tHE BiKEs From Bra Zil - part 4

without getting lost. Minor drama awaited at the resort with my 1 litre water bottle discovered to contain 1 millilitre while the remainder was sloshing around in my top-box, luckily nothing electrical had been marinated. Considerately festooning everything outside the room to create a slum atmosphere, it was to the bar for the welcome drinks; we were in town for 3 nights. Tragically the resort didn’t provide meals other than breakfast, so off into town to find the supermarket with Gabi and Roisin – typical of the Brazilian facilities it was huge and contained everything except cold white wine. A glitch with the eftpos system left 1 hand-held machine to deal with 10 registers and about 100 customers on Good Friday eve, but an older gentleman who was clearly legally blind motioned all 4 of us into his very short queue as we were deserving of priority.

Thoroughly waterlogged and smiling, it was back to the estancia for lunch, and listening to the large red-legged seriema birds making a hell of a racket.

The only possible explanation is that the gentleman assumed we were all autistic

Typical of priority queues, by the time some aged idosos had paid for the weekly shop with their wheelbarrow full of low denomination coins, we saw people who hadn’t even entered the supermarket when we swapped queues out loading their cars. Never mind, we were on holidays. Day 42 Good Friday was an excursion out to Rio Mimosa estancia, we were told we were doing walks with intermittent bathing. That’s pretty much what happened, we donned bathers and suitable footwear, and got into a bus which took us to the Rio. After a steep descent, the day consisted of short walks between about 5 waterfalls which are growing due to the high calcium and magnesium content of the water.

Rio Mimosa falls

As if simply to demonstrate that Rio Mimosa wasn’t a fluke, Day 43 was a trip out to another river, this one sourced from freshwater springs bubbling up through sand and therefore ridiculously clear. Snorkels and wetsuits were provided and came with a snorkel fitting and use instruction session in a pool. Once satisfied that we could use the snorkels and hopefully be trusted not to clean them by spitting in them like someone with 50 years experience of doing that did, it was a long march to the river. The fish were large and numerous, and it was a pleasant float downstream before a long march in squelching wetsuit boots on slippery boards to get back for a late lunch.