tHE BiKEs From Bra Zil - part 4

Here fishy fishy

A big Easter Saturday dinner was held at a local restaurant, unlike Australia nothing closes over Easter and in fact it is a time for getting out on the town, there were people everywhere. Usual huge meal with beers and wines and then back in a taxi whose driver thought we’d said our hotel was in the Amazon, even we knew he was going wrong once he’d left the lights of Bonito far behind. With the fare at stake, he turned around once we’d clearly enunciated the resort name, and the wild fantasies of being held hostage in the Brazilian outback were soon quashed.

No restaurant in the hotel, no wine, and only American beer, so off to the Supermercado. It was bloody enormous and we thought we were in some sort of Brazilian Costco, everything was in bulk. So beer and wine and cheese and bikkies and salami in bulk later, we reached a language stand-off at the check-out. We initially guessed correctly that we didn’t have a membership rewards card, the checkout lady didn’t need a Rhodes Scholarship to figure that one out, but the next series of questions involving getting the supervisor whose English was worse than our Spanish and seemingly focussed on my beer bottles had us all just looking at each other. They eventually just gave up and let us pay.

T-Rex trying to attract a truckie’s attention to the enormous egg she’s laid, beat that

Day 44 was again a necessary big day back through the endless rich agricultural plains to Navirai, a city literally laid out like a spider’s web. We were like those annoying flies that bumped around the outer edge of the web without getting stuck, we never got near the centre.

Over the line on our third continent

Day 45 was the last day of Brazil. We had to push south quickly to get into Foz, many including Cindy and I had a tyre change planned and Cindy had a service besides. We were into Pico Motos at 3pm, and within 2½ hours it was all done, just amazing for 7 bikes on a Sunday. The price of the tyres (Michelin Anakee Adventures for both Tigers, and most of the BMW’s) blew the hair back though; Brazil imports them so charges huge duty, over $1000 per bike for a set that would cost $600 in Australia so hopefully they’ll last a while.

Out of Brazil border crossing on Day 46, back to Argentina. Through the Brazilian side formalities, it was over the river to the Argentinian side, then back again to the Brazilian side as I’d left my gloves on my top-box and someone said they’d seen gloves on the bridge