Anyhow, thought you'd like to see some photos, plus a little bit of reportage, on what was probably the longest journey I ever made, from Uberaba to Porto Seguro, the resort where we spent Xmas and New Year. The journey took some 2 days by car!! Before you ask why we didn't opt for some other, less arduous and time-consuming method of transport, firstly, there is no proper rail network in Brazil. The second option was taking an internal flight, but these are damned expensive, so that was a no-no. So the trip was by motor, and I can tell you that despite the length of the trip (1,400 km which equals nearly 900 miles, the equivalent of travelling from Brighton to Edinburgh and back again) it was one of the most memorable, picturesque and unforgettable journeys that I've ever been on ... and a bit hair-raising, bone-shaking, sweat-inducing, to boot - and any other kind of expression that relates to shaking up the body a little bit). It really made you reflect on how vast Brazil is as a country, too.
I've just realised I didn't actually take any photos on the first day of the journey. We set off quite early around 8am and hit the motorway. Now one significant point to make about Brazil (as with quite a lot of countries in the Southern hemisphere) is that the quality and standard of their roads is markedly different to those we're accumstomed to here. There aren't many dual carriageways in Brazil. In some of the states they do have 2 or even 3 lane roads in either direction, but these are pretty rare. Once we were a few hundred kms out of Gustavo's home town, the roads became single lane affairs in each direction. The other thing to mention is the abundance of slow-moving articulated lorries clogging up the roads. You get whole convoys of them sandwiched together. To deal with this, you can either go for the easy (but slower) option of staying behind them, or the faster (but more dangerous) way - which entails pulling out and accelerating past the hulking brutes, even whilst traffic is coming from the other direction. As soon as a car coming the other way gets close, you take your chances, indicate and move back into one of the gaps between the lorries. You think I'm kidding, don't you?! Well, I'm not. Driving like this is the norm over there. Otherwise it will take you simply ages to get anywhere. (Mmm, Steve, I wonder if I've put you off going, now!) Fortunately as this seems to be the accepted method of driving, people will be accommodating and drop back their cars to "let you in". The number of times we had to do this was countless ... at first I was absolutely sh*tting myself, but by the end of the holiday I was almost laid back out about it. Almost. I did joke with Gustavo's family that they should market a "Dodge the lorry" type computer game in Brazil - I'm sure it would sell like hot cakes.
Anyway, after our first day's travel (probably less eventful come to think of it, hence the lack of photos) we made an overnight stopover in a town called Salinas. As we were driving into the city, we were suddenly accosted by lots of young kids on bicycles who started riding up alongside the car and chasing us! This made me totally paranoid at first - at first I thought they were after our money or wanted to hold up the car, highwayman style, but no, all they wanted to do was show us some of the motels in the area and thus earn themselves a little bit of commission (obviously they could spot visitors a mile off). Anyway we followed a couple of them on their bikes, first place we were taken to was a bit too expensive, but then one of the pedal-pushing guys found us this joint:
The rather nice and posh lobby that no-one actually sat in.
The bar also had lots of cachaca for sale. Unfortunately (or unfortunately) I didn't get as far as opening any, but I did purchase a bottle, plus a couple of cute porcelain shot holders (you can see them in the pic below on the rustic-looking shelving). The bottle is still in my cupboard here at home, unopened.
Gustavo and his folks - we found a pizza place just on the other side of the road - very handy.
Gustavo in the hotel the next morning.
View from one of the hotel balconies. Love the mist in the background.
We then set off on day two of the journey. Note the guys sweeping the road! Wish I'd taken a close up of them. I remember one of them giving us the thumbs-up as we went past. Note how the road has turned into a rocky dirt track - this was pretty much the condition of the road for the next few 100 kms - no tarmac! - and was the only route we were able to take. I did wonder if people made this kind of journey every day - in which case, one's car suspension must get wrecked at a very fast rate and sales of cars must be remarkably frequent ...
Further on we drove past this landmark, which looks very much like the Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio.
Impressive eh.
Buildings like this ...
View from the car window, with rosary beads ... people are very religious in Brazil, Catholicism being the dominant belief system. Every time when we set out on a journey, Gustavo's Mum, Dad and Auntie would take the beads and pray, murmuring incantations to God and asking that we would have a safe journey. This often made me reflect on how much more spiritual people are in Brazil; in touch with the more fundamental side of life. Something we could learn from over here, I reckon ...
Gustavo takes his turn behind the wheel. Being a Native Brasileiro, he's used to being on the other side of the road! At one point I was quite keen on doing some driving over there, but given the condition of the roads, I'm not sure it would have been such a good idea ...!
There were lots of mountainous views like this one. Kind of reminds me of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
This could almost be the English countryside, mmm?
The road's a bit smoother here but just look at that orange colour!
Great mountain vista. However one problem with these type of roads was the amount of choking dust that vehicles would throw up, as you can see in the photo above. Consequently we had to have the car windows rolled up during these parts of the journey. In a 30-35 degree heat, this wasn't too much fun and the car got very stuffy ...And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you:
The Bridges of Brazil!!
On this section of the trip, we drove across lots of lovely constructions like this one ...
Made of wood, rickety, you could see through the gaps ...
And only with enough room for one car to get over ... yeeehaaaah!
Here's another one that looks even more precarious. But we made it over ...Once again I couldn't help but reflect that this was the normal state of affairs for people in Brazil.
Another view whilst driving over ...
Later on we drove past these foresty regions. The picture's not that great as they're a bit far off, but these are rows and rows of tall, perpendicular trees that looked amazing.
Some of the aforementioned trees, closer up.
They looked amazing from the car. We drove through several avenues like this...
And I loved these trees with their red blossoms ...
And ... eventually ... we reached our destination! Welcome to Porto Seguro ...
