ODO: 344,809
Our parts have arrived, so we are out of here! Pick up is smooth, just like last time. We haven’t been able to reach our mechanic yet, but we head over anyways. It takes a long time to get Berne across town to the gear guy, so long in fact, that its too late in the day to finish up. Hotel here we come. Moral is low, we were really hoping to be back on the road this evening, but it’s not always up to us. The hotel comes with free snacks and drinks thanks to Berne’s lifetime platinum status. Since we’re in town, we food tour. Carefully. This part of town looks a little rough, ripped up sidewalks and rundown and deserted buildings. Stop one is dumplings that are not quite warm enough. Stop two is a British Pub that is truly awful. Rubbery fish, crappy beer, and tasteless onion rings. We eat a few bites and leave. Stop three is hotel room service, which is fantastic! And nice because now we are back and cozy for the evening.
We are up early, waiting for the call from our mechanic, Marco, but it doesn’t come…The wait is killing us so we head over. Then its immediately over to the gear guy! He’s finished, Berne gives final inspection and we head back to get these parts installed. And then we have more waiting. The mechanic assigned to us wont be in until later this afternoon. So. We. Wait. Once he arrives, he makes short work of putting the rear end back together and installing the driveshaft. One quick oil change and fluid check rounds out our time here. It’s 7pm, and we engage night driving mode. We’re terrible at only driving during the day, like you’re supposed to in Latin America. Miles roll by, we drive for about five hours before finding a truck stop. The security guard creeps Berne out with his shotgun and inability to not look incredibly high, and tells us it’s not safe for us here. Cool, we’re outta here. Our next stop is eight miles down the road. A nice gas station attendant says this is safe and shows us a spot near the bathrooms. And then plays the loudest music all night. Loud enough that ear plugs bring it down to a normal volume. At least it’s safe.
Today is border day, Brazil baby! We leave early because we want to be across before our meetings start. We have yet to be successful at this. When we try to check out of Paraguay, the border agent gets very mad at us for not having a passport entrance stamp. He angrily throws our passports at his coworker and leaves. Yikes. After ignoring us for fifteen minutes, he finally looks us up in the system, and calmly stamps us out, like he didn’t yell at us earlier. Weird. We miss the aduauna (where we stamp out the truck) by fifteen minutes. The aduana siestas until 2pm, so we wait. And start our meetings. Once they open up, we’re in and out in less than five minutes.
Checking into Brazil starts a little rough. We forgot that we already had our visas on our phones since we applied for them way back in May. Once we do remember, the process is very quick as well. All of these border check ins are in different corners of town, so we spend more time driving between them than we do at them. After a quick resupply (the grocery store has a cigarette aisle?!) and one final meeting, we hit the road. This is a funny town, there is no actual border crossing, so is the place to smuggle things between Brazil and Paraguay. Obviously we drive late into the night again, because it’s us. We see a burrowing owl when we pull over for a break. We pass through Campo Grande and find another truck stop for the night around 11pm. Earlier than last night!
Up and back on the road! Gotta make them miles, we have friends to see! Back in the 90’s, there was a lot of talk about the Amazon rainforest being burned to make way for farming. We think that is what we are driving through, industrial farming and ranching as far as the eye can see. The road is very long and straight, with nice pavement. There is a little wildlife, a handful of blue and yellow macaws fly by, and some extra large Rhea’s. And there is the ostrich farm! Our third toll booth of the day throws a wrench into our plans…they are the first booth that doesn’t take cards. And we maybe didn’t stop for cash last night, in the large city we drove through, because it was so late. They turn us away, back to the last town (and the town before that), where we spend over an hour trying to find an ATM that will accept one of our cards. We even try our credit cards. No luck. Finally a nice lady at the gas station does a cash back transaction for us. Many hours down the road, in Cuiaba, we find an ATM we can use. It’s a bank chain from Mexico. Very grateful it’s here. And half an hour after that we finally arrive at our destination at 10pm. Our earliest night yet, but hours later than we originally planned. Jason and Kara wait up for us, and we have a nice visit before bed.
Pygmy marmoset monkeys live in this campground. We wake up to a small group of them crossing the trees. After a morning visit, we all say our goodbyes again. They are heading south, and we are still heading a little farther north. Have we mentioned how hot it is? 98F before 10am. We resupply and head for adventure. Our final stop is Porto Jofre, deep in the Northern Pantanal. Think jungle, and jaguars, and piranha filled rivers. Adventure. The road in is much less adventurous than we were expecting. It’s a long straight cut into the jungle. But there is unlimited wildlife! The shores under the second bridge we cross are covered in caimans. Some half in the water, some mouths open, some swimming around, they are everywhere! And literally just right over there! No binoculars needed. Then we discover the jabiru. This bird is gigantic, and weird, and we are obsessed! We also see storks, egrets, capybaras, and tons of other birds we don’t recognize.
The day tops out at 104F, yuck. Camp is the parking lot of the lodge we booked our jaguar tour through. Yes, we are going on a jaguar tour in the morning! As we set up, we meet some of the other people staying in the lodge, including Paul, a psychic from the UK. He passes along several messages, and leaves us with a couple of predictions, including to keep an eye on our rear passenger tire.
5:45am comes on loud. It’s the birds, the birds are loud. Oh well, we need to get ready for a river adventure. Today, someone else will be driving us around the local waterways, looking for animals. At 7am our guide arrives and we walk to his boat. Yes, we booked a private boat, we wanted to be in charge of how long we spend on the water, and how long we get to photograph things. The weather is hot again, but motoring along the water, the temperature is perfect. Which means we’re probably going to burn…The tour starts off with lots of interesting birds. There is a jabiru nest with babies in it, way up in a tree. We were not expecting a bird that size to live in trees.
Our first jaguar shows up at 8:40am. It’s up on the bank looking at us, then disappears. Our guide repositions the boat and tells us to watch a dark spot by the water, and sure enough the jaguar pops back up! When it disappears back into the bush, our guide is the first boat to leave, and drives us around a bend in the river. Obviously he knows something. After several minutes, he points to the grass, and sure enough the grass is moving, like something is walking through it. That something turns out to be another, or the same jaguar, we cant tell. And we don’t care, because its exciting. Other boats fill in behind us, some of them with camera lenses that are four feet long. After the cat walks off into the grass, we carry on down the river.
Every time we stop for pictures, we try to make it quick so we don’t overheat. At 9:30am we see our second (third?) jaguar. This one has a radio collar on. Not many other boats make it to us before this one is gone too. The next six hours are spent exploring all the tributaries of the Rio Canabu and Sao Lourenco. We see baby caimans, more jabirus in their nests, some monkeys, and a toucan. Our eagle eyed guide also points out a tapir, who’s head is the only thing visible above the water, and a hyacinth macaw. He seems to hate capybaras, and will not stop for us to take pictures of them.
We decide to call it a little early, we are hot and tired. Since there is still some daylight, and we’ve driven these roads already, we pack and head back to the campground in Cuiaba for the night. Before we lose the light, we stop along the road out to take more pictures. There are storm clouds on the horizon and non-stop thunder. Maybe we shouldn’t be leaving. It starts to rain on us, and turns the road into slick mud. Is this where Paul’s prediction happens? Luckily it only lasts a few minutes. We stop for a truck with its hood up to make sure they are ok. The driver has already called for help, so we leave him with some water and carry one. We arrive around 11:30pm.
We wake up to our German neighbor doing his chores in his very small underwear. Get some! We were going to relax today, but just got the news that if we hustle, we can do one more final, final, final goodbye dinner with our friends before they head towards the coast, and the end of their trip. We’re packed and on the road in no time. One quick grocery stop to load up on meat for dinner and we drive drive drive. This time we make it at a very reasonable time of day, so get to have a great friends BBQ, and hang out late into the night.
