TRIP INFO BOX

Presidente Figueiredo has been an amazing experience and we will miss it! Now the Argentinians (Facebook: enmotoxamerica) and us ride together towards the Brazil-Venezuela border. This means a roughly 650km ride to Boa Vista as our first step. It’s a long hard ride but it’s a good highway and we cross some beautiful landscapes and large rivers.

More excitingly, the route crosses 125 kilometres right through an indigenous reserve, the home of the Waimari Atroari people. This tribe has a history of warring against the modern Brazilian infringement of their territory – a brutal history, where during the 1980s Brazilian armed forces were literally sent into the jungle to shoot these people like animals for disrupting the building of this road. This territory has now been protected for these people in the form of a reserve and upon entry, large signs warn the transitor that stopping, as well as photography and video filming is prohibited within.

We have heard a few stories of people intentionally stopping, or running out of fuel within the limits of the reserve, and being caught by the natives, stripped of all their clothes and belongings, and being left on their own to make their way out. We fill up at the last gas station shortly before the reserve and make our way though.

The reserve is truly astonishing! Pristine jungle lines the asphalt road – trees, vines, sparkling lagoons. Upon the high crowns are perched colourful parakeets, blue, red, black and yellow, cawking out to each other and flying gracefully from tree-top to tree-top. A very special place. Well done to the Waimari for fighting out these strangers with no obvious respect for this natural sanctuary.

Also on the way cross the Equator line, this time again from the Southern hemisphere into the North. I guess that makes it winter again! – wow, this Equator line keeps reappearing in the strangest of places…

I check my oil level a couple of times during the ride and it’s getting lower fast so I have to refill a few times. The last couple of hundred Km we drive pretty fast and within that time I’ve burnt nearly 300ml – this is very concerning! Max points out that when riding behind me he saw plenty of white smoke emitting from the exhaust during deceleration. Damn! White smoke – oil – that adds up. He reckons it could be shot valve seals. Dammit!

As our travel plans changed from going down the Brazilian coast to going up through Venezuela, so also has Ebru’s “First Turkish Woman to Cross the Amazon by Motorbike” challenge – which started all the way back in Puerto Maldonado – been revised. Originally we thought it had ended as we arrived at Manaus – from there we were going to be on a ferry downstream on the Amazon. However now, with our arrival at Boa Vista and move into Venezuela, she has crossed the whole Amazon basin from South to North, with the great Amazon river in the middle of it. We take some time to shoot some photos and video clips to commemorate the achievement.

Late afternoon at sundown we finally arrive in Boa Vista. There are a few cheap hostels near the rodoviaria, but rather shabby, and the Lonely Planet hostel Ebru picked out doesn’t seem to exist. We find a simple accommo at Hotel Ideal (55BRL/dbl incl breakfast, parking). The owner and staff have a somewhat distrusting attitude, but for a night it will do.

We only spend a night in this large town but we get the impression there’s no reason to stay here. It looks uninteresting.

We meet an Australian chap and his Venezuelan wife, also travelling on a moto, a Honda Transalp they flew over from Oz. We don’t get to speak at night but the next morning they give us some tips on riding Venezuela. It sounds as risky as I thought… police road blocks, motorbike thuggery and nasty potholes and speed bumps. They tell us about how they had his wife’s family members help them map out a “safe” route through the country to get here. Their onward route is to head into the Goyanas!

“Oh yes,” he helpfully adds, “it’s practically impossible to find any Honda spares, as Honda closed shop in Venezuela a few years ago, so if you need anything done, better get it done in Brazil. Wonderful!

TRIP INFO BOX

Around 105Km north of Manaus on the BR174, we visit Presidente Figueiredo.

The initial impression is a tranquilo town , though with rather terrible hostels. Almost ready to leave the town for somewhere else, we finally find Pousada Das Pedras (50BRL/dbl + fridge, kitchen, parking, breakfast) – a price which we negotiate for a number of days stay with the owner Fernando.

Das Pedras is excellent. Fernando has set up the place like a jungle lodge, all with local heavy wood furniture and scattered all over are his collected antiques, which he is locally well known for. And then there’s his dog, named Fidel – lol!

A heart-breaking incident at 80Km/h…

As this moth flew by we had to duck not to get clipped for fear of concussion…

We spend a number of days exploring the area by moto and it’s truly amazing! Waterfalls, rivers, caves, crystal clear and pure as nature. Most of these locations are waylaid and off the main tourist path, so we often find we have the entire attraction all to ourselves. Fantastic!

There are even a large dam and hydro plant, which we get a little tour of, thanks to a lovely young lady named Maria, an employee there who showed us around. (They do have tours at certain times during the week but we weren’t there during any of these, so we were lucky.)

Das Pedras has an amazing kitchen, which we’re permitted to use, so every other evening we cook up a storm like we’re chefs in a classy hotel. The other evenings we spend lazing in plastic garden furniture, eating char-grilled chicken or beef skewers at the street-side restaurants in the village centre, while watching the nation-gripping soap opera Salve Jorge (which we were introduced to during our BR319 stint).

Refreshments on the way home….

Breakfasts are included at Pousada Das Pedras and always an experience. Every morning, besides the strong, sweet Brazilian coffee and maize cake, is an assortment of Amazonian fruits we’ve never seen before – interesting, healthy and delicious!

The Argentinians we met in Manaus meet us in PF a few days later.

We spend a few more days in the area with Max and Erica, swimming in waterfalls, exploring the area and getting to know each other a bit better. Erica and Max made some money building properties down Patagonia way and decided to do something adventurous: so now they’ve rode all the way up the Brazilian coast line to get here, and they will continue on all the way to Alaska. Seeing we’re going the same direction we decide to ride on together, at least to the Brazilian-Venezuelan border.

One day, riding out to one of the waterfalls, it starts to rain so heavily that we park up under a little shelter by the road side, where I get introduced to a cashew nut tree. Now of course I’d eaten cashew nuts before but never had I imagined the fruit (edible) to be so odd-looking! Also, I learn the hard way that the bean beneath, which contains the cashew nut, is filled with a strong chemical best not touched, because the resulting burns will leave you with a scar.

It must be said that the area surrounding Presidente Figueiredo is some of the most beautiful we’ve ever seen! There are literally dozens of waterfalls, one more beautiful than the other, secluded in lush jungle, pure amazonian water flowing through – magical! (But beware, some of them are hard to find and hard to get to!)

One of the waterfalls we visit is very close to the pousada but lost beyond a series of mud tracks in tall jungle. It’s such a slush through the clay to get there we get flash-backs of the BR319 – really traumatizing. I drop the bike about three times, blistering my legs up on the hot exhaust… (don’t ride there in your swimming cozzie next time!)

Max and I spend some time chatting with the owner Fernando. He’s an interesting character. Descendant of a wealthy Italian family in the textile business, his passion for motorbikes landed him testing motorbikes for the Honda factory. He tells of his adventures, spending six months at a time, riding the new motorcycle models thousands of kilometres down the Brazilian coast, getting up to all sorts of mischief. Until he unfortunately had too much fun racing down a road, looking backward, and ended up stopping very hard and breaking a whole lot of bones…

On one of our outings I manage to reel in a beautiful Amazonian river fish which went into a good meal that night…. very exciting at the time, but when nothing else took my bait thereafter I was left with a guilty conscience, wondering about whether I’d terminated the only Amazonian river fish living in these parts. I wish I had thrown him back. But then how could I know he didn’t have loads of friends?

On the evening before we plan to depart I try to withdraw money from one of the two banks in town. The ATMs fail to dispense any money, first giving the message “communication failure…”, however the third time I try I get the message “insufficient funds…”. I rush back to the Pousada and spend a hour on their useless USB-key-WiFi system to connect to our Kalixa online banking system, to find that our cash card account has been overdrawn (by my recent failed transactions) by about 600GBP! Something that should not even be possible!!!

What’s more: my cash card provider doesn’t see this as their problem and tells me I need to top up the account balance before I can continue using it! The last time we had a problem like this was in Santiago, Chile, with Kalixa cancelling Ebru’s card due to a suspected “security compromise” – nonsense!

Luckily Erica worked in a bank before and together we go to the branch the next morning. Her Spanish and Portuguese work a lot better than mine and she manages to convince the Banco Brazil staff – first reluctant to do anything – to give us print-out confirmation of the failed transactions from the ATMs, as well as time-stamped photo snapshots of me doing the transactions the previous night.

With these documents – though it still takes a painstaking email process with my card provider – we manage to get my provider to reverse the transactions and refund all incorrect charges. Thanks a lot Erica!!

Did I mention that we planted trees for our Brazilian Planting Around the World mission here? Click here for details…

Why two? Ebru received them free of charge during her visit to the botanical garden in Manaus. So why not??

Around the town of Presidente Figueiredo there are countless waterfalls (locally known as cachoeiras), one more beautiful than the next, hidden in silent little nooks of the jungle, most of them only reachable on foot by narrow paths.

One particularly beautiful waterfall is the Cachoeira Pedra Furada.

The ceiling of this waterfall is a large, flat rock, which forms a cave, in which you can swim and observe the curtain of water falling from behind. However, some unique erosion processes have bored holes into this rock, through which water now pours like big overhead shower-nozzles.

During a wonderful day of swimming relaxing in this secluded little shrine, we planted the two Brazilian palm trees. We found them a home next to a large tree right at the entrance way coming in from the jungle.

No doubt they will be more than happy out here in this little paradise.

THAT’S TWENTY TREES IN THE GROUND, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

GROW LITTLE ONES, GROW!!!

Hostel Manaus Triptour (58.5BRL/dbl-shared inc. “breakfast”; this is at discount 10% with HolaHostel card). But aside from an ok room it sucks. (It’s not the same as the better Hostel Manaus mentioned in the LP, but the other has no parking). Most of the staff are pretty miserable. Breakfast consists of 2 slices of toast with a bit of cheese between, as well as a thermos of coffee or tea on table. When we asked for another helping the reaction was as if we were over-stepping the line. The the back garden was the most enjoyable place for us as we liked to sit out and drink a few beers with the sky overhead. Always awkward as the staff were under pressure to lock the door saying it’s not safe out there at night, despite there being tall brick walls all around. The kitchen is a joke. There is hardly a thing there to use, knives, forks, not even cups or glasses. We mention this to the staff but apparently the owner’s excuse is that people will just break things.

Shopping in the supermarkets is expensive. Even in the budget supermarkets. It’s a blast standing in queue watching the swollen lips and arses of the botox-babes in tight, luminous track suits, as if they’d just arrived from the breezy, sweat-less gym. I wonder what lucky man they hope to land in the supermarket. But the life drain begins when you reach the till and wait for your change, which – without fail – they don’t have, and need to start a laborious 10 minute process to arrange for you. Heaven save you if you have to have an item cancelled from your bill because they rung it up incorrectly or it was on shelf under a different price!

A much better place to shop is the main market near the docks. It’s good old fashioned market shopping, admittedly a bit more sophisticated than the other countries we have been in SAM. But the prices are much better and the produce is excellent. Highlight is the fish market, where you can get enough fresh fish to feed a family for less than 10USD.

Our search for laptop screens makes us wish we’d bought them in Puerto Maldonado. We drive all over town, literally, and they try to rip us off viciously! In Europe or the US you can buy these screens for about 50USD online. I know there are high import taxes in Brazil (I read up the rates on the Internet) but they are taking the piss! We’re quoted anything between 140USD and 400USD per screen! The ones offered at 140US are the same model Ebru got in Rio Branco, which broke within a few days, so we didn’t want to buy that. No melting icebergs here it seems – what will we do??!!

One evening, explaining my frustration to one of the reception staff, he explains that it’s because we’re foreigners and also, because without a screen the computer is useless, the vendors will really lay it on thick.

As we plan to take a ferry to Santarem and Belem, we inquire about the rates. It takes a while to find the ticket office: the floating docks terminal ticket offices have closed and relocated to street vendors with badges before the terminal. You deal with them if you have a vehicle, but if you’re on foot there is a small office on the street side further towards the market.

There are only a few main lines that you can book the journey with (e.g. Amazon Star and Rhondonia) and they leave on different days. The prices they quote us at the office are:
Manaus-Santarem 120BRL/pp
Manaus-Santarem 150BRL/motorbike
Manaus-Belem 220BRL/pp
Manaus-Belem 250BRL/motorbike
(They indicate prices for December would be higher about 20-25%)

We have more questions about transporting the motorbike which they can’t answer so they give us a special “authorization” paper with which we can access the terminal itself and go ask the captiain of the boat himself. The captain of the Amazon Star, quotes us the following prices:
Manaus-Santarem 120BRL/pp
Manaus-Santarem 120BRL/motorbike
Manaus-Belem 180BRL/pp
Manaus-Belem 250BRL/motorbike
Santarem-Belem 150BRL/pp
Santarem-Belem 150BRL/motorbike

Definitely some savings there! Also the journey times he quoted are:
Manaus-Santarem 1.5 days
Manaus-Belem 2 days
There would also be a 30-40BRL tax fee involved at the Manaus entry gate.

Now, by the market area there are several boat services which you could catch to either of these places also. You would have to go there yourself and ask for a space, and you may find yourself sleeping in a hammock among the cargo, but it would probably be an authentic experience and somewhat cheaper (a French bloke we met said he got a space to Belem for 80BRL).

Mateo is a ice Uruguayan chap staying at the same hostel. He’s here for a film festival where he’s promoting a documentary he made with his accomplices and he’s mad about the local music. We have a lot of fun joking about the diabolical breakfast and attitude problems of the hostel.

Together we go to visit the white beaches with a boat from a well known little port north of the city. We get there (Punta Negra) easily by bus and walk the rest of the way to the boat-village where we catch a little canoe (I think it was 5BRL/pp) over to the beach. The beach is beautiful but there’s nothing there aside from a few refreshment tents and beach umbrellas. Only a few other folks have visited.

Confirmed (at the boat village) last return by boat is 6PM. We enjoy the spectacular We watch the sunset waiting for the boat and get chatting to this guy who seems to work there and sells beer at this marquis. Another boat arrives but it’s a private hire. The guy asks whether he should come back for us but we say we’ll catch the 6PM one, upon which he gives this strange look…. The boat doesn’t come.

UFC-Jungle-Man…

While we wait this dude we’re talking to is really getting annoying. He’s talking about how he is in the army, real jungle survivor, and how he is a UFC fighter and blah blah. It’s getting a bit late for our liking and dark so he says he will arrange us a boat with this old man who works there…

Then when another boat finally arrives a bit later we go towards it to check and he’s trying to stop us, saying that the costs already have to be covered for this other boat that’s coming. Anyway E and I push ahead, it turns out to be the dude from the private hire. He has come back for us, probably knowing that there would be no 6PM and he takes us all back for the normal price – how awesome of him. Jungle-UFC-man also gets on board and is getting us really on edge. He talks to the boat captain in Portuguese and who knows what kinda nonsense he is trying to talk him into. When finally back at the jetty, the dude walks along with us, so to get rid of him we stop at this floating tienda there with a lotta locals on it and have a cool-drink, until the guy disappears on the back of a moto taxi. Thank G for that! Serves as a warning: be wary – lots of scammers here!

We go up to catch the bus back town centre, but since it’s gonna be a while we opt to walk as we came. Soon a passing car stops: it’s the boat captain! He offers us a lift as it’s on his route anyway. This awesome guys takes us all the way to the centre without asking a thing. We give him 10BRL to cover the petrol or whatever but we’re just really grateful to have met such a good guy!

There’s a few things you can do around Manaus as a tourist, such as taking jungle trips and swimming with pink river dolphins. But we don’t take part in any of this. Tours on offer in Manaus are expensive for what they are, and paying 40USD to take a boat out and meet a supposedly-wild river dolphin on the Amazon sounds fishy to me. Besides, we’ve seen a fair bit of jungle already.

Though Ebru does visit a couple of the main attractions – the theatre house and a botanical garden, together with a Spanish girl staying at the hostel with us. She found the theatre impressive, but the garden was a bit of a rubbish dump.

Highlight of the visit? At the market we find a whole variety of essential oils which we so badly need to top up our home-made skin-care-bug-repellent! What’s more, they have lots of oils from exotic Amazonian plants which we wouldn’t find anywhere else. Awesome!

Back at the hostel we deliberate hard about our future journey: Our Brazilian people experience hasn’t been all we had hoped – I really been looking forward to soothing music and the gentle friendliness I’d become accustomed to from Brazilians I’d met elsewhere. Is the rest of Brazil like this? It seems we don’t have any hope to find affordable laptop screens here, which is a disaster. Manaus is meant to be the best place for electronics – so fat chance finding them cheaper in Rio or Paulo. Then there’s motorbike parts: even for a bike that is made here in Manaus – spares are costlier than in other SAM countries! Then fuel and accommodation at higher rates. Add a costly ferry trip to Santarem and/or Belem…

The thought of heading 8000+Km down the Brazilian coast seems more and more unattractive to us, despite the promise of beautiful beaches. The alternative would be to move North, through Venezuela and into Colombia in the east. We contact our friend Garret in Colombia to see what he thinks about this. He recommends it without doubt and assures us that we’re very likely to get our laptop screens and bike parts in Colombia at decent prices without major rip-offs. Venezuela is renowned to be a dangerous place. But I do some research and it seems that it should be perfectly possible to do a 4-day crossing of the country – in the one side and out the other into Colombia.

The morning we’re about to leave Manaus a couple with helmets is standing at reception. They’re Max and Erica (Facebook: enmotoxamerica) from Argentina and they’ve just come up the Brazilian coast – serendipity? We end up delaying our departure for a day and intensely quiz them about their experience.

One more thing we arrange before leaving Manaus: we manage to get in touch with Mr Saba, the man that runs that white VW kombi bus between Manaus and Labrea via the BR319 (he gave me his card when he stopped for a break back in Igapo Acu). We send a few gifts for the kids of the Pousada and our dear friend, the man who gave us the confidence to complete our journey to Manaus as we’d planned. It was great to meet someone from “the road” out here in the “real world”.

By the end of it we’ve made up our minds: We’re going to Venezuela!

It’s “bye bye” to Erica and Maxi and expect we’ll be seeing you guys up the road somewhere.

By the way: If you’re planning to head this way to Venezuela you will want to take plenty of US Dollars with you. There is a MoneyGram office just around the block from the theatre plaza. (We had trouble finding a bank with foreign exchange and there are no exchangers as in other countries). You can take plenty of Brazilian Reais as well to change in Santa Elena de Uairen but after that it’s dollars only.

Our departure from Careiro is celebrated with a sort of doctors’ pool party. (Ok it’s not really in honour of us but the doctors). Music is playing and [what I assume is] the chief medic is dunking all his underlings under the water. The vibe is happy. We haven’t met any of these people before in our lives and all this wouldn’t have been necessary, but none the less we find it interesting and very sweet.

The onward way to Manaus is tame; all asphalt as far as the eye can see, smooth riding. Yet there are one or two sections of road works which send a chill up the spine – could this possibly be the initial steps of the reconstruction?

Out here we’re riding through a completely different world. Trees have given way to cattle ranches, vegetable plantations. There are streets, cars, buses, fences. From each concrete bridges we cross we can see settlements, some big, some small, skirting the river.

We ride along comfortably over the smooth tar road, and we feel a sense of sadness at leaving the lush wilderness behind. A sense of repulsion at the sight of public transport and a sense of loss, looking at the wide expanses of grazing land surrounding tall, solitary trees dating from different age.

II wonder how many of those cows I have to stack on top op each other to reach the top of the tree…

More work going on at the Careiro-Manaus ferry terminal. It’s a building site. The ground is all turned up and big machines are tilling and ploughing and shovelling and flattening.

This was the final part of the BR319 road from Humaita to Manaus. From here we have a 45 minute ferry ride which leads us straight into the city of Manaus.

We take a few photos to commemorate Ebru’s achievement of being – as far as we know – the first Turkish woman to cross the Amazon by motorbike. And I can contest to the fact that, even though she was not the pilot, she certainly bore a large part of the burden in getting us across! Assisting in navigation, wading mud and water ahead of the bike, building foot-holds and bridges with rock and wood, seeking alternate paths around obstacles in the shrubbery…

Heck, you could almost go as far to say she was also the first Turkish woman to have practically WALKED across the Amazonas!

May I just add as a partner & husband: Thanks for coming along and I’m proud of you!

This has been the craziest, riskiest, scariest and most exhilarating thing we’ve ever done. Arguably, also the most stupid, this I can’t deny. However, having done it, it’s something we don’t regret. Despite the dangers (many of them could have been much diminished through better planning and equipment), we have had the privilege of spending time in one of the most remote places accessible on earth, where wild nature still reigns supreme – while she still reigns, as this fact may be at risk in the near future. And indeed, because of inadequate planning and equipment, our journey through this place, which could have passed us by in merely two days, was prolonged, and gave us a longer and more intimate contact with this special environment. Though we were too engrossed in progressing our journey and in our survival at the time, it’s now a fact we’re grateful for.

The ferry moves slowly towards Manaus, taking us across the Rio Solomoes to the Rio Negro, over the “encuentro de las aguas” or “mingling of the waters”, which is where the two rivers confluence to become the grand Rio Amazonas. Here there’s a clear, wavy division where milky brown waters of the Solomoes and the dark waters of the Negro join, and flow along without mixing for another several kilometres down stream.

Large ferries and barges transport automobiles and people in every direction and scores of huge freight ships lay anchored in the river. We even spot one from Turkey as we pass by.

On the other side we disembark into the large customs terminal of this Zona Franca, the city of Manaus. We’ve made it! Our Trans-Amazonas adventure is complete!

We’ve been looking forward to reaching Manaus for some time. We’ll have the chance to meet some other travellers again for a change, it’s history is rich and, very importantly, in this Electronics “mecca” of Brazil, we hope to get our laptops fixed, melting away the last drops of the iceberg in the Amazonian heat!

The owner of the pousada suggested, and kindly asked the remaining members of the Malaria control team whether they’d be willing to carry the bulk of our luggage in the back of their 4×4 to Careiro for us. This would obviously make our ride so much easier by eliminating the heavy load on the bike. They kindly agreed.

Most of the malaria control team leave in the morning, but one 4×4 with the remaining folks and our gear remain until around midday, which is when we leave as well. In the mean time we enjoy our last moments in this out-of-the-way village, playing with the kids and taking in the scenery.

It’s a fond thank you and goodbye to the lovely people of Igapo Acu and we embark on the final 45 kilometre unpaved journey of the BR319, we realize that getting rid of our luggage has probably been the most important decision of this journey. What we encounter just a few kilometres after the ferry crossing is a constant trail of deep mud ruts and terribly difficult terrain.

Even without the heavy luggage, and even when Ebru gets off the bike to allow me to cross some of the deep slush pits blocking the way, it is very difficult to manoeuvre the motorcycle across without dropping it in the mud. We would never make it though with all our stuff on the back!

We leave the ferry ahead of the 4×4 and soon lose them in the distance. Even for the 4×4 it’s a gruelling drive and it’s slow going. Somewhere along the way we pass a truck stuck in the mud, the crew unloading its cargo to try and get it moving again. I don’t want to be in their shoes!

Then the mud gets worse and we really struggle. The 4×4 re-appears behind us and overtakes. At this point they have an advantage over us – being able to remain upright.

The problem with this last part of the road is not the severe deterioration of the surface alone, but also that here there is no way to side-step the obstacles. Further back, I was often able to move along some more solid bits in-between the mud-pools and in other cases, go completely off-road and ride through the shrub on the road-side. However here the road is mostly elevated on a mound, so a side-step would leave me stranded in a rut downhill somewhere amongst vegetation and whatever else is running around beneath.

It’s a hard ride! Half of the time Ebru is off the bike, walking; wading through puddles, checking how deep they are and how soft the mud is beneath. Sometimes we use old chunks of asphalt and rock, or logs of wood lying in the area to make a workable track across the mud-holes, or at least some solid foot-holds for me to help keep the bike upright. It’s blood, sweat and tears all the way. But not so may tears though – we know we’ve almost made it!

After 3 hours to finally reach the tarmac. Caked in mud, soaked in sweat and exhausted, we drop to our knees and kiss the solid ground whose image has been the stuff of our dreams for several days. We’ve made it through!

Riding on asphalt again feels unreal. There are some strips of dirt where the road is being repaired but nothing comparable to what we’ve been on. I take it pretty slow though – my chain’s been spluttered in mud and I am out of lube, so I don’t want to cause it to break by pushing it hard in my excitement.

We pass a jungle-hut not far from the road and I hear a chainsaw running, so I stop and call for the owner. He comes out and I ask him whether he’s got any oil he could spare to lubricate my chain – he obliges. I thank him and ask if I can pay him something in exchange. “No man,” he says, “we’re in Amazonas, we help each other out!”

That certainly has been our experience. Out here in this harsh, inhospitable abundance of life, people stick together. Everyone knows what they’re up against. Being left out on your own may mean game over. (My thoughts reflect on the loopy lady we met on day 1.)

We cruise along the last 100km to Careiro. The few bridges we have to cross are large structures of reinforced concrete. Hardly as exciting as what lies behind us.

We meet the Malaria team at the petrol station in Careiro as agreed. They lead us to a hotel across the road (Hotel Prive, 40BRL/dbl) and offload our things there. They don’t have time to stay for food or drink as they have to push on to another village in the sticks, so we say a big thank you to Dioneia, Maria and Ana Claudia, and the driver (whose name we cannot remember) for their help and wish them on a merry way.

The hotel room is a bit rough but there’s a swimming pool, so we spend the evening drinking beer and rinsing off the mud in the pool.

San Sebastian do Igao Acu is a small village along the BR319, laying at the point where the road crosses the river Igapo Acu. Actually the road takes a steep dive into the river and comes up on the other side, and a ferry boat manages the crossing of vehicles and people. At any hour of day or night, a car / truck / motorbike might pull up at the river’s edge and hoot the horn, whereupon the ferry driver will come down and pilot them across.

There’s not much out here that meets the eye. A number of wooden houses, home to the around 40 families that live out here, some small boats, a ferry, a public phone booth…. that’s about it.

Our arrival at San Sebastian marks a big milestone in our BR319 adventure, because it means that we’ve covered the uninhabited 400 kilometre stretch of the road, which presented the main risk of the journey. From here onwards remain another 45 kilometres of dirt road before we’re back on asphalt. Although it’s still expected to be rough going, we’re at least in a somewhat populated area again where help may be at hand if we need it.

Following our four-day ordeal, we’ve decided to sit tight in this village for a little while and get some much needed rest and to mend and clean our equipment. Besides, we’re not likely to find ourselves in such a remote part of the Amazonas again any time soon, so we might as well spend some time taking it in and enjoying it.

Life out here proceeds at a distinctly slower pace. It’s hard to make out exactly what these people do and with out command of their language we’re not getting any the wiser at speed. People get their supplies from out-of-town deliveries. Somewhere further downriver there’s some local agriculture, and of course there’s fishing.

Every afternoon, or several times a day, people get together and sit under the shade of the large trees opposite the pousada and talk, think, rest. One chap breeds little river turtles in his home for later release into the river, an attempt to boost their declining population. Women go down to the river and wash clothing and kitchen-ware from atop little wooden rafts. Some folks go out on ‘crocodile patrol’ during the night, where they will shoot them to control the risk to people in the area.

We wash our stinking biking gear in the river too. At some point in the day, children gather down by the river and go for a swim. We join them – it’s great fun. They’re full of life and energy, somersaulting overboard from the tall car-ferry into the water.

One day I try out my hand at fishing without any success. A couple of the guys there are intrigued at how I’m going about it, with my hand line and bottle. One morning they take me up to one guy’s house and as we sit on the little veranda and sip on cachaca (cane spirit) and beer, we exchange information about how we go about fishing in our countries – knots, bait, etc. It’s nice to have a common subject to bond with.

The following day they offer to take us fishing in one of their boats, out on the river. Though we don’t catch anything, we have great fun and I learn that here in Brazil, a bit of cachaca seems to accompany just about every activity you can imagine.

On the second day in the village, two crews arrive in a number of 4x4s. The one is from the malaria control team, visiting here to check the entire population for exposure, as well as to deploy some toxins to control the mosquito population.

As it happens, because we’re here at this time, we also get tested for malaria. It’s quite efficient really, and we’re surprised. These folks come out regularly, and testing and extermination is completed within 48 hours.

The other people are a research team, they will continue deeper into the jungle to a remote research camp, where they will spend about a month gathering information about changes in the local biome. We spend some time talking to these people and they’re all very interesting. Everyone’s got their own area of expertise and everyone is excited to be involved. I would be! Spending time out here, doing work in one of the last natural frontiers unpolluted by mankind – that’s a privilege!

The days are hot and every afternoon and/or night there’s a strong rain shower. We read, swim, tend to our equipment. We go out to the jungle streams to get fresh water to drink. At night we eat and drink a few beers whilst we join everyone watching the current number one TV soap in Brazil, Salve Jorge. Half of it plays off in Turkey so it’s at least somewhat intriguing for Ebru and I as well. It’s all very rejuvenating.

We end up staying here 4 nights…

Some of the people here used to live in cities like Porto Velho, but decided to escape from the environments of population, crime and pollution. Now there is talk of the BR319 being re-paved to make Manaus accessible by road for the 2014 Football World Cup preparations, (Manaus is meant to host many of the matches).

We wonder how this will affect these people. We’ve spoken to a number of people about this subject before: some believe it will happen and others believe it’s only a rumour, as has been the case many times in the past, since it’s far too controversial.

We learn that some residents here would be in support of the road, seeing in it some benefits in commerce and access to the city – for example, for any serious medical issues, the next hospital is in Careiro, which is several hours by 4×4 under current conditions. They also don’t seem to be too concerned about a bridge replacing the ferry crossing, and the ferry captain would be able to re-employ his vessel somewhere further down stream.

We can only see a big concrete blemish on this tranquil scene and a noisy, dirty highway with careless motorists ploughing right through it. (Do they not see it??) In our judgement, rebuilding this road carries an unbelievable potential for destruction. The beauty about this whole area is its inaccessibility and (therefore) natural purity. Something like 28 natural and indigenous reserves inhabit the area we have journeyed through. We suspect that illegal logging and mining operations would be only too convenienced by this new road.

Even this aside, I can clearly imagine the scene in a few years time: a constant flow of automobile traffic between the south and Manaus. Trucks puffing out black soot on their journey to Sao Paulo. Beer cans, plastic bags and colourful sweet wrappers clinging to the brush on the road-side. A scattering of truck tyres remnants and empty engine oil canisters – perhaps the odd refrigerator or other rubbish dumped in a convenient cove. Flattened corpses of snakes, birds, lizards and other wild decorating the tarmac. Butterflies and other insects withdrawn deeper into the remaining wild, no longer fearless and inquisitive towards outside human visitors, population and body size declining, just as I’ve witnessed in so many places man has gone to settled. Petrol stations, shops, rest stations… the thought of it is too much to bear!

My firm opinion is that anyone currently wanting to visit this place needs to pay the price in sweat and tears to make the hard journey, and therefore appreciates it more for what it is. And this should remain so! I know I don’t live out here in these difficult conditions, but it’s clearly obvious what happens to these places when they become easily accessible to mankind – one excuse leads to another and the result is a tragedy and a crime – just look at the [horribly deforested] eastern side of the Amazon. I can guarantee oil and gold exploration will be on the agenda at some point.

On our journey over the past few days has shown us an absolute ruin of a road – in fact it can hardly be called a road for much of its extent. The only maintained part we saw was the section between Humaita and the Labrea-Manaus junction, which is about 20 kilometres, and it was graded dirt, not asphalt. The rest of route goes through such hostile terrain that it’d surely take years to rebuild it. There’s only a year before the world cup so we’re suspecting this road will not be built.

…FINGERS CROSSED!

This morning feels different. We have a few rays of sunshine coming through the clouds, the grass and trees are still wet with dew, we have water from the well, a scrumptious breakfast of veg-on-veg instant noodles simmering in the camping pot… As we consume our breakfast, Şeker-Kız-Candy excitedly nibbles away on some salt-crackers we feed her. It almost feels like something of a home, something of a family, going on here. Me being delusional I guess. A multitude of bird calls and insect sounds brings the air to a pleasant vibration. I think I’d like to stay here longer. Except that we don’t have enough food.

Our departure from camp 3 turns out to be more difficult than any other. We check and load the bike up, give Şeker-Kız-Candy a loving pat goodbye. Within our short one-night stay here we’ve really befriended this dog and leaving her behind here all alone is turning out to be hard.

With heavy hearts (not like we don’t already have enough load on the bike) we head off down the road, but she follows us. The road is still moist and we’re therefore not able to speed up to much more than a jogging pace, so she’s having no trouble keeping up. Ebru tries to indicate to her to stay behind, but this poor dog obviously prefers company and is convinced we’re now together on this mission into the unknown – wherever it may lead us. She follows us over road and bridges for a couple of kilometres, until we finally hit a piece of road solid enough for us to accelerate out of sight. Heart-wrenching.

Well, from here the journey goes on, sluggishly, hot and humid! Though the sky is mostly overcast, we have plenty of penetration from the rays of the sun and it boils us in our suits. But nothing we’re not used to by now.

You’d expect that the heat given off by this solar radiation would have dried up the track for us. but unfortunately at this point the ground is so saturated with water that it’d take at least a day of good sunshine to harden out, I recon. Some places are deceivingly dry on the surface, but just below the water creates a soft bed of mush to slide around in. So on we plod…

The day gets hotter and in keeping with the tradition of days past, the track gets steadily worse as we get closer to the Amazon river. We’re both pretty tired and pissed off by now. After coming to terms with the initial shock of the reality of our situation, we switched into a different mental rhythm, one that would keep us tough, focused, persistent, not allowing us to give in to the pressure and resign in wait of the vultures. Keeping this focus has been very important as there’s not much space out here for errors nor low spirits. But now, after four days, we’re tired and turning each corner to find yet more brown road ahead of us is becoming hard to bear.

We have some nice pieces of asphalt here and there, but the muddy sections are therefore all the more challenging. Deep mud, metres across, no footholds… just terrible!

We start to encounter occasional signs of civilization. Every now and again a rickety wooden sign-board naming a fazenda, or a barb wire fence. We’re not quite out of the woods yet, but we’re getting closer and it’s encouraging.

Sometime about 11:00 I drop the bike again, coming off a bridge. Because of the need to avoid falling, as well as circumventing protruding nails on the wooden path, I’m crossing bridges really slowly and, the bike being very heavy, this doesn’t give me much natural magic to hold the bike upright. There’s a little drop off the end-board of the bridge and as my front wheel comes down I lose balance as the weight shifts forward. Oh well – another hour or so lost. Anyway it’s just about midday-park-under-a-shady-leaf-and-drink-some-water time!

I notice as we ride, that my back is burning. I take my shirt off and have a look: I’ve kept a money belt slung around my shoulder underneath my T-shirt, to keep it out of sight, and it seems that with all of the sweat, salt and rubbing it’s caused a lovely rash between my shoulder blades. One of the bonuses of off-the-beaten-track adventure…

Now and again we pass farm houses – simple constructions of wooden boards on stilts, high off the ground. I cannot see why they need those stilts right now, but I suppose with some heavy rains out here, this whole landscape might be a whole lot different. Maybe it’s just for the wild cats.

Further ahead it all gets really nasty. Ebru walking half the way, not wasting the energy to climb back on the saddle for the short distance to the next puddle. She’s treading mud and building crossings where possible. I’m going completely off-road where I can, trying to find some hard ground in the shrubbery instead of slushing through this awful mud!

Crossing one deep mud-rut, the back tyre gets stuck and doesn’t make it out the other side. I’ve got some precarious foot-hold and luckily I haven’t dropped the bike, but it’s bad. Carefully I try to rock the bike back and forth, accelerate to climb out of this mess, but the slush is deep and soft and I can hardly keep balance.

While I do this, Ebru gets up behind the bike and tries to aid by pushing the bike forward. I accelerate and the wheel turns, but I’m not getting out. It almost seems to me I hear Ebru try to say something, but it’s muffled under the sound of the motor. I stop the engine and turn to look at her. She’s standing there in shock, covered in mud from toe to head! Red-brown clay mud running down her face, her shirt, her trousers… mud on her hair, her lips, her eye lashes…. I guess as the wheel splattered it all up at her she tried to shout, but then kept her mouth and eyes shut to avoid the dirt getting in.

Ebru’s a royal mess! I mean this is probably the most memorable mess I’ll ever see her in. I have a fleeting thought of “I MUST get a photo of this!” but I know for sure she’d kill me if I ask for the camera. But then I also know she’ll so have wanted that photo to be taken, later when we’re looking back at all this… Too risky! I love my life

Ebru’s in a bit of shock. Following the two seconds it takes her to realize she’s still alive, I see her shoulders sag as she breaks down and starts to cry. I’m stuck holding up the bike, my feet desperately trying to keep grip in this slush-pit and I can’t even get off and help. It’s a horrible situation.

Soon Ebru’s gathered herself together and washed off the dirt with water, and we’re ready to move on. Somehow, in my anger, I have managed to rock the bike back and forth and with some power from the engine, brought the back tyre out of the rut. Thank f–k for that!

The road winds on.. At some time around two or three in the afternoon we hit some lovely streaks of tarmac, weaving narrowly between trees and bush. Some are hundreds of metres long and uninterrupted. We glide over it, savouring the smoothness, the effortlessness of the ride, the cool breeze blowing in our faces. Lots of beautiful fat lizards in splendid colours lying here, sun bathing on the hot tar. Once, on a downhill, we spot what must be a wild cat, pitch black with a long bushy tail, on the road in front of us. It moves off into the bushes as we approach.

Then eventually we open up on to a tar road as wide as a six-lane highway, and I know we’ve just about made it. It’s an awesome feeling – we’re cruising along, solo, on this massive road surrounded only by dry grass and jungle. We don’t even have to indicate to change lanes.

Then another narrow stretch, then an abandoned petrol station, and very soon after: houses. A whole handful of them. We’ve made it!

We ride out to where the road ends on a steep slope into a wide river. A ferry awaits, but we will take that another day. For now, we’ve reached civilization – the village of San Sebastian de Igapo Acu, and we’re going to get some rest!

After I stop the bike, Ebru gets off the back, walks over on to the grassy slope and vomits. She’s been through an ordeal and having made it through must have been overwhelming. The handful of local folks sitting under the tree look at her in surprised amusement, but then one man approaches her with a cup of dark cane sugar drink with ice.

Our BR319 journey hasn’t finished yet, but we’ve made it through the most dangerous part – 400 kilometres of Amazonian desert, without access to any human services.

As we get familiar with some of the people, unload our motorcycle and move into our room at the pousada at the river, we start to acclimatize and take in the tranquility of the place. It’s a small village, we see only about 20 wooden houses, there’s a large river with a ferry, a number of boats and rafts parked up at its edge, a couple of people washing clothes or tending to their boats. A number of young children play about, dragging toy trucks behind them on a string, or riding along on a tricycle. A few men and women sit lazily under the large trees near the pousada, smiling and talking at a relaxed pace. Looks like we might enjoy it here.

I complete the morning maintenance routine as always – visual check, tyre pressure check, fuel top-up, chain lube, engine warm-up, oil check and top-up. The oil level needs topping up every morning which I find worrying, but maybe it’s just the tough going out here. Anyway we cannot do anything about it now but keep adding. Will get it looked at in Manaus.

Though sometimes we can almost identify a feint of blue, the sky overcast with white and grey, so we pocket our hopes of better weather and dry roads for use on another day.

The first few kilometres are reasonably dry and solid, but the road gets progressively worse as we head closer to Manaus, even though for some time it’s actually quite sunny. Too much water in the soil already. I find myself thinking that this is logical, as we’re getting closer to the ground water level of the majestic Rio Amazonas. But that’s probably nonsense as well.

Not much time to think out here though. Ebru and I are fully in gear and are working together every step of the way, me manoeuvring the bike and keeping it upright, Ebru scanning the road ahead for obstacles and feeding directions back to me as I concentrate on the close-up stuff. At bridges, Ebru gets off and surveys them first, then advises me on the best path and guides me as I slowly move our heavy craft across.

When we encounter deep mud ruts and puddles, Ebru gets off and wades through, checking how deep they are and whether they’re passable. I try to help out with this myself but mostly there’s no solid ground to prop the bike up on its side stand and I’m left holding the bike up.

Sometimes, below the surface water, there’s actually solid stone beneath, meaning I can zip across without problems. At other times you step into the puddle and your boot disappears into a foot of soft mud, leaving you struggling to pull it out. In these cases another way has to be found.

Sometimes there’s pieces of asphalt or rock or wood, probably from old bridges, lying around, with which we can build a way across. mostly this isn’t possible but we use them to place foot-holds along the way so that as I ride across I can at least lean on something solid and keep the bike from slipping out sideways.

Every few kilometres – where we can find ground solid enough to out the bike on its stand, we’re on our knees, scraping the thick clay out from under the mud-guards and the rear suspension area and the chain drive sprocket enclosure. This stuff is so sticky it forms a thick layer around the tyres – not to mention your boots – and when the wheels turn, bit by bit it sprays off and gets stuck in all the cavities. Though it looks like soft mud, it’s clay just like you’d use for making pottery, and when you have a build-up between the tyres and other surfaces it creates such friction, you think you’re stuck on a rock or something, but the tyre’s gripped in a vice and slowly you’re burning your clutch out!

Did I mention there were nice bits too?….

Hard going, but we get on pretty well – if you can call 5 to 10 km/h “well”. Near midday the sun burns down so hot, you start to get aggravated. Amidst all the concentration it’s important to try and realize that and keep up your water intake and take a break in a shady spot – if you can find one.

The ride goes on. Slowly, painfully, carefully. The walls are green and the floor is brown for all the few kilometres until the horizon. I squint in concentration, trying to identify any wet-brown-ness or perhaps even a shimmer of grey, but that seldom happens, and the grey shimmers are no more than a few metres across. I set the horizon as my target, focus myself and slowly we plug along the road, getting off here and there to walk through mud, build foot-holds or work out a way round something nasty or across a bridge.

Just before we reach the horizon there’s always a silent pulse of hope, a desperate kind of optimism that, following that next turn or ridge, the floor will be grey for a good long distance.

But around that bend and over that ridge, the walls are green and the floor is brown. Again my heart sinks and I have to steel myself for the beating I am – yet again – about to receive. The brown line of the road ahead stands dead still and stares back at me – as if it hasn’t even noticed me, but it knows I’m there, and it knows I know. Silent. Emotionless. Merciless.

About 11:00, on a nasty bit of slush, I drop the bike and lose my temper in a bout of intense frustration. I curse the mud and the rain and whatever else I remember to curse. The sun is getting to me again and now, in the midst of the heat, we’ll have to unpack, pick up the bike and re-pack before we can move on.

Sensibly, with the benefit of past experience, we huddle into a spot of shade off in the shrubbery and drink lots of water and eat some panela bar before we complete this exhausting task. This allows us to recuperate, gather our wits and also assess that our water levels need topping up pretty urgently.

The water level is another topic of frustration and leads to additional fear, argument and grief. Our decision is as follows: we will have to get water from one of the lagoons or streams we pass on the way ahead.

Random!! This in the middle of nowhere. Possibly a military camp nearby…

Further up the road we come by a lagoon accessible from the road side. It looks murky and green but it’s water nonetheless and we don’t recall passing any clean looking water at all so far. I grab a bottle and head down the ravine to the edge of the water, giving it a good, long stare. I have a good idea what a crocodile lurking just beneath the water may look like, but an Anaconda? My original visions of tying a string to the bottleneck and lowering it into the water have gone to pot – just not practical. So here I go.I crouch down and start filling up, keeping a keen eye on the water for any movement. I notice Ebru’s at the top of the slope taking photographs with her camera. “Well dear,” I think to myself, “if an Anaconda grabs me now you’ll have an award winning photo for sure!”

We putter along with our new murky water for some time. Crossing over yet another bridge, I notice how the black water from the big lagoon turns crystal clear as it passes through the sallow sandy channel under the bridge. That water is clean! Though all the water we’ve come by looks still and black, it’s actually crystal clear, it’s only because there is so much tannin in the water from all the plant life around, it becomes completely opaque as soon as it’s any deeper than about a half metre.

I pour our our new murky water and head down the ravine with all of our empty bottles to go and re-fill with clear and clean water. I’m at a wide, shallow, sandy stretch just below the bridge, almost like a beach, and the water flowing by me looks pure as can be. It’s also a lot more comforting being able to see to the bottom of the water around you (for reasons discussed above).

Our water reserves are completely replenished now! Of course we will chuck in a chlorine tablet just in case, but it looks like we’ll be fine, and no doubt now we know what to look for, there’ll be plenty of water ahead for the taking if we need it.

Ebru comes down the ravine to check out the water. I’m surprised. She stares at it for a while, then grabs one of the large water bottles out of my hand, opens it and drains the entire thing out over her head. GENIUS! A shower! Before you know it we’ve got our shirts of and we’re drenching ourselves with this cool, revitalizing amazonian water like elephants at the water hole. What an incredible feeling! All that dirt and sweat and stink and pain and heat, all washed away by this magical liquid flowing right here in the middle of nowhere. Well this certainly put some stride in our step!

We soon reach the next telecomm’s tower. The gate is open and there’s a 4×4 parked there so we go to investigate. It turns out to be some of the Embratel workers and they invite us for coffee. Again, though we’d love some, we decline, seeing that it’s already 3PM and we have another 35 or so kilometres to go before dark. The road report from them isn’t very encouraging. But we’re getting used to not expecting any improvement.

Somewhere around then we must have hit a high score and got a bonus round or something, because all of a sudden we’re riding on a stretch of tarmac about a kilometre long! It’s cracked and half reclaimed by the jungle, but it’s good hard asphalt. I’m so pleased I instinctively want to open up the throttle, but knowing that this may be the last of it for a long way, I’m content to glide along at 50km/h and let my body enjoy the relaxation it.

Late afternoon we pass some lost soul on some kind of a street bike. How the hell did he end up out here with that??? It turns out he’s part of a 4-car 4×4 convoy headed to Porto Velho and he’s been sent ahead to scout out the road. Well good luck with those tyres!

It takes us until about 6PM to get to the next tower where we set up camp.

The final tally for the day: We’re two telecomm’s towers further ahead – about 80km. Total distance from starting point Manaus is 362Km. We crossed 37 bridges. Our water reserves are FULL and Food levels are as expected. What a recovery!

Another wonderful set of surprises await us here: firstly, there is a water well here which has been left unlocked, so we have all the drinking and cooking water we need and we can shower and wash our clothes.

Secondly, we have company! A lonely dog is also camped out here, probably belonging to one of the Embratel workers. She’s a beautiful little dog and she’s been so lonely out here you can see the sadness in her eyes. She’s absolutely ecstatic to have company. It’s funny how this works, but we’re totally chuffed to meet this dog out here too.

So we give her a bit of love and feed her some biscuits while we have our incredible roast-chicken-on-chicken meal of instant noodles. Ebru promptly givers her a name: Şeker-Kız-Candy (translated that means something like Sweet-Girl-Candy). At night, when we go to sleep under our mosquito net under the comm’s tower, she huddles up next to us for the night. I feel like I’m in Jock of the Bushveld.

Some time around midnight we hear some noise. A 4×4 has pulled up at the gate and they’re hooting, trying to get the attention of anyone who might be living here. Eventually I walk down to see what’s up. It’s two men transporting some heavy equipment towards Manaus. They’ve driven all the way from Porto Velho today, a long drive indeed, and they both look utterly shagged. The one guy crashes in the car, but the other was looking for a place to hang his hammock. I show him the hole in the fence and he soon finds himself a spot around the building and crashes.

It’s a bit scary having these two strangers in our vicinity, out here in the middle of nowhere. What if they have bad intentions? But then again I think that, if you have made the arduous journey all the way out here, you’re probably have a more serious mission and if you’ve stopped out here at this hour like these guys have, you’re probably too exhausted to do anything but sleep. In any case, I have my machete to hand and Şeker-Kız-Candy is here to protect us. The guys are back on their way by about 4AM – Maniacs!

We wake up early and the rain has stopped. Thank God! Instant noodles for breakfast go down well and the best news is we’ve managed to trap a couple of litres of rain water in the poncho, which brings us back to our planned level. However we now know that we could very easily be using up more water per day than expected.

We pack up and safety check before hitting the road. Strangely I’ve had to add a bit of engine oil again but I guess that may be because of the driving conditions.

The road has changed unbelievably since yesterday. The slight amount of moisture remaining following the rains last night has turned the surface into a mud-slide. It’s not deep slush, but it’s slippery as hell! Well, with a bit of luck it’ll dry out in a couple of hours.

Our driving tempo has slowed considerably. We’re averaging 5 to 10 km/h and it’s not fun. At kilometre 219 we see the final farm house and thereafter nothing. The surroundings are beautiful, for sure, but I have to focus on driving so intensely that I can’t take most of it in. Whenever we reach bridges now, Ebru gets off the bike and I drive across very slowly.

Late morning, a chap, plain clothes, is standing at the road side looking towards us. Unexpected. There’s a very basic shelter on the deforested plot behind him, wooden posts, palm leaf roof – he must be stationed here for something. As we pull up next to him we stop and greet. He seems very cheerful and invites us for coffee. We’re dying for a cup of coffee right now, but we’re progressing so slowly, we’re worried about making it out of this desert before we run out of supplies. Regretfully, we explain, we must decline and move on.

It’s only later, looking at the photos, we realize what a gorgeous paradise we were in…

An hour down the road the view gets more and more enchanting: the sky above the trees is an ominous grey, as we move closer we hear occasional rumblings of thunder. The situation is becoming really tense. Soon we meet the first rain drops. Light and fine, but wet none the less, and out here that is BAD news! It’s almost like a wall of rain which doesn’t move one way or the other, it just stays there in its same position and makes things wet. Here it’s dry – there it’s wet. We push on carefully, hoping that the rain will subside ahead.

By kilometre 243 the drizzle has not let up. Riding along, even at 5km/h is scary business! The bike is heavy and my shoe soles are caked with a fist-width of mud. So are the tyres – “Enduro” my ass…

At some point it all becomes too much. We can’t take it anymore. We have something like a break-down there. An argument – or an angry outburst of sorts. Talk of regrets, stupidity and agonizing visions of thousand-mile back-tracks to the countries we came from. We’re destroyed – out of energy, out of confidence, out of hope. We turn the bike around and slowly ride back in disappointment.

An hour and half later – or 15 kilometres – we again pass the chap we spoke to earlier. He’s come up to the road side again and invites us for coffee. “What the hell,” we say to ourselves, “might as well.” We follow him into his little hut. It’s more of a roof on posts, a hand-made clay oven on one side and a bunk-style bed fitted well above the ground with a ladder to it – apparently to protect against the wild cats.

The man speaks Portuguese, which we already hardly understand, with a twang that’s almost unintelligible to us. Yet he’s very talkative. In a flash he cuts up a log with his chainsaw, sparks up a fire and cooks up a bashed up pot of coffee – black, sweet, Brazilian style. It goes down like a dream! He tells us he lives out here for several weeks at a time, working to maintain this plot. We don’t really get it but as I drink my coffee I think to myself how grateful one must be out here to get some company once in a while.

We explain that we’re returning to Humaita. The road conditions have become unmanageable ahead and we’ve given up. “Back to Realidade”, he asks – meaning, unbeknown to us, the last village we passed through. What a fitting name indeed! “Yes”, back there. He looks thoughtfully at us as we savour the feeling of caffeine and sugar pumping into our veins.

“Why do that?” he continues with a smile, “your way back is about as long as your way forward. No point in going back. Might be raining back there too.” Ebru and I look at each other, not sure what to think. We walk with him to the top of a nearby mound. Indeed there are grey clouds back there as well as ahead.

He says to me, “You want to go to Manaus right?”
“Yes.”
“Well then go,” he smiles casually. “If that’s where you want to go there’s no point turning back. Just go. You’ll get there, all you need is PACIENCIA. If you go back you’ve got a similar distance, probably similar conditions, and you won’t get to Manaus. So just go.”

Ebru and I look at each other, not believing how our minds actually seem to be inclining towards trying this again.

We ponder and discuss the matter some more. Ebru is scratching sums into the ground with a stick, confirming the exact mileage we have ahead of us, compared to behind. We’re still not sure what he put in that coffee, but by the time we leave there we’ve got the confidence to move forward again, towards Manaus.

We leave at about 13:30 and we cover another 55Km that day. But it’s a hard slog in first gear. Muddy, slippery, dodgy bridges to cross. Every few kilometres we have to stop and use our hands to scrape the thick mud cake out from under the mud guards and rear suspension and chain area because it’s causing so much friction when turning the wheels, the clutch is having a hard time – I can almost smell it!

Other nutcases on a misson… at least they packed light…

Every time we cross a bridge Ebru is off the bike and guiding me. Now, in fact, she’s guiding me constantly: at this rate I’m only able to focus on the three or five metres right in front of me, trying to avoid obstacles and prevent dropping the bike, but that means I can’t look further ahead to plot a course, so Ebru is focussing there, telling me whether to veer left or right, or whether something’s coming up. It’s like playing an FPS game with one person concentrating on the close-range melee while the other is steering the way to go and checking the coast is clear ahead. It’s team work, real-time.

At one point in the late afternoon, from behind us a couple of large 4×4 pick-ups overtake us with farming machinery on the back. They stop and a number of big men and a woman get out. We greet, exchange a few words, and I think we must look pretty shattered to them, because the lady goes back to the car and brings us a bottle of ice cold water. Holy smoke! Has she any idea what an angelic gesture this is? We are exhausted, we’re not doing well on water supply, and this stuff is ice cold! We drink like it’s Ichor. She brings us a box of biscuits. This is unbelievable!

Well the people encounters we have had along the way have seemed almost prophetic. As if some universal force was telling us to move on just as we’re about to give up, and making sure that we have enough help and supplies on the way. Or maybe that’s what we want to believe to convince ourselves we’re not completely stupid to go on with this journey.

The rest of the the day’s journey is a slog. Mile after mile of slippery clay-mud, wooden bridges in various states of repair – or disrepair, sections of road disappeared into deep ditches filled with vegetation or water. Occasional stretches of crumbling asphalt or grass-overgrown road are a respite from the intense grind of riding the bike onwards on this terrible muddy terrain. Every now and again a glimmer of hope as we imagine the weather may be clearing up, but no such luck this time.

The final tally for the day: By nightfall we’ve made it a whole two telecomm’s towers ahead – a distance of about 70km. We did a detour of 30Km to “get coffee” though. Total distance from starting point Humaita is now: 283Km. We crossed 24 bridges. Our water reserves are according to plan but that won’t be enough at the rate we’re consuming. Food levels are as expected.

The night in the Embrahotel is a bit more comfortable than last. We pitch the tent for storing our things and as an emergency shelter in case of rain, but this time our bedroom is a set of Thermarest mats covered by a mosquito net, out in the open, suspended directly from the large transmitter tower – which we hope doesn’t double as a lightning conductor!

Another friendly Amazonian insect pays us a visit…

Dinner is a delicious serving of roast chicken and vegetables on a bed of noodles, all magically re-hydrated with boiling water. We sleep under the stars with a cool breeze caressing our skins, while the jungle orchestra plays us a magical lullaby. In the early morning hours we feel the touch of drizzle. At least we have an idea what kind of a day lies ahead. But the drizzle is minimal, barely enough to get us wet, so we stay where we are and enjoy the last hour or two of slumber before it’s time to rise.