ODO: 346,240
We wake up to wind. Strong wind. It’s the only thing keeping the temperature bearable. We’re camped in a municipal park along the river with a lot of blue and yellow macaws hiding in the trees. Their signature move is to make a serious ruckus twice a day. All of our friend leave today, heading in different directions. Some heading for shipping containers and different continents. This may actually be our final goodbye with Jason and Kara. In the afternoon we find a laundromat, and do our own laundry for the first time in Latin America. Oh, and there is the daily ostrich visit? Apparently it comes every day to stand in the shade of the fence. We walk into the nearby woods to look for the blue and yellow macaws we can hear. There are MANY, but the light is fading fast so our cameras are no help in capturing them.
The sun and the heat have us up early. On our own again, we start getting things put back in order so we can hit the road. But first, a day time macaw walk! Taking photos goes much better in the full sun, go figure. While we’re putting away laundry, a toucan files into the tree above us. They DO NOT like being photographed, and we end up chasing it across the campground and back before getting a picture. Our final chores before we go: take advantage of the free water at the campsite! Which means hose the mud off the truck and deploy our shower.
And then back on the road. The mission today is find an anteater. It’s impossible to schedule or predict wildlife, so we’ll see how we do. We are headed for a place called anteater road, so hopefully that helps. We drive and drive though the 105F afternoon heat. Anteater road is similar to the Porto Jofre road, long, straight, red dirt. We encounter lots and lots of Capybaras crossing back and forth (this is probably why our river guide wasn’t interested in stopping for them), a couple of foxes, some birds we name dinosaur birds, coatis, frogs, bats, and one lone caiman. No anteaters. We find a spot to tuck in off the side of the road for the night. We’ll try again in the morning.
The internet says the best time to see anteaters is at dawn and dusk. Dusk didn’t work out yesterday, so we try dawn today. We finish out the road, and all we see are some wild pigs. Our friend, Hano, sent us an off-road track, so its time to head back the way we came for some gas and supplies. As soon as we hit pavement, it happens…Ol’ Eagle-eye Berne spots an anteater off in a field. Much excitement and picture taking ensue until the anteater is out of sight. Back to business, adventure road here we come!
On the way to adventure we see: deer, cows, caimans, big lizards, an armadillo, capybaras, rheas, horses and a donkey. Our adventure road is a sand track, with lots of gates. Today we will open and close twenty seven of them across just over thirty miles. Before we get through all of those gates, we come to a water crossing that looks suspect. Is it deep? Does it have a hard or soft bottom? Important questions, especially since there is nothing to winch to if we run into trouble. No one wants to wade through the murky water (caimans, bugs, other stuff), so Berne goes exploring on foot until he finds a way around. Success!
And then we find our second anteater! Just out in a field with some horses. KoKo grabs her camera and heads off to make a friend, while Berne takes a meeting. The anteater lets KoKo get way too close, less than six feet away (later we learn they can run up to 30mph, so WAY too close). It is completely unbothered by her, and goes about its business for about half an hour. Then the horses in the field decide to gang up on them. The horses start menacing KoKo and the anteater, and end up chasing the anteater out of the field. Rude. We find our next open clearing, and set up for the night. Our starlink has been acting up, so we put some effort into fixing it before getting into bed. Then Berne says, “Do you smell gas?”. Our extra, extra gas tank, a gas bag we strap to the roof and only fill when we don’t know how far away and adventure will take us, is leaking. We hop out, pull it down, and empty it into the tank. Crisis averted, but now we have less adventure range until we acquire a replacement.
Our efforts at internet repair last night didn’t work. The morning starts with swapping back to our old router, and figuring out how to secure it while we drive. Our day is full of wildlife again: so many deer and wild pigs (heards of twenty or more!) with babies. We scare an anteater out of the mud, and it looks like something out of a scary movie while its running away. More coatis, and another armadillo. This armadillo sticks around for some pictures before heading off into the wilds. Lots of egrets, and burrowing owls, cows, and horses. More Jabirus and tons of other birds we couldn’t (didn’t try to) identify. After another 62 gates, we make it back to the main road. That’s 89 gates over 150miles, one gate every 1.7miles.
We’re losing the light, but there’s a park not far from us. A quick hour drive and 10min river ferry later we arrive to find zero side roads (all reclaimed by the jungle), not a single wide area, and nothing on iOverlander. Shoot. We carry on through the dark for an additional hour to the town we had planned to drive to in the morning for gas. A tapir crosses the road in front of us, which was exciting. And we end up in our old standby, truck stop! The nice caretaker gets us settled in, and an excited trucker talks Berne’s ear off in Portuguese, which Berne does not speak.
Thumping against the fenders wakes us up. Berne goes to inspect, and finds the truck stop chickens roosting on top of the tires, under the fenders. Pack, gas, drive! We hit the long straight (what we call the roads now) towards Bonito, an area full of touristy activities. Which should be super fun! This road has more roadkill than we have seen in ages. We pass a tapir, lots of capybaras, an armadillo, and tons of birds. We see no alive wildlife. Because it’s that time of day, and we haven’t had much Brazilian food, we go out for lunch in Bonito. It is very cute and touristy, and all the rental bikes are unlocked, which feels very safe. It also happens to be Brazilian Independence day, which means almost everything is closed. We are able to get gas and cash, so we head to camp, a farm owned by a nice guy named Mark. And it’s the rare occurrence that we arrive early! We relax and do some work, and fight our internet issues some more before turning in for the night.
For the second day in a row (ever?!) we wake up to chickens trying to roost in the fenders again, followed by a loud, long duck fight. While planning what to do for the next two weeks, we decide there isn’t much in this area for us, mostly river snorkeling, so why not drive 1600 miles to the coast and back? Did we mention that we’re heading back to California in two weeks? We are, and will be flying out of Paraguay, so we are on a timeline. And we’re over here, and unlikely to come back later, so off we go! Our starlink is officially dying, so we don’t bother to turn it on while we drive anymore. The plan is to find a new one in a store along the way. Five hours into our fifteen hour drive, the rear end starts howling again. We JUST fixed this, nooooooooooo! When we pull over to investigate, the pinion snout is WAY too hot. Damnit. The only positive, is that this happened right before we passed the turn to take us straight back to Paraguay. So we pivot, again, and head slowly back towards Asuncion, and the mechanic we left two weeks ago. We make it an hour down the road before we find a truck stop for the night. The noise is getting worse. Berne’s theory is that a bearing is going out. Moral is low.
We’re tired…it was loud, and there were bright lights on all night. Moral is still low, and we have to get the driveshaft out and strapped to the awning again. At least we get to do this on pavement…and we’re really fast at it now. Berne gets under the truck, while KoKo pulls the drive slugs. No more than ten minutes. The road south takes us through fields of sugar cane. It’s a short day today. Our destination is a city park in Marechal Candido Rondon. It’s a really lovely park. The center is a small lake surrounded by a walking path, and full of ducks, geese, and capybaras! There is a workout park, and a free lending library, nice bathrooms, volleyball court, playground and mini amphitheater. As the sun sets, the park fills with people exercising, and families enjoying the evening. The restaurant across the street has a bacon pizza, which we enjoy for dinner. And the weather cools off nicely in time for bed.
