Mini World Adventure Part 7

Anyone who has owned a Mini will understand the picture above; rain has managed to get into the distributor cap,so I am drying it out and treating with WD40.
A day or so after all the rain we were driving and I came across Jack stopped in the road, We always travelled with Tony Driving the lead car (Jack) and I followed on so if he broke down I would find him, if I broke down it could be some time before he knew I was no longer following. This was well before mobile phones, so some days we would not catch up to each other until we stopped for fuel to to eat or if we came into a large town and directions may be an issue.

The rear suspension cone had broken, not a part we carried, so I drove back about 5 miles to the last house/farm, remove the part from Jill and walked the 5 miles back. 

It was such a different experience walking, I saw so much more wildlife, beautiful birds, leaf cutting ants, butterflies and one snake. I rebuild Jack and we drove back. 

We then took a bus the next day back to the last town about 150 kms away and found a blacksmith who did a fantastic repair, got the bus back and refitted the cone and to it is still there to this day.

The cars were suffering quite badly due to road conditions and the weight we were carrying, luckily the next ‘service area’ was run by an Englishman and as you can imagine it was much better organised than all of the others we had seen. One of the cars had cracked the rear sub frame and the roof rack needed attention. He had a welder but of course there is no mains electricity this deep in the jungle, so he had a generator that was powered from an old truck jacked up with one of the wheels off. 

A belt then ran from the drum to the generator, not very health & safety but it allowed us to repair the cars.

About 150 kms before Manaus Jack blew its head gasket, normally this would not have been a problem as we carried the parts on board, but as we had changed the engine to 1275cc, the parts we had were for 998cc. I tried to modify the gasket as a temporary measure and we managed to limp on.

The rivers were getting wider and at least we reached the Balsa to take us to Manaus, it is where the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers meet and is over a mile wide! The Amazon river is brown and the Negro black and they run side by side for many miles not mixing which was an incredible site on the Balsa.

Manaus is a city the size of Truro but 1500 miles up the Amazon surrounded by Jungle, it is the largest inland port in the world and prospered from the rubber trade but when we visited pretty run down with large areas of Favelas, 

but still has the Italian designed Opera house.

One of the good aspects of the City is because it is on the River Negro there are not too many mosquitoes.

We found a very cheap guest house to stay in and managed to persuade Pecton a subsidiary of Shell who were exploring for oil in the area to help us. We left the cars with them and used their phone and telex to try and sort out the parts required to repair the cars. It was such a luxury to go to their headquarters as it was air conditioned and out of the oppressive humidity.

It took 6 weeks to sort out parts, flying them to Manaus and customs etc. We spent the time working on the cars and on one of our walks around the back streets found an old Mini Moke, it was abandoned, so we rolled it onto its side and ‘borrowed’ the rear suspension trumpets. Our third cameraman left us here after picking up some form of tropical disease 

There was a small English speaking community, mainly Americans and passing through backpackers travelling the length of the Amazon from Iquitos to Belem, I can vividly remember two days here; one was the day John Lennon was shot and the other was my 21^st. We managed to find a bar with a banana tree growing through the tables after drinking Caipirinha cocktails and eating Plantain crisps; I climbed the tree and brought down the bunch of bananas, quite a different celebration.

Finally the correct parts arrived after much work behind the scenes from my parents. I rebuild Jack’s engine, we re-loaded the cars and headed north. We were still not sure that a road existed between Manaus and Venezuela, which seems incredible, some locals said the road only went for a couple hundred kms others said it was there but very poor in places. We had no alternative but to drive on and see. 
To begin with the road was hard a bit like a cobbled street 

and before long we came to the equator and for fun lined the cars up and sat either side, a leg in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the southern.

As we pulled out of the jungle towards the high planes of the border the roads got steadily worse, the road was a brilliant white colour,

very rutted and the cars struggled.
We eventually made it to the border and crossed without issues, although they did steam clean the underside of both cars to prevent any bugs being imported from Brazil.

The landscape was just so different, open plains with quite deep rocky streams to cross, less humid but still very hot. We had found a large bunch of bananas and lots of limes in an abandoned Fazenda.We mixed Limes with sugar and they made a very refreshing drink.

Mini World Adventure Part 6

 To me personally this was the part of the trip I was looking forward to and scared of the most, The Amazon, its wild tribes, snakes, killer frogs, insects, Cayman, Piranha fish, electric eels and that’s just the animals we know about!

The Trans-Amazonian highway was built in 1972 to open up the forest to development and was a major cause of the deforestation. Its 2000 miles of dirt road built as 3 lane but as narrow as single track in places, fine in the dry with corrugations  

and gully's,

but when the rains come it turns into a quagmire. These road conditions caused us a now fairly normal problem on the Mini's, the exhausts, they kept being knocked off.It was happening so often we eventually decided to leave them off and drove very noisy little cars.

Bridges spanned the smaller rivers and streams, some required a walk across before we tried the cars on them!

We set of full of anticipation and to begin with the road was dusty but fine, lots of large trucks towing out enormous logs that took up most of the road so we had to drive with care. When we arrived at the first river we had to wait for the ferry or Balsa as they are called. 

They are all free and each side of the river small villages have sprung up. We bought some milk from a chap with a horse and cart, very pleased with ourselves until we saw the emaciated cows and worried every time one of us coughed.

The Balsa's varied from one or two vehicle versions to large ones similar to the King Harry Ferry rivers also varied from 100 yards to 1/2 mile or more across. On one of the first crossings we were lucky enough to see the rare freshwater pink dolphin. 

The locals were very friendly and often, as we waited for the Balsa to arrive we would try and wash our clothes in the river,seeing how poor a job we made of it the local women would wash them for us whilst we occupied the children (who were more like fish then children) swimming and diving in the murky water. Many children sold food to waiting drivers,boiled eggs,bananas,oranges,bananas,pawpaw and mangoes.

Some of the towns were quite large and gold had been discovered making others very 'wild west'. In one of these gold rush towns we were in a bar and saw the barman bring a double barrelled gun up to the counter to point at a very drunk and rowdy client, it certainly quietened him down and left a lasting impression on us too! Men were using gold as money in the bars and shops,there were several buyers of the gold the prospectors had found,these were heavily guarded.We went into one of these establishments and were shown the raw gold dust and some larger ingots,with hindsight I wish I had bought one. Many men carried guns and it did feel very much like America must have been in the cowboy days.
Many towns had what looked like a bandstand,(in fact it may have been a bandstand, but I never saw a band playing in them) where at night if you didn't want to stay in a hotel  or have the money you could hang your hammock without charge. 

We often slept in these that could sometimes have up to 30 men sleeping at all different angles making quite a sight, and sound I can tell you!!

In Itaituba we were told it was over 1200 kms to the next fuel station, our plastic tanks we had bought had long since gone, so we loaded the cars with 20 litre metal cans, both inside and on the roof rack, it was like driving a mobile bomb. 

Unfortunately the quality of the cans was not good, so we had to juggle leaking cans and topping up as often as possible. The other problem was the quality of the fuel, (there was a joke in Brazil that when the Pope decided what bits of South America where Spanish and Portuguese he must have known where the oil was because at that time most other countries had it, Brazil did not) to save importing too much petrol they had developed a fuel called Alcool developed from Sugar cane, this was to cause major engine problems later in the trip. 

Another way to lower fuel use was to close fuel stations on Sundays, this meant an enforced stop and I usually serviced the cars, on one particular day working on the bank a of a large river, someone from the village bent down close to where I was working and pulled metre long snake from the grass shouting 'viper,viper' The way he was handling it made me think it was not dangerous but it certainly made me more careful when working on the cars. 
It also meant as we spent a bit longer in a village we got to know the locals better and by now are Portuguese was getting better. 
In one small town we were invited by a local to his farm, 

They proudly dressed in their Sunday best for me to take a photo.

He then took us into the forest to cut down a tree, it was incredible to see the difference in light once it was felled. 

 We walked through the virgin forest being shown wild mango & pawpaw, I have never eaten fruit so sweet and strong tasting, it was delicious.

We also visited the local sawmills and did some filming for Nationwide TV

Below is a shot of 'Slash n Burn' the controversial way farmers clear the jungle to enable them to raise cattle and grow crops, problem is the land is poor and after a couple of years it is no longer viable, although given time the jungle does start to take it back.

Many of these river side villages were flooded every year and we were shown houses with paint rubbed off half way up the walls even though they were 50-60 feet above the present water level!

Something that I hadn’t thought of was unless you were on the bank of a river you had no view, on the road the furthest you could see would be the other side of the valley and all that would be was trees. A problem locals has was there were no rocks, the surface was soil or sand and boulders and rocks had to be brought in. 
About half way to Manaus the rains started, this turned the road into mile after mile of sticky glutinous mud. Our usual method of dealing with this problem was to get out of the cars,have a recce, choose the best route, back the cars up and drive as fast as we could to try and make it all the way through. If, or more likely when, we got stuck we either used our hand winch to a tree, or if the other car had got through tried to tow it out. Sometimes it could take several hours and locals on the road would also help.

On one particular day it was so bad the mud jammed in between the rear wheels and wheels arches locking them up, we had to stop, jack up the car, drag out the mud and start again, but it happened so often we had to stop in an old abandoned farm (fazenda) and wait until the road improved. 
The jungle is an incredible place, when we were unable to find villages or ‘service areas’ (along the track are areas for trucks, buses and cars to stop with a place to eat and usually somewhere to hang a hammock) we would sleep next to the road with the hammocks tied between the cars and a tree. The noises from the jungle at night are amazing, from howler monkeys, frogs and thousands and thousands of insects, most of which seem to bite. The mosquito’s will actually bite though the hammock into your skin and then the ‘pinon fly bites between, at one point my back was just red all over.

 There was another insect that seemed to get under your skin and left me with what looked like long white scars. 
We arrived at one small roadside stop late one afternoon, hitched our hammocks in the adjoining barn and went down to the stream to wash and clean our kit. It was about three metres wide and about a metre deep.a with all the rivers in the jungle it was lovely and warm and you could feel little fish coming up to your skin and gently biting.
As throughout the whole of our trip, we found the local people very hospitable,here was no different and we were invited into the house for a evening meal. Obviously fish is the staple food and as guests we were given the best part, the head!!! I had dawn the short straw so started to eat what I could noticing the rather large teeth,so I asked them what sort of fish it was, they said Piranha, I then asked where the fish had come from? They informed us they had caught it in the stream!!

The food in the Amazon apart from the fish was not the best, it usually consisted of rice, black beans and spaghetti all of which had been reheated many times. They also had ‘Farina’ which was made from the husks of corn on the cob and I think meant to be roughage. Occasionally we would treat ourselves to a Churrasco a selection of up to 20 different BBQ’d meats are brought to the table on long skewer, it was usually for a set price so they would always try to fill you up with bread etc before the best meats came at the end of the meal. The coffee always came very strong and very sweet with sugar pre-added.

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.