back into history, Alan was our original mascot. He’s been on Kitty ever since we started the trip back in 2007.

During the trip he gathered some friends and it was always a conversation starter as we travelled through Mexico and Central America. Even if people spoke no English at all they still knew “kangaroo” or “skippy”.

You can imagine how pissed off I was the morning I discovered that someone liked him so much that he’d been liberated from Kitty overnight. Considering this was the first theft on the trip I’ve had I suppose I can’t complain too much but it was annoying. Well Alan, wherever you are I hope you have a good home, at least you won’t be out in the weather any more.

Heading back into Argentina I had a communication problem with the customs guy. I eventually realised he wanted my insurance paperwork. This was the first time I’d been asked for it and I’d been wondering if it had been worth the effort of getting it. It was.

In Puerto Iguazu I headed off to a hostel that I’d researched earlier.  As I pulled up someone called out my name. In the small world that is motorcycling in South America it turned out that Damien and Carina who I met months earlier back at Villa Kuntebunt were also staying at Bambu Hostel. They have been travelling around South America on a pair of 650 bikes.

The next item on my agenda was to visit Iguazu Falls which is a world heritage site. You can do this from the Argentine or Brazilian side. As you can see from the pictures the falls themselves are spectacular and well worth a visit.

Brazil Again

It was time to head back into Brazil. Back in 2012 Marcelo and Beth stayed with us in Sydney and now I was planning to return the favour. They lived outside Sao Paulo which is about two days travel from Iguazu.

The road to Sao Paulo is not very exciting, just expensive. Every 20 – 40 km is a toll point and they even charged motorcycles which was an annoyance. There were some very large police checkpoints and they always had a couple of enormous parking lots, one would be filled with wrecked cars and the other had lots of motorbikes and cars that looked ok. Having seen the way some people drive I understand about the car wrecks but not the other parking lot. Marcelo told me that the police confiscate the other vehicles if they have not paid the vehicle registration. A lot of people must walk home every week. I wanted to take some photos but the cops tend to get a bit twitchy when they see people with cameras around police checkpoints.

Although at one point on the there were a lot of cameras. Down the road I could see that lots of cars had pulled over to the side. I first thought it was some kind road side market but as I got closer I could see it was a troop of monkeys, there would have been at least 50 of them. This was just outside a fairly large city, there was no nearby jungle and these guys knew that people had food.

Kitty also got some attention from the locals.

When I was about 80 km away from Sao Paulo I heard a bike horn, I looked over to see Marcelo and Beth on their bike, Companheira. They’d been on a ride and had been sitting in a café looking at my Spot Tracker location getting closer to them.

It was good to see them again, they stayed with us while they were waiting for Companheira to arrive from South Africa. They had been lucky enough to be on the road for two years and crossed all the continents. We did a couple of local bike trips and met some of their friends. As usual everyone has been very welcoming.

I mentioned at the start of this post that it wouldn’t be as long as normal. While I was in Argentina I had word that the parents had become unwell and I needed to think about heading back to Oz. By the time I was back in Brazil the time for thinking was over. Fortunately Marcelo and Beth (and the Brazilian government) were happy for me to leave Kitty in their garage.

I needed to organise some plane flights back to Oz and in the end we did a day trip into Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo is a massive city and driving around is not for the faint hearted. My original plan would have meant riding through Sao Paulo to get to San Roque. When I asked Marcelo for advice on the best way to get through the city he had some simple advice.

Don’t do it.

It would be too dangerous for an unaccompanied foreigner, riding through the wrong part of the city could be a very bad career move. Armed hold ups and car jackings by guys on little 125cc bikes (known as motoboys) are a big problem in the city. Luckily Marcelo was driving so I had a relaxing day.

After sorting out plane flight and a few other thing we had time to go to the Mercado Municipal de Sao Paulo. We always enjoyed going to local food markets and this one is well worth a visit.

And that’s where this part of the trip is finishing up for now. I’m back in Oz and things are looking better on the parent front so in a couple of months I hope to head back to Brazil to continue the journey.

Thanks for joining us, as always comments are welcome, see you for the next instalment which will be out soon.

Ian