Mini World Adventure Part 5

We said our goodbyes to our loved ones, and Africa, and caught a flight to Buenos Aires, a crazy taxi driver then drove us across the city to the 2nd airport and we then flew to Uruguay in one of the worst flights I have ever had. The locals were praying and making the sign of the cross as they entered the old plane, luckily it was not a long flight and we were glad to get off safely. We would have preferred go straight to Brazil with the cars but they had very strict restrictions on importing.

In Montevideo, a lovely city, stayed on the Rambla a road hugging the coast around the city in an apartment with an English expat. The city made me think of what Nice must have been like in the 1930’s. Our first Spanish speaking country with the best steaks in the world,grilled over wood they were so big it was all you could do to eat it all,in fact they often cut them in half and kept one part warm for you! Our first attempts at speaking the language didn’t go too well, we ordered a coke; a cold beer and Tony being very English wanted his beer not too cold, we were served the coke, a beer and a bowl of strawberries!

The amount of old 1930 to 1950 American cars still being used was incredible, from Model T ford and Chevrolets to larger light commercials, some in showroom condition, some far from it.

We had a couple of days to wait for the ship to arrive from South Africa and luckily Kuhne & Nagel one of our sponsors was on hand to help. Although not as obvious as Nigeria there is still a culture of bribery. When the ship arrived we all went to the docks with a Uruguayan whose job was to pay the correct bribe to correct person and with his help the cars were released with a couple of hours!

I gave the cars a good check over, we loaded then back up and set off early next morning. In many third world countries road checks are common, these can be up to every 100 km and are manned by Police or the Army. Sometimes they just wave you through; sometimes they ask us to completely strip out the car, this officer below wanted a picture!

The Uruguayan coast road north is just beautiful with long stretches of yellow sandy beaches with no one on them, as we go closer to Brazil we drove through a national park. It was late in the evening and very swampy either side of the road and all you could hear over the noise of the car was a frog’s chorus.
Up to this point we had slept on camp beds either in tents when cold or just next to the cars in the open the warmer climates with mosquito nets.

As soon as we got into Brazil we bought ourselves a hammock each and once we got used to stringing it in a banana shape and sleeping across the hammock we hardly ever slept in anything else for the rest of the journey. 

It was now Portuguese, very similar to Spanish but the Brazilians seem to make it sing.

Brazil is a vibrant and varied country and the roads were very good so within a short time we had passed though Porto Alegre and stopped at Sao Paulo as we were asked to meet the TV Company to do some filming. This is an enormous city and dangerous in places so we decided to sleep in the gardens of the TV Company! This lead to a bit of a commotion early the next morning with the security but once we explained it was sorted out quickly.

It was a short way to Rio De Janeiro one of the most iconic cities in the World. 

We were staying in a camp site just south of the city in the hill behind Ipanema beach, visiting the awesome beach front, although it was raining! 

Sugar Loaf Mountain and the Statue of Christ the redeemer, we also visited to Favelas where the less fortunate live, afterwards being told it was a very dangerous place and we should not have gone in alone. All the time we were trying to get more information about the road from Manaus in the Amazon north to Venezuela, some maps showed a route some not and the authorities were well known for selling land either side of a road that had not yet been built!

From Rio it was over 1000 km to Brasilia the capital city,

built from scratch in 1955 with the principles of urbanism, so all the banks are in one area, shops in another, hotels etc. We stayed in a very small hotel/hovel for £1.25 per night it was ‘dodgy’ to say the least.

There was still no confirmation that the road we hoped to take out of Manaus existed but we had no option but to head north to join the Trans Amazonian highways at Maraba. 

As we got closer the road got worse with more and more pot holes and late one evening we arrived at the end of the tarmac and hung our hammocks in a large barn at the start of the Transamazon Highway.