Morretes, Brazil

This place is strange. We had beautiful weather for 8 straight days, and now, when we want to get back on the bike and do some riding, it rains all night and most of the day. A repeat performance of Matinhos. Except we have learnt from that experience (a week ago), and are just staying put until the rain stops. In the internet café, wasting time. YouTubing it up.

Whats that I hear you say? It’s only rain? Correct, and I don’t care. Being soaked all day isn’t much fun, and the road we are planning to take is cobblestones most of the way. Slippery when wet. Plus, this should be a road of good views – no point going there in ‘pea soup’ fog.

Ilha do Mel

Could be translated (incorrectly) as the Island of Honey. It doesn’t really matter. I spend a week of this:

Not a drop of rain (well, some overnight, but didn’t affect us). Some good fish. Plenty of doing nothing. 3 books in 2 days.

Hope you enjoyed your week

(Thanks Stefan and Sabine for the photos!)

Brazil. Rain?

What’s going on here. It is not meant to rain on the coast of Brazil. Especially not when I’m here on hoiday.

Today I1m entrenched in an internet café. The bike is loaded and waiting outside ready to go when the rain stops. I wouldn’t mind a light sprinkle, but it’s coming down in buckets. The road is now flooded, but I don’t want to spend another day in this town (Matinhos). There is nothing to see; it is practically deserted. Think of the Gold Coast (4-5 story apartment style beach houses and pretty much no-one around). Not really all that exctiting.

Maybe it will stop raining soon. Maybe not.

+1hr. The water is now above the top of the gutter. Surely this can’t continue…
+1/2hr more. I can’t see the gutter any more. Where does all this water come from?
There’s a new river forming! I hope it doesn’t carry away my bike!

An evening in São Francisco do Sul

I’m in São Francisco do Sul. The old town is nice – old buildings, cobelstone streets (hell to cycle on). What’s this? There’s a fiesta! The 20th festival of island traditions, or something. We expected great things, the whole island has been talking to us about this (that is all I could understand – I still think they are speaking Russian in Brazil).
Nothing really happened in the old town until 9. Before then we could buy the usual things from the craft stalls. Should we want to. Then we could grab something to eat and drink, and listen to some light music.
A parade of dancing starfish and 3m tall people with huge heads passed by. I still don’t get that.
A very good looking lass tried to sell us (in English!) a fair/fiesta in Gasper, down the road, next month. We’d cycled through the town a few days ago, and didn’t want to say that we weren’t going back. I couldn’t work our how to say it. Actually, when she first spoke (in Portuguese), we said we don’t understand. So she asked us if we spoke Spanish (in Spanish). We said ‘Si’! But she couldn’t (so why ask?). Then she switched to English. Everyone tells us that Portuguese and Spanish are so similar, so why does no-one understand a word of Spanish here?
The street filled with people (the festivities were confined to one street along the sea shore).
The main stage was occupied (by, it seems, the main act). They played some instantly forgetable 80’s covers and Portuguese songs, that were very well recieved by the kids. The singer appears to be a transvestite, or at least a cross dresser, appearing in leopard skin tights and pink feather boa to sing “Dancing queen” in a feminan voice. After YMCA and Rivers of Babylon (all essentially in English, but missing significant parts of what I remember of the lyrics), the second guitarist took over. I think he must have been chain smoking from birth to get that voice. It was a strange show – the lighting and equipment were pretty good, the music was good, but the singing and act were terrible. And the crowd loved it. I left about 11 – not wanting to suffer any more, and to beat the rain to the hotel.
Maybe there’ll be a fiesta I can dance along at up the road…

Portuguese

It’s hot here. The hills have begun, and everyone seems to be speaking Russian. At least they may as well be speaking Russian, Greek or even Chinese.

I cannot speak Spanish, but I can get by (present tense only, nothing too complex). I’d love to know more, and I will learn more. However, it turns out that a smattering of Spanish isn’t going to be enough in Brazil. Portuguese is impossible! Jessica, how do you do it? And why does it sound like Russian to me?

Brazil!

Ok, I cheated again. But I figure the ‘pure’ bike trip is over and now I’m doing my best to enjoy myself until it warms up in Canada. Today they’re going for 12°C, so it’s getting there. Still a a way to go.

I finished my ride across Uruguay. Punta del Diablo did hold me captive for one more day. Kind of funny, I don’t normally like just relaxing by the beach, but it’s so nice there, and it was kind of novel talking ‘Oz’ again. I couldn’t help it.

The border posed a small problem: I arrived at the consulate (to get my visa) 30 mins too late, at 1pm. This meant I had to overnight in Chuy. Not the highlight of the trip, but there have been worse towns. Other than that, and the fee for the visa, everything went smoothly (definitely not whinging about the visa – I’m still outraged about Australia’s visa requirements).

Stefan and Sabine have been camped out here in Campeche (near Florianopolis) for a week. So I jumped on a couple of buses and came up to meet them. Another chilled out beach spot. Stefan has been taking surfing lessons, Sabine and I bashed about a volleyball for a while. We sat on the sand. Cooked up a 1.5kg fish for dinner. Found out we could do with more, so added some prawns. Kind of hard work.

We will head for a different, possibly equally idyllic, beach tomorrow. Maybe with more surf. Perhaps I’ll take a crack at surfing again (Lessons? Who needs lessons? ).

And I want to go back to work?

Coast of Uruguay

I knew there would be large distances after Montevideo, and possibly not much to see. There was and wasn’t, respectively. So I put in some big days and shot across the country, day one to just past Punta del Este, and day two to Punta del Diablo (Devils Point). Big is between 150 and 180km per day. See the map.

Some of the riding was along the coast, party through eucalyptus plantations (it is great to see my trees!), but mostly past dairy farms. So lovely and blue, woody, or green. Really it is pleasant countryside, but not overly exciting for a cyclist. It would have been heaven on a motorbike. The tarmac is very good here. Several bikes screamed past during the day (as well as plenty of mopeds puttering along). I wished one of them would let me hang on.

The weather has been exceptional. I took a day off cycling in Punta del Diablo, but I might just take another. Apparently this is the off season by the coast (thank goodness, I hate crowded coastal towns). It’s great here! Blue sky, not a cloud in the sky. The sea is warm; there is even a bit of surf. Air temperature up around 30°C. The hostel is pretty good too. Enough different people – I’ve met some other aussies for a change. If Brazil turn me around at the border, I think I’ve found somewhere to kill some time, err, profitably occupy myself.

I can’t show any photos (no camera), but I can offer a different sense of the place. The prevailing sound is the crash of the waves (or music after dark); the water is warm and the sand and water full of shell grit (it gets everywhere!), the sun on your back feels great. The clean smell of the sea is welcome down at the beach, and there is a strong, lingering sickly sweet (not tobacco) smell after dark. It is touristy, but more of a chilled out beach place. Lots of foreigners – I was expecting more Uruguayans.

Australian Visa?

Perhaps I am out of touch with how the world is, or should be, run. Perhaps I am ignorant with the plight of many. But I don’t see why every single person that wants to come and have a look at Australia needs to apply for a visa. You want to stay longer? Look out! Why are we so paranoid? Even the US will let me in without a visa, and I thought they had the most draconian entry requirements in the world. I’m shocked to find it is actually my homeland that is worse that what I thought was the worst.

Take a look for yourself on the “how to apply” website. Now imaging that English isn’t your first language (like the majority of the population on the planet). The online aplication site has recently been the target of Trojan horse virus, that may skim your credit card details. There is a warning when you start to apply for a visa. Are you kidding? Australia, what happened?

Montevideo

It would be in your (and probably my) best interests if you just ignore everything below. Perhaps pretend you’ve read it. I think my brain has taken a holiday.

Uruguay started promisingly. The first day of riding to Colonia was pleasant. Nothing too stressful, a nice change of scenery – lovely green rolling fields. A few cows. Reasonably flat.

Colonia (del Sacramento) is a lovely little place on the river across from Buenos Aires, old buildings and nice café. The sunset is spectacular – the sun melts in to the river, right alongside the skyline of BsAs. But the old town is easily explored in a few hours, and left the next day. I thought I could make Montevideo in one day (only 180km). And did, but I’m still feeling it, two days later. One reason to make the trip in just one day, is the country is boring. Let me add a few o’s to that. Booooooring. Perhaps some emphasis. Booooooring. Flat and green is nice for a half day or so, but after hundreds of kilometers… Did I mention it is boring?

I had hoped to get a bus up into Brazil, and bypass some of the boring bits in the south. But the Brazilian consulate in Montevideo has other ideas about issuing visas to trouble making Australians. Clearly I must be a potential troublemaker – no other country in South America has had a moments problem with letting me in. The best advice (from the consulate) I have now is to ride to the border and see what they say.

That will be a great laugh:
“Can I come in? Err, without a visa?”
“Why don’t you have a visa?”
“The consulate said he couldn’t give me one without bus or plane tickets showing how I would enter and exit the country. I have a bike – I don’t need a ticket to ride my bike”
“Why don’t you have a ticket to leave the country?”
“Errr, hello. Bike.”
“No. Go away and get a visa. You trouble maker on wheels”.
“But its 350km (boring!) back to Montevideo!”
“You think we care?”

Actually, I expect they wont have a problem with letting me in at the border, but you never know. I will be pretty annoyed if I get turned back now – after having gone through all the work to apply for the visa and being rejected. Do they think I want to stay there? I have a ticket to Canada after all!

And on that, I bought a ticket to Canada (in part to make the visa application for Brazil easier). I’m flying to Toronto in mid May. Not the original plan of heading to Vancouver – on the wrong side of the country in fact – but a start. I decided to not use my frequent flyer points to get an essentially free ticket. Another part from normal Steve behaviour (whats going on here?). But I had reasons, or at least one: The US make transiting through their country as much of a headache as wanting to stay there for months. I turns out that technically I could not transit through the US without having a ticket, not just out of the US, but out of Canada as well. This is despite having a visa that allows me to land in Canada on a one way ticket. So, if the US immigration official was having a bad day, it would turn into a very uncomfortable week for me as well. Does everyone assume that I’m going to try and live in their country, steal their welfare?

Personally, I think we should have grown beyond all this visa crap. I think it way too much of a pipe dream to ask to start to break down the borders around the world (hang on, haven’t they started to do this in Europe?). They appear to be heading in the opposite direction over here. Never mind, just so long as they let me in. A few extra (well many) bucks to jump over the US may be worth it in the long run.

Another behavioural deviation. Today I met up with Stefan and Sabine again for a wander around Montevideo (did I mention that for some reason Germans are not considered trouble makers, and can just go right into Brazil?). We had a pleasant stroll, looked at some old buildings. Had a nice lunch – I always seem to have big chunks of cow to eat when Stefan is around… And then, we got fleeced. I’m a little embarrassed to tell the truth. Some guy managed to get our confidence, and we voluntarily handed over cash for some football match tickets. He went off, and we never saw him again. Surprise, surprise. Now it wasn’t much money, but more that we’d spend on lunch. It was terribly galling, we simply are not that gullible. Well, clearly we are. I can only claim that my brain has taken a temporary leave of absence. Hence my comment that you should ignore all I’ve just written.

Time to watch the football match on television. We’ve paid to watch the damn thing once, let’s at least see who wins