Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Arroio do Sal, Rio Grande do Sul, Mile 570, November 30, 2010

Greetings from the little beach town of Arroio do Sal, which is about 20 miles south of Torres.  Today I encountered some absolutely monstrous headwinds, in the 20 to 25 MPH range, coming straight out of the south.  As I was heading south, it felt like someone was pushing my against my chest, which sure slowed everything down.

I headed out of Torres, went about a mile and a half east, then turned south on to RS-389, known as the ¨Estrada do Mar¨ (Coast Highway).  Immediately, the wind hit me.  Almost three hours (and one Coke and three bottles of water) later, I had only moved 20 miles, and was faced with a choice:  Either take the cut-off for Arroio do Sal, or continue on another 20 miles to Capao da Canoa, a slightly larger resort.  I decided to bin it, and cut into Arroio do Sal.  The 20 miles on 389 were quite pretty, off to my right (west), I could see the coast range (known as the ¨Brazilian Escarpment¨ that I had descended out of a few days ago.  To my left were fields; 389 is far enough inland that the ocean was out of sight.

Once I got off of 389, I rode a couple of miles into town, found half a dozen hotels, five of which had signs saying that they would open for the season in mid December, and was very happy to discover that the sixth was open.  I got a room, locked my bicycle to a pole in the garage, and, on my way back through the office with my clothes and things, discovered Zero Hora!, the principal Porto Alegre newspaper that is my favorite of all Brazilian papers.  Zero, as it is known, is so right wing it makes Limbaugh and friends look like wimpy flip-floppers.  I appropriated it, and as I was basically exhausted from fighting the wind, lay on the sofa in my room for an hour reading it.  It had an interesting, and long, article on the WikiLeaks situation; apparently the Brazilian government has been cooperating a LOT more than they have admitted to, and the reason that ¨no terrorists have been operating in Brazil¨ is that every time the Policia Federal nabs, say, a Hezbollah operator in the triple border region, they charge him with drug trafficking or something, and do not classify it as terrorism.  This lets the government say one thing for public consumption and do something very different.  Whether this will cause any problems for the government or not remains to be seen; Lula is out of office next month anyway.

The newspaper situation in Brazil is interesting.  Unlike in the US, basically every State in Brazil has one and only one big city, which is the capital.  Porto Alegre and environs, for example, is at least ten times the size of Pelotas, RS´s second largest city.  Ditto Florianopolis for Lages in Santa Catarina.  (In Uruguay, it is even more stark, Montevideo is about 15 times the size of Uruguay´s second city, Salto.)  The capital city´s main newspaper then becomes the principal newspaper in all the state.  So, in the first days of my trip, I encountered O Diario do Povo, from Curitiba, Parana, everywhere.  As soon as I crossed the border into Santa Catarina, O Diario disappeared, and was replaced with Diario Catarinense (DC), from Florianopolis.  Once in Torres yesterday, DC disappeared, and Zero made its appearence.  When I get to Uruguay, two or three Montevideo papers (principally El Pais) will be available throughout the country, and the Brazilian papers will disappear.  (However, in Punta del Este, it will be easier to find, and cheaper to buy, La Nacion or Clarin from Buenos Aires, to the immense disgust of the indigeneous Uruguayan population.)

Once done reading the paper, I went walking along the beach for a while, and almost got my face sandblasted off by the wind.  So much for that.  I then went to a cafeteria and ordered beef with rice and french fries, and got a HUGE bowl of rice, another of fries, and a large piece of meat, all for less then ten bucks.  I am now going to go back to the hotel and see if I can borrow a bucket, hose and a towel and wash off my bicycle, two weeks of travel have left it pretty dirty.

Tomorrow´s weather forecast calls for 10 to 20 MPH winds blowing east to west, and since I will be going south and west, this should help to get a little farther than I did today.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Torres, RS, Mile 547, November 29, 2010

Greetings from Torres, where I was treated to an illuminative lightening storm last night, and it has continued raining on and off all day today.  Luckily, it is supposed to be sunny and in the 80s for the rest of the week.  Today was relaxing, and it was nice to be off the bike for the day. 

Here is an excellent map of Rio Grande do Sul, which will serve to explain what I am talking about below:

http://www.transportes.gov.br/bit/estados/port/rs.htm

This morning, I got a piece of very good news.  I wandered down town with my map to the tourist office, and talked to the very nice girl inside for a while.  She informed me that, contrary to what my map shows, BR-101 is paved all the way to Sao Jose do Norte, AND there is ferry service from Sao Jose to Rio Grande, AND I should be able to find a bottom-end hotel in Mostardas or Tavares, halfway down the peninsula.  It is about 225 miles from here to Sao Jose do Norte, and I should be able to do that in three days, if the wind is right.  Assuming it stops raining, I will be on my way tomorrow.

On another happy note, since this is a major tourist spot, I actually found a money exchange place this morning, and was able to exchange $340 at R$1.70 to one.  That should, with luck, be enough to get me out of Brazil, and means I am not carrying so much cash around with me.

Next to the money exchange place, I bought the local paper (for 75¢), and walked to the beach where I found a little place that sold me a Coke and a ¨pastelzinho¨, which is what the Brazilians call empanadas.  Looking through the paper, I found a little one paragraph piece on a ¨truck accident¨ Sunday morning on BR-101 in Santa Catarina, near the municipio of Ararangua.  The paper reported that one of the drivers died, which, considering the shape of the cab I saw, and the PRF cop´s reaction, surprised me not a bit.  Too bad for him.

I then walked all the way to the end of the 3,200 meter boardwalk, and came to the Rio Mampituba, which is the border with Santa Catarina.  On the other side was Paso de Torres.  I then walked back to the hotel, got my book and read for a while, and, taking advantage of another break in the rain, got out my bike and rode around through town.  To my immense disgust, I discovered a bridge over the Mampituba, which led into Paso de Torres.  Had I known that such a bridge existed (it does NOT appear on my map), I would have ridden into Paso de Torres yesterday, and gotten off the BR-101 a few miles early.  I then found another bridge, made of rope and for pedestrians only, and walked the bike back across it.  I got back to the hotel shortly before the skies opened up again.

I also went to three pharmacies this morning, and stood on three different scales (In case one was wrong.)  All of them showed me, dressed in shorts and tennis shoes, to weigh 90 kilos, which is 198 pounds.  When I weighed myself at home, the morning before my last day at school, I weighed (sans shorts and shoes) 208 pounds.  Take into account the clothes, and I have lost just about 12 pounds over the last two weeks.  It is amazing what the combination of lots of exercise, eating right, and not drinking any beer can do to one´s weight.

The chaos in Rio, by the way, seems to have died down.  The PMs and Army invaded and took control of a huge slum called the ¨Complexo do Alemao¨ on Saturday, and the paper had a picture of them planting a Brazilian flag on the very top of the slum, like it was the capture of Iwo Jima.  Resistance was said to be ¨less than expected¨ which, this being Brazil, makes me suspect some kind of a deal was worked out with the traffickers.  Who know...

More will follow...

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, Mile 541, November 28, 2010



Well, I made it out of Santa Catarina. 

Today finds me in the beach resort of Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, about five miles south and east of the RS/SC border.  Adding in today´s 45 miles, I have now ridden 541 miles on this trip, 160 in Parana, and 376 in Santa Catarina.  I still have all of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) and all of Uruguay to go, and RS is, by far, the biggest of the four jurisdictions I am visiting on this trip.

Speaking of Santa Catarina, I got on Google Earth and looked at the stretch of SC-438 where I burned up my brakes coming down the mountain.  It would appear from the satellite imagery that I dropped 3,000 feet while advancing only about a mile, as the crow flies.  The people who laid out and built this road must have been some very serious engineers.

Yesterday evening, in Arroio do Silva, I went out and had a quite good pizza for dinner.  Then, about 9PM, walking back to my hotel, I came upon a sort of bandstand set up in a park.  They had loudspeakers set up, playing Sertaneja music (Brazilian country music), and a bunch of couples aged anywhere from 20´s to 60´s were dancing the two step, like they were in Texas.  Most interesting.  I wandered back to my hotel, talked with the owner, who had worked in Connecticut years ago, for a while and eventually wandered off to sleep.  This morning, I retrieved my clothes, which I had had washed, drank about half a gallon of orange juice, and headed out about 9:30AM. 

The six miles out of town back to BR-101 was very narrow, with no shoulder, and I was a little worried that all the people who had been drinking all night (I heard them) would be on it.  Luckily, they were not, all the traffic was into town, not out.  I made my way out onto the main highway, stopped at an ESSO station for a Coke and a bottle of water, and proceeded south.  To my great happiness, a shoulder reappeared on the roadway, and the highway itself went from one lane each direction to two lanes each, divided, and then back with numbing repetitiveness.  For about half the mileage I pedalled today, I was able to use frontage roads, the rest was on the highway itself, but there was always at least a shoulder for me, so it was quite safe.  For me.

About 25 miles into my trip, just after the little town of Sombrio, I came upon a traffic back up.  Being on a bicycle, I simply road to the front of it.  What a disaster.  It would appear, from what was left of them, that a tank truck on the west side of BR-101 (which was one lane in each direction at this point) decided to turn left (North bound) out of a gas station onto the highway.  He was impacted at what must have been an EXTREMELY high rate of speed by a stake bed truck travelling south bound.  Luckily, whatever was in that tank was not explosive, as it was all over the road.  The stake bed truck that hit the tanker did so with such force that the cab completely disintegrated, went UNDER the tank trailer, and emerged from the other side.  I would estimate that this happened half an hour before I arrived on scene.  The Policia Rodoviaria Federal (PRF, federal highway patrol) was there, and I watched one of them look into what was left of the cab, and then walk over to the side of the road and vomit.  I assume they did not waste any time calling an ambulance.  Curiously, nothing at all happened to the cab or driver of the tank truck; like always, the morons who cause accidents never get hurt in them.

On that happy note, I continued along, stopped to drink my water, stopped again a bit later to have another Coke, pulled of the frontage road into an underpass under BR-101 and drank another water in the shade, continued on and passed the cutoff for Paso de Torres, which is the southernmost city in Santa Catarina.  A mile later, I crossed a bridge over a river and was in Rio Grande do Sul.  Crossing the border, I stopped and had one more Coke (a little one, I bought what looked like a 12 oz can on a diet, it was as tall, but significantly thinner, and held 9 oz.) and bought one more water.  Two miles south of the border, I came to a cut off for RS 345, rode around a VERY long cloverleaf, and headed east into Torres, stopping to drink the water en route.  It was blazing hot, and I was sweating like a race horse in July.

Torres is a very large resort town that serves as a sort of Ocean City, Maryland for Porto Alegre.  (It is about the same distance as OC is from DC.)  I would say Torres is larger than Punta del Este, although it is not serving such an up-market clientelle as PDE does.  I got a quite acceptable hotel for less than I thought I would pay (weekend is over...), took a shower, discovered to my GREAT pleasure that this area has NEXTEL radio coverage, and then went out to look over the town. 

When I rode into town, it was sunny and hot.  By the time I showered, talked on the radio to multiple people and came down from my room, it had clouded up, but was still warm.  I walked the two blocks to the beach and discovered a very agreeable walkway laid out along the beach.  This walkway is paved, and is 3,279 meters (two miles and a few hundred feet) long.  I know this because, every hundred feet or so, is a marker telling you how far you are from either end.  I got on about midway through, and decided to walk to both ends.  First I walked south, along the beach, and it was very nice.  Interestingly, EVERYBODY seemed to have a cooler or a car trunk full of beer, everyone had loud music playing, kids were running underfoot, people were having a good time.  There was not a police officer in sight.  To paraphrase Cyrus from ¨The Warriors¨, ¨Nobody was wasting nobody.¨ I wish the knuckleheads on the San Diego City Council, who seem intent on criminalizing all that is fun, especially if it involves the beach, could have witnessed this. 

Coming to meter zero (or meter 2,379, depending on which side of the sign you looked at), I turned around and headed back north.  I continued a bit past where I started, and found a section of a dozen or so fish restuarants and popcorn stands.  I ducked into one and had a Coke and popcorn, and then continued along.  I made it to about meter 3,000, at which point I felt large raindrops begin to fall upon me, so I turned around and ambled back to where I started, passed a BM (not PM, more on that in a minute) viatura which seemed to have shown up so the troopers inside could watch the girls, and made it to this internet place about five minutes before the skies absolutely opened.  It POURED down rain for a quarter hour or so, and then stopped.

Rio Grande do Sul is somewhat different from other Brazilian states.  Being close to Uruguay, the custom of drinking Yerba Mate (Erva Mate in Portuguese) is big here; everyone on the beach who was not drinking beer seemed to be drinking Mate.  This state is the home of Sertaneja music, and that is what is on the radio, not rock.  The State Police, which are called Policia Militar in every other state are, here, called the Brigada Militar.  Politically, this state was the first stronghold of President Lula´s Workers Party, yet it was also the state that voted down Lula´s idiotic gun ban iniative in 2004 with an 81% (highest in the country, although every state voted majority no) no vote.

I have been riding flat out for a number of days, and tomorrow thunderstorms are forecast.  I may well stay here a day, unless the weather changes radically.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Balneário Arroio do Silva , SC, Mile 496, NOvember 27, 2010

Greetings from about 100 yards west of the Atlantic Ocean. Today, I am in a little resort town called Balneário Arroio do Silva, which is about six miles to the east of Aranguá. SC, a town on the BR 101 highway about 40 miles north of the border with Rio Grande do Sul.



Yesterday evening, in Orleans, I asked at the hotel for a restuarant reccomendation, and they suggested an Italian place because ¨They make their own pasta¨. I went and got a lasagna, which was, supposedly, for two people. It was so good (homemade pasta and all...) that I ordered a second one, which put the waitress in awe. I asked her if the third one could be free if I ate it all (I cannot eat as much as I could 25 years ago, but I can still consume genuinely monstrous quantities when it suits me.), but she said no, so I contented myself with the two. They were truly excellent. I then waddled back to my hotel, freezing due to my sweatshirt still being wet, in the light rain that was falling down. It was Friday night. Why didn´t I go out drinking and raising cain? Simply because then I would not be able to get in today´s ride. All the wild partying etc is on hold until I get home.



This morning dawned cloudy, and I never did get a view (or a picture) of the mountains that I descended yesterday. The sun slowly poked its way through, however, and by the end of the ride, it was sunny and hot.



I headed south out of Orleans on SC 446, towards the town of Criciuma. I immediately climbed a monstrous hill (sigh), and then rode for about ten miles through ¨rolling hills¨, which means I climbed up for half a mile in low gear, coasted down the other side, and then repeated the process. After ten miles, I passed through the small town of Cocal do Sul, got a Grape Fanta, and continued on. In Cocal do Sul, I found Osama bin Laden! Or, anyway, I found ¨Bin Laden Towing, open 24 hours¨. Another 11 miles of hills brought me to Criciuma, a largish (bigger than Orleans) town. I had to ask directions three times to get through town. I eventually found SC 445, which brought me to an unnamed road which led me five miles to BR-101.



36 miles into the ride, I got onto BR 101. This is one of the main north-south highways in Brazil, and was, where I got onto it, a freeway with two lanes in each direction. Think I-5 or I-95. I rode past the ¨no bicycles¨ sign, and headed south at about 15 MPH, courtesy of a tailwind. After five miles or so, a frontage road appeared, so I rode along it for another five miles, stopping for Coke and Gatorade midway. Then, the frontage road disappeared, and I got back on the main highway which ran for a mile or so as a viaduct over what appeared to be rice patties. All was well, I was moving along happily, when the dual carriageway disappeared, and the highway became two sets of lanes in each direction, sharing one roadbed, with no shoulder. This was not fun at all, there being entirely too many trucks on the road. After a couple of miles of this, I got into Arangua. South of Arangua, I have no idea what I will find. Hopefully, a shoulder, at the least, will make an appearance.



In Arangua, I turned east through town, and got the road for Balneário Arroio do Silva. Getting into town, I found a lot of businesses (and hotels) closed. This last weekend in November corresponds to Memorial Day (last weekend in May) in the US, so one would expect to see more beach resorts open, but, both here and in Uruguay, things really do not get jumping until after Christmas. I found a very nice hotel, with AC, for a not too outrageous price, and I get to use the computer for free, too. They are also washing my clothes, and will probably stick it to me on that.



Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, followed by two days of rain. I am hoping to make it into Torres, Rio Grande do Sul, tomorrow, and then go from there. I have a very interesting route through RS planned out, but I need to talk to someone in that State about road conditions, and whether or not there is a ferry boat at one point. If all works out, I will be loving life. If not, I will be heading through Porto Alegre, a city of three million or so that I have zero desire to ride my bicycle through. We shall see...

Friday, November 26, 2010

Orleans, Santa Catarina, Mile 443, November 26, 2010

Greetings from Orleans, a pretty little town about 25 miles from the coast. 

Yesterday evening, after I got of the internet joint where I wrote my report, I went for a walk to the one square block city park in Sao Joaquim, where there were no fewer than seven Orelhoes (public telephones, which operate on cards).  Wanting to be a good boy and phone my mother on Thanksgiving, I went through ALL seven of them, but none worked.  I had to walk a block away to the police station (Sao Joaquim merits exactly a platoon of PMs.) to find one that works.  Like in the US, as everybody in Brazil gets cellular phones, the public phones are decaying.

Once I made my call, I went to the restuarant that had been recommended to me at my hotel, and had another excellent lasagna, served with rice.  Everything in Brazil seems to be served with rice.  They had the news on the TV, and all the news from Rio (1,200 miles away from me) was bad.  The images looked like something out of Iraq.  The situation is bad enough that the governor asked the Marine Corps to lend him a dozen M-113s, which then went on a rampage crushing cars.  I hope the people inside don´t feel too safe; a .50 cal will penetrate the side armor on an M-113.

On that happy note, I went back to my hotel, passing a bunch of very interesting planters and benches in the street.  The Santa Catarina mountains are apple country, and all the planters were giant green apples, full of flowers, while the benches were supported in the middle by what looked like apple tree trunks, and on each end by one half of a red apple.  Very well done, I thought.  While I had been eating, I had witnessed a city truck setting up half a dozen Christmas trees in the street in front of the restuarant.  For once, in Brazil, in November, it really felt like Christmas, I do not think it was any warmer than 45 degrees last night at 10PM when I went back to the hotel.


My window had no curtains, so I was awakened today at 7AM by the sun shining in my face.  Happy that there at least WAS a sun shining, and not rain clouds, I got up,  guzzled as much orange juice as I thought I could get away with from the free breakfast, and, at 8AM, was on my way, after a stop at the local gas station for a couple of Cokes to complement my frozen bottles of water.

When I left Sao Joaquim, I was at an elevation of approximately 4,400 feet, and I knew, from my map, that it was a distance of about 28 miles to Bom Jardim da Serra.  SC-438 immediately began climbing further up, albeit with a lot of ups and downs.  But, the trend was up.  Ten miles out of Sao Joaquim, I arrived at a road junction with SC-430, which went north.  I continued on 438.  En route, I was passed by two ¨viaturas¨ (PM cars, they are station wagons, so you can lock up more of the maggotry in the back.) with their sirens going.  The guy inside the second one motioned me to get off the road.  Wondering what this was all about, I pulled over, and about a minute later was passed by a convoy of trucks carrying absolutely enormous blades for a windmill.  These blades must have been 75 feet long, each.  I can only imagine the size of the windmill they are going to be attached to.  About 15 miles out of town, I reached an elevation of 4,820 feet, which would prove to be the highest elevation I am going to attain on this trip.  Shortly after this, I descended 550 feet in 1.5 miles in three minutes.  Once on the bottom (at a river), I encountered the ¨subidao¨ I had been warned about yesterday.  I got all the elevation back, in the same mile and a half, and be assured that it took a LOT longer than three minutes.  Back up above 4,000 feet again, I rode on in to Bom Jardim da Serra at a few minutes before noon, 30 miles out from Sao Joaquim.  Bom Jardim was a little tiny town that, upon inspection (I rode through it.) held no interest for me at all.  There was a cut off at the entrance of town with a sign saying ¨wind farm 10 kilometers¨, so at least I figured out where that convoy was going. 


I got out my map and discovered that it was only 20 miles on to a place called Lauro Muller.  I figured I would just go on.  This decision led to what turned out to be, so far, the most interesting bike ride of my life, and the first time in my life that I have burned up a set of bike brakes.

I continued south and east from Bom Jardim.  I started climbing again, and, as I did so, it got noticeably cooler and cloudier.  I passed several signs saying ¨Gelo na Pista¨ (Ice on road), which made me think that this would be a road to avoid in the winter.  Meanwhile, as I got higher, the clouds kept getting lower, and, after five miles or so, I found myself IN the clouds.  While it was not exactly raining, per se, the fog was sort of particulating water out of the air.  I assume the dew point was higher than the temperature; the temperature couldn´t have been more than 50 degrees.  I stopped the bike, and removed my IPOD, phone, and camera from my Camelback, and buried them in one of my saddle bags, to keep them dry.  I also put on my sweat shirt.  The fog got so dense that I could not see more than 50 feet in any direction; ghostly lights would appear in my front, or behind me, and then hiss on by me on the bike.  To say that I hugged the shoulder would be putting it mildly.  About eight miles out of Bom Jardim, I hit a sign that said ¨Welcome to the Serra do Rio do Rastro, elevation 1,421 meters¨, which jibed with my watch, which said I was at 4,690 feet.  I still could not see more than 50 feet.  Moving on another half a mile, I came to two more signs, one of which said the next 12 kms would be ¨curvy¨, and the other said ¨steep descent next eight kms¨.  Both of these signs were understatements.

The next five miles of the highway looked like something out of a mountain stage of the Tour de France.  It was an incredible descent, with the road making endless 180 degree switchbacks.  On my right was a wall of rock.  On my left, the Abyss.  Then, I would make a switchback, and the rock and the abyss would switch sides.  Water was still precipitating out of the fog, which in no way had let up, and, as well, I was getting splattered with droplets of water from the sheer rock wall I was descending, a wall that, at times, overhung the highway below it.  Due to the wet conditions, I had to ride the brakes, and by the time I was a couple of miles down, I could smell them burning up.  I stopped the bike, and used my last bottle of water to try to cool them off, but to no avail.  By the time I got to the bottom of the five miles of ¨extreme descent¨, my rear brake would not, held to the handle bar, slow me down.  Luckily, I had a front brake also.  During these five miles, I descended from almost 4,700 feet to 1,300 feet, which is a drop of 3,400 feet.  What does that mean?  Five miles is 26,400 feet.  Written as a fraction, 3,400/26,400 works out to an incredible 12.9% grade. (In other words, for every EIGHT feet forward, I dropped ONE foot.)  For five miles.  Unbelievable.  I have never done anything like this in my life.  I can only imagine what going UP that road would have been like.

Meanwhile, it had finally stopped raining, so I pulled into an overlook, ditched my now totally soaked Redskins sweatshirt, (actually I bungeed it to the top of my saddle bags in the unrequited hope that it would dry off), and then pulled out my Allan Key and went to work on the rear brake.  The shoe was basically gone, so I took half an inch of tension out of the brake cable.  Now, when I brake, the brake itself is touching the wheel, there being no shoe.  Not good long term for the wheel´s health, but at least it will stop me.  Tomorrow morning, I am going to find a bicycle mechanic who will, hopefully, have in stock a new set of shoes in my size.

I was by no means done descending out of the sky.  For the next five miles, I continued downward at a more leisurely pace, and ended up at an elevation of 700 feet.  From there, it was the normal ups and downs into the town of Lauro Muller.  Lauro Muller wasn´t much, and my map said it was only 7 miles on to Orleans, so I decided to continue.  During this part of the ride, I descended as low as 300 feet, which means I dropped 4,500 feet, almost a mile, from my high point of the day.  On that happy note, I will no longer bore you all with elevations, as the rest of the trip will not be, thankfully, involving mountains.

From Lauro Muller to Orleans, it had started to rain slightly, which put paid to my plans to continue on another 22 miles to Criciuma, so I rode into Orleans, up a VERY steep hill, and found a decent hotel with free internet.  The total ride today was 58 miles, of which I only actually pedalled about 48 miles.  Orleans is a pretty little town with, my landlady assures me, a beautiful view of the Serra that I just came out of, except for the clouds.  O well, maybe I will see where I came from tomorrow.

If it does not rain tomorrow, I should end up at the beach!

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Sao Joaquim, Santa Catarina, mile 385, November 25, 2010

Greetings from the mountanous town of Sao Joaquim, Santa Catarina.  I am 50 miles south of Lages, and at an altitude of 4,400 odd feet.

Today started out MUCH better than yesterday.  I awoke in Lages and, while cloudy, it was not raining, nor did it look like it would rain.  Shortly before 9AM, I retrieved my evaporative bicycle water bottle, and two additional bottles from the hotel´s freezer, and placed the extra bottles in my Camelback.  (Over five hours later, the second of these still had a little cylinder of ice in it, and was freezing cold.)  I then rode through downtown Lages, and headed south for a mile and a half or so through town.  At the southern edge of town, I stopped at an ESSO station, and bought a 12 oz can of Coke for my Camelback, and an 8 oz (something I had not seen before in Brazil) can for consumption there.  The girl at the counter asked where I was going, and when I told her Sao Joaquim, her response was ¨Puxa!!!!!!!¨, which means, basically, ¨no bloody way.¨  I decided it would not be good for morale to ask her why she seemed so shocked, so I just grinned and said, that´s right, drank my little Coke, and got on my way. 

Today`s highway was SC-438, and it picked up after another half mile or so through the outskirts of town.  I should add, at this time (SC 438, KM 0), my watch informed me that my elevation was 2,900 feet.

Below is a link to a page that has some very good photos of SC 438, if you click on it, the first two photos you see will be what I did today, and the othere will be what is waiting for me tomorrow:

http://www.radarsul.com.br/estradas/sc_438.asp

One of the photos in the above link shows stone fences; these are EVERYWHERE in the fields along the road, and makes me imagine I am riding in Ireland.  For the first ten miles or so, the highway was fairly level, I kept riding up to about 3,000 feet and then back down to 2,900.  The scenery was some of the most beautiful so far on this trip.  Then, the fun started.  At about 11 miles into the ride, over five miles, I climbed from 3,100 to 4,200 feet.  Up, up and up.  Once up at altitude, I rode along for a few miles, coming back down to 3,900 feet or so, and came to the little town of Painel, which was, as a matter of fact, the only town I saw today.  In Painel, I stopped and bought a Coke, and then continued along.  I rode a few more miles, got back to just about 4,000 feet, and then, over three miles and in a little over five minutes, dropped 750 feet, at an extremely high rate of speed.  This descent brought me down to a little river, after which, the first law of bicycling kicked in:  ¨That which goes DOWN must come back UP.¨  The next three miles took a lot longer than five minutes, to say the least.  Over the next seven or eight miles, I worked my way back up to 4,000 feet, and then got another rocketing descent, although this one was only about 400 feet.  Then, I climbed back to 4,000 feet again, where it decided to start to rain.

I stopped the bike on the side of the road, drank some water, and then put on my windbreaker.  Within five minutes, the rain stopped (naturally), the sun came out, and I began to cook inside that windbreaker.  Now about 40 miles into the ride, I stopped yet again, took the windbreaker back off, and continued on.  At this point, I was maybe at 3,700 feet.  In a few miles, my last climb of the day began, and it was a monster.  Over about three miles, I went from 3,700 feet up to 4,470 feet, including over 300 feet in the last mile.  I was dripping sweat like a race horse by the end of this.  I finally saw a sign that said welcome to Sao Joaquim, and at that sign (the absolute highest point of the ride), found, to my unmitigated joy, a gas station, where I rolled in and bought another Coke.  The attendant asked where I was coming from, and when I said Lages, he opined that that was a heck of a hill I had just climbed.  I agreed.  The Portugese word for ¨climb¨, (the noun) is ¨subida¨, just like in Spanish (¨drop¨, however, is not just like Spanish, it is ¨descida¨, not ¨bajada¨.), and I said it was quite a ¨subida¨.  He said ¨wait till tomorrow, you´ve got a ¨subidao¨ (mega-subida) on the way to Bom Jardim da Serra coming up.¨  I can hardly wait.

Done with my Coke, I rode into town, and made a circuit of the downtown area, which is not much, maybe two city blocks, before settling on a cheap looking hotel (R$35), and checking in.  They gave me a decent room, locked my bike in the store room, and sold me three more bottles of water, which I immediately gave back to them to freeze for tomorrow.  I have a feeling I am going to be beyond 5,000 feet high tomorrow; the good thing is I think this is the last of it.  It ought to be all downhill after tomorrow to the beach.

I mentioned yesterday seeing ¨Tropa de Elite 2¨, which is all about violence in Rio de Janeiro.  As if on schedule, violence in Rio is all over the news  today.  The favela gangs are raising cain, stopping cars on freeways and assaulting the drivers, and the PMs have killed, officially, 15 gang members.  The real number is probably triple that.  Below, another link to a BBC story on the issue. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11832312

On my way out this morning, I looked at the Diario Catarinense, which is the principal Florianopolis (state capital) newspaper, and the coverage was almost hysterical.  If you think violence in Tijuana is hyped up by the press in the US, you truly ain´t seen nothing yet.  If this violence keeps up, it might cause plane ticket to Rio prices to drop, and I am halfway minded to look up what it would cost to fly from Porto Alegre to Rio for a couple of days.  I haven´t been to Rio in seven years...

The weather forecast for the rest of the week is good, so I will either be in Bom Jesus da Serra tomorrow, or maybe a little further along.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Raining in Lages, November 24, 2010

Greetings from Lages, once again.  I am not having much luck with the rain it would seem.  It was pouring this morning, and as I have about a 55 mile ride up into more mountains ahead of me, I decided to wait here.  It is supposed to be cloudy but not raining tomorrow. 

Last night I found an excellent restuarant where, for one price, you got all the ¨picanha¨ (tri-tip) you wanted, all the sausages, plus rice, fries, salad, and other things.  I may go back there tonight.  Returning to my hotel, I popped into another book store, and, for the outrageous price of R$40 (US$ 24), bought a book called ¨Elite da Trope 2¨  (¨Elite Squad 2¨), a follow up to the original Elite Squad about the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro.  The book is presented as fiction, but most of it is probably true, which, considering the levels of violence and corruption discussed, is a shame.  Then, having nothing to do today, I went to an internet joint and uploaded all the pictures in my camera, and then added a bunch of them to my brand new blog  (http://adventuresontwowheels2010.blogspot.com/)  I went to the movie theater and saw ¨Tropa de Elite 2¨, which is the film version of the book.  I am happy to say that this movie is even more violent than the book, and even more people die in gruesome ways than in the original 2007 Tropa de Elite movie.  To get into the movie cost 5 Reais, and popcorn and a Coke 8 more, so it was in no ways expensive.

Suitably desensitized to mindless violence, I came out of the theater and went for a walk around town looking for decent restuarants; I found a few and will return to one of them later this evening.  Other than, today was absolutely boring.

Tomorrow, assuming it does not rain, I continue riding on to the city of Sao Joaquim, which will, supposedly, involve me climbing up above 5,000 feet.  Apparently the information I was given about the highest place in this state being 4,000 feet was incorrect...  In my hotel, I found a magazine from August talking about the twenty (20!) inches of snow that fell in Sao Joaquim on August 4 and 5.  Stereotypical Brazil this area is not.

In another magazine, Veja, which is kind of a cross between Time and The Economist, I found some interesting statistics.  In 1997, Brazil apparently had a dollar denominated foreign debt of US$200 Billion, and foreign reserves of US$ 51 Billion.  Today its foreign debt is exactly Zero, and as previously mentioned, there are $300 Billion in reserves.  Such debt as the Brazilian government has today is ALL denominated in Reais.  What a turn around from the 80´s and 90´s...

Hopefully, I will have more interesting facts to relate tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Lages, Santa Catarina, Mile 334, November 23, 2010



Greetings from the city of Lages, Santa Catarina.  I rode here today from Curitibanos, where I stayed yesterday, due to rain.

Very little of import happened yesterday.  It stopped raining about noon, and, had I not already left my clothes to be washed, I would have left yesterday.  O well.  I took the bike out in the afternoon and rode around town for a few miles, and read the second 25 cent book I had brought with me.  I had found a very good Italian restuarant a few blocks from my hotel, and Sunday night I had an excellent lasagna; last night an excellent pizza.  The lasagna was funny, because it was served in what ammounted to a deep dish pizza tray, and cut into four slices like it was a pizza.  It tasted good...

This morning, I got up, paid my bill, and retrieved my bike from the store room where I had kept it.  (Some hotels let me keep the bike in my room, some insist I lock it in a store room.  I am flexible.)  Today dawned cloudy, cold and windy.  I rolled out at about 8:45, stopped at an ESSO station (Who is old enough to remember ESSO in the United States?) and bought a Coke and four bottles of water, and rode out the south side of town on SC 457.  In about two miles, 457 ended at BR 470, which is a main east-west highway in Santa Catarina.  Here I turned east, and immediately road straight into the wind, and also started climbing.  This got cold fast, so I stopped and put my sweatshirt on.  The shoulder was lousy, and there were too many trucks.  The story of my life on this trip, in other words.  I might add, that this streth of BR 470 is NOT a toll road, and is (poorly) maintained by the federal government.  Luckily, I only had to ride about nine miles before I came to the little town of Sao Cristovao do Sul, where 470 crossed BR 116, a north south highway that runs all the way to the Uruguayan border.  This is where I figured something out.  BR highways that are PUBLICLY maintained are disasters for a bike rider.  On the other hand, BR highways that have been concessioned out to a private operator, as this stretch of BR 116 has been, are in excellent condition, and have wide shoulders.  (State highways, I might add, have been in quite good shape too, at least in Santa Catarina.)  BR-116, also known as the ¨Autopista Planalto Sul¨, was two lanes with wide shoulders, and an additional third lane whenever it made a significant climb.  These third lanes are not my friends.  When I see one coming up, it means that I will be gearing down, and grinding my way up some long grade for a while.  As an example of what I mean by a third lane, by the way, anyone who has driven out from DC to Shenandoah Natl Park on US 29-211 will have encountered such a lane the last five miles or so up to the Skyline Drive.  Now, imagine climbing that on a bicycle.  I get to do that multiple times every day.

By the time I got to the 470/116 junction, I had climbed up from about 3,300 feet to 3,630.  Here it got fun.  I immediately dropped 500 feet over about three miles.  I do not think I was under 30MPH the whole time.  This was fun.  I was also now heading south, not east, and the wind shifted a little bit, so I had the wind at my back.  I was positively flying along.  After about 20 miles, I came to the town of Ponte Alta, which has nothing much to reccomend it, and after another eight or nine, I ame to Correia Pinto, which was even less interesting than Ponte Alta.  I did less climbing today than I have in a while, the road was mostly, if not flat, then at least minimally hilly.  Several times, I came to areas where I could see for ten or 15 miles in front of me, and it was very pretty.  The day remained cloudy and cool, although I did take my sweat shirt off after a while.  It never rained, luckily.  A few miles after Correia Alta, I came to a toll plaza, which I road through.  The 40 mile or so stretch that I rode today would have cost a car R$2.90, and a motorcycle half that.  About $1.75 for a car, in other words.  A similar stretch on MX 2 from Tijuana to Tecate would run about $7.00 US, so I have finally found something in Brazil that is cheaper than it would be in Mexico.

A few miles after the toll plaza, I came to the cut off for Lages.  I still had another six or so mile ride ahead of me into town, and then through town.  I finally found a hotel a few blocks from the downtown cathedral.  Total distance ridden today was 53 miles.

Once in town, I went in search of an ATM, since I was running low on Reais, again.  This is not as easy as it may seem; not all Brazilian banks are linked into the CIRRUS system that my credit union uses.  I went looking for a Banco Bradesco, who I knew would accept my ATM card, but did not find one.  After trying Banco do Brasil and Santander unsucsessfully, I went into a HSBC, and their ATM worked.  I have now taken out R$1,730 on this trip, and have had $1,020 disappear from my account.  This works out to a rate of 1.70 to one.  I am hoping to make it to the Uruguayan border in another seven or eight days; at this exchange rate, the sooner the better.

Lages is the biggest city I have been in yet (not counting Curitiba), and probably has 100,000 inhabitants or so.  There is a nice plaza and cathedral downtown, and it looks to be a prosperous place.

The State of Santa Catarina, incidentally, is one of 26 Brazilian States.  Considering that Brazil has a larger land area than the 48 continental United States, that means the average Brazilian State is almost twice the size as the average American State.  Santa Catarina is slightly smaller than average, but it is still quite big, say the size of Missouri.  Rio Grande do Sul, which is coming up next, is actually significantly BIGGER than Uruguay, and is somewhere between double and triple the size of Santa Catarina.  However, my time in RS will be a straight shot down the coast to the Uruguayan border, instead of the meander I have been doing here in SC, so my distance travelled there should actually be less than what I will end up travelling in Santa Catarina.

Having read (and discarded) all the books I brought with me, I wandered into a book store in search of more.  The prices were incredible.  A Portuguese translation of ¨Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow¨ was going for about 12 dollars, for a paperback with less than 200 pages.  ¨A Brief History of the 20th Century¨ was almost $30 US.  I am going to go back to the hotel and ask them if they know of any used book stores near here. 

Tomorrow, I continue to head east.  Let us hope it does not rain...

Curitibanos, Santa Catarina, Mile 276 November 21, 2010


Greetings from the town of Curitibanos, a place of similar size to Caçador.  Today is Sunday.  On a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, I rode out of Caçador, and headed east to the town of Lebon Regis, where I planned to turn south and come on to Curitibanos.  Guess what I found?  Hills!  What joy.  Over two and a half hours, I climbed up and down endlessly, while advancing about 15 miles.  Then, because I obviously was not miserable enough, it decided to rain, heavily.  Luckily for me, I had enough warning to stop the bike, and pull out my windbreaker, and get it on over my camelback, thus protecting camera, phone, passport, wallet, etc.  The rest of me got absolutely soaked.  The rain did not make the hills go away, and I slogged on another 11 miles, including one decline where I think, had it not been raining and forcing me to ride the brakes, that I could have got up over 50MPH.  I eventually, about 2PM, got into Lebon Regis, which is well and truly the armpit of the world.  The town has about three streets going north and south, and five going east and west.  I found the one and only hotel, paid R$20 (and you get what you pay for.), and went to my room, and wished I hadn´t.  It looked like a jail cell, with just enough space for a thin single bed, and a shower.  I almost walked out, but it was raining so bad that I just did not want to deal with getting drowned for four or so more hours on the road. 

I stripped of my clothes, and took a shower, and discovered a problem.  My shoes, socks, and riding gloves were absolutely drenched.  The socks and gloves were still wet this morning, I finally bungeed the bloves onto a saddle bag, so they could sit in the sun and dry a while.  The one good thing to the stop in Lebon Regis is the restuarant I discovered next to the hotel, where I had the best lasagna I have had in a good while.  That almost made up for the lousy sleeping conditions.  This lasagna comes on top of Friday night´s dinner in Caçador, where I had what was probably the best pizza I have ever had in Brazil.  Dinner on Friday was funny, because the waiter asked me if I was Argentine (I denied it, again), and when I told him I was American, he opined that ¨Obama is a jackass.¨  No argument from me on that one, but he is, after all, OUR jackass, so, not wanting to run him down in front of foreigners, I asked the waiter´s opinion on Brazilian president-elect Dilma, and learned that she is well and truly the mother of all jackasses, and was probably holding conclave with Hugo Chavez right this instant, plotting to turn Brazil into a communist hell-hole.  The southern states in Brazil all voted for Jose Serra in the recent elections, and they do not seem happy with the result...Next time I am asked if I am Argentine, I am going to say I am Uruguayan, and see what results that brings.  I will probably be told that Mujica is a jackass (and no argument from me on that one, either.)

Today dawned bright and beautiful, although even if it had been pouring, I was going to get out of Regis Lebon.  Half a mile from the hotel, on the east side of the town, I stopped and bought a couple of Cokes and two bottles of water.  I then rode another mile and a half or so on SC-302, before coming to the cut-off for (I think, my map is not with me) SC-457, and a sign which announced that it was 52 kilometers to Curitibanos.  Finally, the hilliness seems to be easing up some, and at one point I descended as low as 2,750 feet.  It was also a lot warmer, and very sunny.  SC-457 is not as good a road as SC-302, there is no shoulder at all, and occasional holes in the pavement.  However, I did not care, as there is also just about zero traffic.  I was passed by cars from time to time, as well as the (very) occasional truck, but had no problems whatsoever.  I also, in the entire 32 odd mile stretch I was on this highway, encountered not a single store selling anything.  Since I was boogying right along, this was no big deal, but had this stretch been as hilly as the area around Caçador, I would have run out of stuff to drink, and that would not have been good at all.  The countryside itself was beautiful; this area is the breadbasket of Brazil, and there were endless fields of who-knows-what growing to the horizon, interspersed with lots of cows, and the occasional ¨milk co-operative¨.  Occasionally, I would pass onion fields, and the smell was impressive.  About four miles out of Curitibanos, I rounded a curve and got a view of the entire city, sitting in a valley below the highway.  Very impressive.  Curitibanos itself is shut up tighter than a clam; not much goes on, to put it mildly, in small towns in Brazil on Sundays.  I rode through town and found a ¨bar¨, which is really a lunch counter, open, where I got a ten ounce bottle of Coke for three times what a 12 oz bottle would cost in Mexico, and the owner kindly pointed me to what he said was the best hotel in town.  It is certainly an improvement over last night, and they are letting me, again, use the internet for free.

Tomorrow, or maybe Tuesday, depending on the weather, I move on to Lages, 55 miles further south.  Hopefully the road will not be hilly, but I plan to take extra bottles of water just in case.

Caçador, Santa Catarina, Mile 216 November 19, 2010


Greetings from the town of Caçadores, 56 miles south of Uniao da Victoria.  Yesterday night, I was exhausted and very frustrated.  Tonight, I am simply exhausted, which is a great improvement.  Physical exhaustion is, after all, nothing more than weakness leaving the body, which is what I tell some of the larger fifth and sixth graders at school when I am running around the field with them, trying to get them to run at least one lap.

Here, by the way, is a really good map of Santa Catarina.  I started out in the middle, at the top, in Porto Uniao, and followed the green highways down to Caçador.

https://exchange.sandi.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://asnovidades.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Santa-Catarina-mapa-rodoviario.jpg


I was not optimistic this morning.  I figured that, bad as BR 476 was, it was at least a Federal Highway.  Today´s ride would be on Santa Catarina state highway SC-302.  Leaving my hotel, I crossed the train tracks and found myself in Santa Catarina (Bye bye Parana.) and rode about a mile through Porto Uniao before getting on BR-277 (I think that was the number, my map is in my room.) for about five miles, at which point BR-whatever veered off east, and SC-302 started at KM post 0.  A sign informed me that it was 82 kms to Caçadores, 50 to Calmon, and 33 (20 miles) to Matos Costa. To my immense joy, I discovered two happy facts.

1.)  The road had a good, paved shoulder.
2;)  There was hardly any traffic, and big warning signs promising astronomical fines to anyone who drove trucks over 45 tons on this highway.

Very happy, I set off, with a block of rapidly melting ice in my bike´s water bottle, and another, unfrozen, bottle in my camelback.  About ten miles out of town, at Km post 12, I stopped by a little church to drink water, change the batteries in my camera (and through the dead batteries, fittingly. over the fence into the cemetary) and take some pictures of the church.  At this time, the elevation, according to my magic watch, was 2,500 feet, and I was feeling very smug about myself.

What I did NOT know then, but do know now, is that Matos Costa is the highest point in the entire State. 

Within a mile, the road began to climb.  Big deal, I thought, I might end up at 3,000 feet or so, but then I will come back down.  First I climbed to 2,850, then dropped about a hundred, then climbed up to 3,000, dropped another hundred, then went up to 3,250, dropped a hundred, and the cycle continued repeating itself.  Eleven miles and an hour and a half later, I arrived in Matos Costa, at an elevationof 4,020 feet.  I was out of water (I bought more) and beat.  So, I figured, no need to be a hero, I will go on another 12 miles or so to Calmon, and stay the night there.  Calmon turned out to be at 3,950 feet, but I think I dropped down to 3,500 and then climbed back about three times en route.  I got to Calmon at about 3PM, discovered one hotel, one lousy looking restuarant, and no internet places to go kill time.  In the Petrobras station where I stopped to drink a Coke and buy more water, the owner and his wife swore up and down that, from there, it was ¨all downhill¨ to Caçadores, 19 miles further south.  I believed them.

Leaving Calmon, it sure looked like they were telling the truth.  According to my speedometer, I set a new record for speed on this bike, getting up to 44.7 MPH as I dropped down to 3,400 feet over two miles.  Since it was curvy, the speed limit was 70 KMs an hour, so I was, technically, speeding.  This speed involved me coasting; the way the bike is geared, had I pedalled, I do not think it would have made the slightest difference.  Unfortunately, once I got down to 3,400, I climbed right back to 4,000 feet AGAIN, roared downhill again, and then climbed back up once again.  The second time, once I topped out and could see that was all downhill for awhile, I stopped the bike, went and sat in the shade of a tree, and just lay there for about 15 minutes, slowly drinking a bottle of water, and, unbeknownst to me, getting ants all over me.  I was well and truly beat. 

Finally, about 8 miles out of Caçadores, it really did become (almost) all downhill, with only scattered climbs of a quarter mile or so mixed in.  When I got to the turn off into town, I was absolutely dead.  Unfortunately for me, I had one more massive drop, down to 3,000 feet, in store, followed by about a one mile steep climb into town.  Once in town, I could not find a hotel, and finally stopped in another gas station and asked, and they were kind enough to point me UP yet another hill, where I found the place I am staying, for R$40, tonight.  While the guy at the desk was copying information out of my passport, I felt like I was going to pass out, and had to go and sit on the steps for a couple of minutes.  That is how tired I was.  The owner of the hotel walked in, and could not believe it when I told him where I had come from.  He asked me what time I planned to leave tomorrow, asked me if I would mind being interviewed, and told his son (working the desk) to call up the local rag and tell them to come on down tomorrow morning to interview this crazy American.  I hope they do, we shall see.  Since the crazy American is staying at his hotel, this will involve some free publicity, which I do not think ownership is averse to.

Once I got to my room, I took a shower(bliss) and then just lay on the bed for 15 minutes as piece by piece my whole body cramped up.  First my jaw (?), then a leg, then my right foot, which resulted in the interesting sight of my right big toe sticking out at a 45 degree left angle from the rest of the foot, then my back, then the leg again.  What fun.

The hotel is letting me use their computer, free, which is nice of them.  Unfortunately, the computer is so old, it has no USB ports, which I regret because, today, I used the IPOD I brought for the first time, for about half an hour, until the battery died.  It recharges through the USB port. No music for me tomorrow, I guess.  The (borrowed) IPOD is loaded with ¨Rock en Espanol¨, and I was listening to it as I climbed up toward Matos Costa, and, somehow, it got me thinking in Spanish, because when I went in to get a Coke, I asked for a bottle in Spanish (botella, instead of garrafa, big difference), and they immediately asked if I was Argentine, which I empthatically denied.

Now it is off to find dinner.  More reports to follow.

Uniao da Victoria, Parana/Porto Uniao, Santa Catarina, mile 160, Nov 18, 2010


Greetings again, today from the twin cities of Uniao da Victoria and Porto Uniao, which together sprawl across the Parana/Santa Catarina state line.  I rode in 54 miles from Sao Mateus do Sul, and it was absolutely no fun at all.  Three things combined to make today less than pleasant.  1.)  There were more hills, and they were steeper.  2.)  A strong headwind blew all day out of the west.  and, 3.) The shoulder on the side of the road is deteriorating the further west I go.  As a result of all this, it took me six and a half hours to go 54 miles today.

I headed out this morning at about 10:00; I had to wait for my clothes to get done being washed by the people at the hotel.  I rode a mile or so through town, and got onto BR 476 at Km Post 278.  Immediately I climbed up a couple hundred feet, but no big deal.  The first seven or eight miles passed by quickly.  Then, the paved shoulder deteriorated.  While it still remained paved, it looked like it had not been maintained in a couple of decades or so.  This is very bad, because when a truck is overtaking me, I have to get off the road, and, while this is no big deal if I am CLIMBING a hill, it kills all of my momentum if I am coming down the other side.  I did not ride the bike above 10mph on the shoulder today because I was worried about either a flat tire (bad) or a broken spoke (far worse).  Luckily, neither occurred, today.  Meanwhile, a headwind sprang up, which made things even more fun.

At about 20 miles out of S. Mateus, I came to a roadblock; they are repaving a segment of the highway, and have about a three mile stretch of only one lane.  I rode to the front of the line of cars, and the flagmen looked at me like I had just landed from Mars.  We spent a good ten minutes discussing my trip, and they were quite interested.  Once I got through the one lane section, there was a five mile or so stretch that had already been worked on and was in excellent shape.  Then the highway reverted to form.

About ten miles out from Uniao da Victoria, a MAJOR climb took me from 2,500 feet up to 2,950.  At the top of this, and five hours plus into my ride, I got into my camelback for my bottle of frozen water, and there was still a cylinder of ice floating in it.  That impressed me.  Unfortunately, I cannot drink ice, but there was a little store selling Cokes up there too, so I got one.  I should have then come roaring down the other side of the hill at 35 MPH, but instead, I coasted slowly down the shoulder.  The process then repeated itself, and back up to 2,800 feet I went, before finally descending to a gas station that marks the cut off for BR-163, which heads further west.

A mile or so after the cutoff, BR 476 ended, at a bridge over the Iguacu River.  I had no idea the river came this far east.  I then passed Km Post 363, which marks the end of BR 476, and rode into U. da Victoria, and, in looking for a hotel, apparently spent some time in Santa Catarina too.  I found a basic but cheap place for R$35, and will spend the night in Parana once again.  Once I paid off the hotel, I was down to R$50 or so, and I went out and found a Bradesco Bank, which accepts American ATM cards, and pulled out 500 more.  I am lugging around a thousand dollars or so in my money belt, but no one wants to exchange foreign currency in these out of the way towns in the interior. 

I now have a decision to make.  I am not happy with the state of the highways, and I am informed that BR 163 gets significantly worse past General Carneiro, 25 miles further west of here.  I could go straight south, but that is a Santa Catarina state highway, and who knows what shape it is in.  (I am going to ask.)  I went to the bus station, and there is a bus leaving tomorrow for Frederico Westphalen, Rio Grande do Sul, at 4 in the afternoon, but they acted like idiots when I mentioned that I have a bicycle.  Depending on the results of my investigations, I may ride south into Santa Catarina tomorrow (Calmon, SC, is about 40 miles south of here.) or I may just show up at the bus station with my bike and try to bluster my way on.  I have ridden busses in Brazil before with the bike, and never had a problem.  (The knucklehead at the counter insisted that I would need to box it.  Where am I going to get a bike box?)  From F. Westphalen, if I go there, I can continue south in Rio Grande do Sul, if the roads are good, and head for Uruguay, or, if the roads are not good, I could probably get a second bus to Livramento, on the Uruguayan border, and continue my journey in Uruguay, where the roads are wide, shoulders are good, and trucks are almost non existent.

I have no idea right now where I will be writing from tomorrow.

Uniao da Victoria and Porto Uniao are, by the way, very much larger than Lapa or S. Mateus, where I stayed previously.  There is quite a bit of movement in the downtown area.  Unfortunately, they are not big enough, apparently, to warrant NEXTEL coverage.  O well.  On the plus side, there is an old train station with a WOOD BURNING steam locomotive parked in it.  It does not look like it has moved anywhere in a while, sadly.

Sao Mateus do Sul, Parana, mile 100, NOvember 16, 2010


Greetings again.  Today I am in the wonderful metropolis of Sao Mateus do Sul, exactly 100 miles from Curitiba, which is the capital of the State of Parana.  I had a rather pleasant, albeit hilly, 50 mile ride today from Lapa. 

Last night, I (wisely) bought a bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of water.  I then poured half of each bottle into my magic water bottle, which has a type of sweater on it that you pour water on before leaving, and then, as that water evaporates, it keeps the contents cooler than they would be otherwise.  I then poured the rest of the water into the gatorade bottle, and presented both of them to management at the hotel, who froze them.  This morning I retrieved them, put the gatorade bottle inside my Camelback, and for the first three hours of my ride had cold drinks.  I also last night went and got a pizza for dinner; I had wanted lasagna, which was on the menu, but there was not.  Oh well.  The pizzas, curiosly, came in three sizes:  ¨pequena¨(small), ¨grande¨ (large) and ¨Big¨, which, I guess, means ¨Big¨.  I ordered a grande; I should have ordered ¨Big¨.
Today dawned chilly, overcast, and smelling of rain.  I left my hotel at about 8:15 this morning, wearing a sweatshirt, something I have NEVER done even once on any of my previous three trips down this way.  I rode a mile down the street, passed lots of Field Artillery guys doing their morning PT, passed the giant cannon, and got back on BR 474.  I then headed west.  Today´s ride was VERY hilly; the watch I am using has an altimeter on it (it uses changes in barometric pressure) and I was constantly riding up to about 3,000 feet, descending to 2,800 or so, and then climbing back to where I was.  The first 20 miles or so went very slow because of this.  Then, it got really fun.  I started descending to 2,500 feet, or even lower, and climbing back up.  Here, the ascents and descents were each a couple of miles, and I got really flying coming down.  Going back up was less fun...  Finally, about ten miles out of S. Mateus, things more or less leveled out, and, except for one last climb coming into town, the ride got easier.  Midway through the ride, I stopped and removed my sweatshirt.  Within minutes, it started to rain, lightly, so I stopped (again) and retrieved a very useful yellow windbreaker that an uncle of mine got for me some years ago.  I assume it would have worked perfectly to keep the water off of me, but, of course, as soon as I put it on, it stopped raining.  By the time I arrived in town, the sun was out.

Arriving in town, I found a hotel ($R60, blechh), and had another experience with those stinking electrical hot water heaters.  Then I headed out and found a bike store where they kindly sold me a tube of some vile substance which lubricates bicycle chains.  If it lubricates as strong as it smells, I am sure all will be well.

My room today is on the second floor, and I had fun getting the bike up the stairs.  I bought a Trek 7,500 in March, and it is much heavier than any other bike (including my 2003 Trek 7,500) I have owned.  It has, among other things, a shock absorber on the front.  Because of the bike´s weight, I took drastic measures to limit how much stuff I am carrying.  My load is the following:

--One pair of long pants, one pair of shorts, one bathing suit, two bike shorts, and one long bike pants.
--Four (plus the clothes I wore on the plane, so five) sets of T-shirts and under clothes.
--One sweatshirt and one windbreaker.
--Several tools
--One ¨commando tent¨, which is a one man tent that stands about 22 inches high and weighs three pounds.
--One poncho liner, courtesy of the US Army, and one mini Redskins blanket. 
--Several books (which I bought for 25 Cents each, and which will be discarded as they are read) and maps.
--My cell phone/Nextel radio, which works down here, in some places, but not here, not today. 
--A collosal device which steps Brazilian 220 Volt electricity down to 110 Volts, so I can charge the cell phone without blowing it up.
--My AM/FM radio, camera, an IPOD, and Camelback.

All of this goes into two saddle bags, one on each side of the rear wheel, except things like water, the IPOD, camera, map of whatever State I am in, plus passport, wallet, and Nextel, which all go into the camel back.  Every fifth day, obviously, I am going to have to find someone to wash my clothes.  To say that I sweat them up is an understatement.  The commando tent, and attendent liner and blanket (courtesy of a credit card I signed up for once at FedEx Field) are there in case I find myself in a situation where the next days lodging is over 100 miles away.  This will not be a problem for the forseeable future; Parana and Santa Catarina, as well as the northern half of Rio Grande do Sul are quite populated, and I think I can continue my 50 mile or so a day rides indefinetly.  However, once I get closer to Uruguay, and into Uruguay itself, the population thins out quite a bit, and I could find myself outside if, say, I get a head wind.  If that happens, at least I have somewhere to sleep.

One thing I do NOT have is a helmet.  I will only say, charitably, that helmets are for mountain bike riders, who´s biggest threat is hitting a rock or a root or something and going flying head first into a tree.  My biggest danger is getting ground into a thin red slime by a truck, and if that happens, a helmet is not going to help a lot.  I wear a baseball cap.

I got onto my credit union´s page today, and discovered that, after fees, the 520 Reais I took out of the ATM in Sao Paulo came out at an exchange rate of R$1.695 to the dollar.  This is even worse than anticipated.  As an example of costs, cans of Coke cost anywhere from R$1.70 to R$2.35, with most of them going for 2 Reais.  Dinners are in the R$25 range.  Gasoline costs about R$9 a gallon if you find it cheap, and alcohol (most Brazilian cars run on both, but alcohol gets worse mileage) costs about R$6.50  Gatorade costs R$3.25 for a 20 oz bottle.  Instead of heading west a bit before turning south, I may just make a beeline for the Uruguayan border if these kind of expenses keep up.  On the other hand, Uruguay is probably not much cheaper.

Tomorrow I plan to continue on to Uniao da Victoria, which is about 55 miles further west from here, and on the border with Santa Catarina.  Tomorrow night should be my last night in Parana...

More will follow.

Sao Mateus do Sul, PR, mile 106

Greetings from, again, Sao Mateus do Sul.  I stayed over today because it was raining heavily when I woke up this morning, and did not look to improve (it didn´t; it is still raining now.)  During the middle of the day, it stopped raining (for a while), and I figured I would grab my bike, remove the saddlebags, and ride about the town.  I got very wet coming back to my hotel.  The ride through town was interesting, I found a two mile or so long bike path through town leading from the river and paralleling, about two blocks down, the main drag through town.  From entrance to exit of S. Mateus is only about two miles; this is not a particularly big place.  It is, however, quite prosperous, and if you factored out the language, you could imagine easily that you were in some rural town in the midwest or south.

Brazil has five ¨regions¨, and the southernmost one is called, curiously, ¨South¨.  It comprises the States of Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.  (Directly north of Parana is the State of Sao Paulo.)  It is the richest region, by far, in Brazil and if it were an independent country, would be the richest (measured by per capita GDP) country (by far) in all of Latin America.  It defies every stereotype Americans might have about Brazil.  Everyone is white, for one thing.  (I wander around, and no one looks twice at me, they all look just like I do, only not as handsome.)  Slavery was never economically profitable this far south, so it was never practiced, and so the black population (and culture, music, etc) that you would find in Rio or Bahia never took root.  With the exception of a Lebanese presence in Foz do Iguacu, the Arab and Japanese immigration waves passed this area by.  On the other hand, the largest Octoberfest in the world outside of Germany is celebrated in Blumenau, Santa Catarina.  This place actually has SEASONS, and it snows here in the winter.  People do not listen to Samba or Rock music here, most radio stations play ¨Sertaneja¨ music, which is a Brazilian adaptation of American country music; just like in the US, 90% of the songs concern somebody´s girl who did him wrong, or the rotten S.O.B. who took his girl.  Crime rates in the big cities (Curitiba, Florianopolis, Porto Alegre, Pelotas) are, by Brazilian standards, very low, and they are negligible in places like where I am riding.  I am watching out the door at an expensive motorcycle parked with the keys in the ignition.  The owner is nowhere in sight.  On my travels through town today on my bike, I saw no slums, and every house seems to have either a car or at least a motorcycle in front of it or in the driveway. 

I also, having lots of free time today, bought (for R$2.50) a copy of O Estado de Sao Paulo, and spent a while reading it.  The articles in the business section were interesting, and not what you would have seen in the Brazil of 20 years ago.  One was a discussion of whether Brazil´s foreign reserves of US$300 Billion was enough, or if the Central Bank should keep buying more dollars.  That number would give Brazil the fourth or fifth largest foreign reserves in the world.  Another was an appalled article worrying about whether the multi billion US dollar remittances that illegal aliens are sending out of the country (and back to Paraguay and Bolivia, principally) is an economic danger.  Again, 20 years ago, you would have been laughed at if you had said that someday Brazil would be importing, not exporting, illegal aliens.  The exporters federation was also screaming at the government to do something, because they are getting killed by the strong Real, and having trouble competing in international markets.  I agree wholeheartedly, and hope the government does something too, preferably by tomorrow afternoon, which is when I am going to have to exchange more dollars.

On my bike ride through town, I found a decent looking restuarant, and wandered back down on foot once it stopped raining again.  I got the typical meal of some bland cut of beef and rice; the best that can be said about Brazilian cooking of meat is that it is hot.  They certainly lack the talent that Uruguayans or Argentines have for producing great steaks.  Since I was laid over for a day, I gave all my dirty clothes to the hotel to wash, Heaven only knows what that is going to cost.

Tomorrow is forecast to be sunny, so I will be writing from someplace else tomorrow night, I hope.