Our Journal

August 16      Manaus

Early morning we stopped for a quick breakfast and got to the Guardia Nacional before they opened.  We needed permission to take Venezuelan bikes out of the country.  The front guard showed us to a waiting room along with a bunch of truck drivers.  News on the TV was blaring and for an hour and a half the truckers talked about Chavez and how great he is, interrupted at times to exchange perverse comments about an aerobics program on another channel.  It’s been strange to me that with all the anti-gringo rhetoric from Chavez, no one seems to equate us with those evil meddlers from the north.  We were invisible to them as I buried my nose in a book and Matt sat cross-armed in zen-like removal.  I had asked several times who we were supposed to talk to but couldn’t get anywhere.  The Guardia Nacional was a flurry of activity without anything getting done.  After a couple of hours I asked again and was pointed to an office where an officer speaking way to loud with a finger pointed at our chests ordered us in. 

We showed him all our paperwork, everything in order as far as we knew but he just kept muttering, “They’re never going to cross…”  We made the mistake of saying we were going for a year and this brought even more complications.  Taking Venezuelan bikes out of Venezuela isn’t so simple.  He ordered Matt to come make some copies of such and such and they walked out to the bikes where Matt calmly encouraged the process and we were instantly on our way over to get our passports stamped at another office across town.   Heavy rain began on the 20 km the road to the border.  We kept driving through check points until we found one where someone asked us to stop.  The Brazilian official laughed and sent us back to the Brazilian police where there was confusion since my bike is actually in Matt’s name.  The two very smiley ladies told us I needed permission from Matt to drive this bike into Brazil so Matt looked at me and said, “Chris, you have permission to drive this bike through Brazil.”  Smiles quickly disappeared and they pointed back in the direction of Venezuela. 

We both looked like we’d cry and slowly started packing up our paperwork.  Just as I was about to close my folder she grabbed the papers, told me to go back 100 meters to get them signed by a Venezuelan commander and come back.  We moved quick seeing that lunchtime was at hand. We got back to find James, a New Zealander traveling on a bike with Jersey plates, in front of us.  They began processing all three of our papers.  James had been traveling for a year and half all over South America.  His bike registration had long expired and most of his paperwork was false unbeknownst to them.  Everyone broke for lunch so we waited two more hours.  We walked into the small town on the Brazilian side and had lunch where a blue-eyed Brazilian serving us told Matt that in Brazil, blue eyes mean you’re crazy.  Our paperwork was all ready when we got back, then a visit to another office for the stamp, a quick pass through customs where nothing was checked, and we were in Brazil after six and half hours.  We drove on into the rain. 

We had been so rushed to try and beat the lunch break we hadn’t gotten gas on the Venezuelan side.  No gas station on the Brazilian side.  James, taking in our slow pace and lack of planning, quickly sped away with a wave.  I had tried to repair my rain pants but was once again sitting in a puddle.  The rain didn’t last long and pretty soon we were on an isolated highway past poor Indian pueblos wondering how much further to a pump.  We asked at every sparse settlement but no luck.  Finally we reached a road stop where a guy signaled us around to the back where he had a few two liter coke bottles full of gas.  We put a few in and sat down for a rest watching some old guys play pool on a tiny table.  The village idiot tried to order something with a few coins obviously not having any idea of their worth.  They gave him a half cup of Cachasa (cane liquor) to make him happy.  The TV had the opening ceremony of the olympics on and a guy jiggled with it to make the angle just perfect for us.  They were curious about everything, the bikes, where we were from, and it just didn’t seem to matter to them that we couldn’t understand much of what they said.  Watching the lighting of the torch we couldn’t help but parallel a certain symbolism with the crossing into Brazil.  We didn’t factor in that it was Friday 13^th in August, a month I hear Brazilians consider unlucky. 

We pushed on and reached Boa Vista in the rain as it was getting dark.  After a lot of asking for directions and not understanding much more than hand motions we made our way to the center and a hotel.  Boa Vista is a planned city with a spiral layout making directions pretty difficult.  The avenues are gigantic with multiple lanes and esplanades.  The main strip has a concert area, basketball court, soccer field, bmx track, go carts, tennis courts, murals, a beer hall (but not so much beer being consumed), food stands, natatorium, jungle gym, and movie theater.  At midnight kids were still all over the place.  There’s a giant expansion of park at the end of the walk.  Churches were everywhere.  I only saw police when I ran past the station and there didn’t seem to be any need for them.  This is family paradise and we began to wonder if we had stumbled into one of those communities from science fiction movies where we wouldn’t be allowed to leave.  Surely a man was about to approach us to assign us jobs, homes, wives, and community responsibilities.  After a day we decided it was best to escape before they absorbed us and made us one of them.  After two days of our attempted babbling nonsense in Portuguiseish, the receptionist at the hotel suddenly spoke to us in perfect English.  We were clearly under surveillance. 

Leaving Boa Vista, it rained of course, but the road was good with few potholes.  If the Amazon is called the “Lungs of the Earth”, then the road we were on is a cancerous artery cutting into it.  To either side of the road there is an expanse of cleared forest, sometimes beautiful cattle land, sometimes looking like a graveyard of stumps.  There’s not much else, a few settlements of ranchers and loggers.  We decided to split the trip to Manaus into two days and stopped at Roranopolis, a logging town about halfway.  It’s tiny but there was a town map on the hotel wall and I counted 10 different lumber companies advertised.  Our hotel/gas station was definitely man’s land and there was a constant group of guys around the bikes, full of questions.  We couldn’t answer too many of them.  We walked the town, not the friendliest of places.  Our hotel doubled as a house of ill repute with negotiations taking place outside.  A pimp looking guy came over to us and tried to offer us a 15 or 16 year old girl.  I got a little spooked about leaving the bikes outside next to so many flatbed trucks.  The owner agreed to let us put the bikes in the lobby.  Tired from the road or perhaps tipsy from the big beer I drank, I left the lock on the sprocket, broke the lock clean off when I accelerated, the bike fell, and I toppled into the mud.  To make things more humbling, the bike is too heavy to lift alone and I just stood there growling at it. 

We rose early and drove out in the rain.  The road got bad, lots of pot hole dodging and we drove through night-like storm clouds.  They never seemed to last very long, giant thunderheads that we passed through in 30 minutes.  We stopped off at the equator for a rest and some equatorial silliness, but tried to keep moving as we had a lot of distance to cover.  As we moved south the rape of the land got worse.  Passing though an Indian reservation that hadn’t suffered any cutting we got a sense of what the growth looked like and how loud the forest is. 

By mid afternoon we stopped for gas and moments later six bikes traveling north pulled up.  My bike had a twin and we visited with the 12 Brazilians who were headed on a month tour through Venezuela and Guyana.  They had just traveled for three days from Porto Vehlo to Manaus on a road where they had to bring their own gas.  One rider had fallen five times.  We got their number for when we pass through their town and parted ways.  It took us eight hours to get to Manaus, our longest day yet and we pulled into the surrealism of heavy traffic after a day of none.  A truck flew by me dangerously close.  A motorcycle weaved between us with the rider laid out on his belly Evil Kenival style with legs horizontal.  We found the old town, checked into a hotel, and were walking down tree lined streets and plazas with 19^th century architecture, an old opera house a block away.  We’ll probably stay a while to rest up, plan, and study Portuguese.  Up to now it has been a lot of roadwork and we’re both looking forward to sinking further into a place.

Again, thanks for all the comments, it has been great getting news.

Um abracao, Chris

contact us:  chris@isabm.com   matt@isabm.com