The Brazilian Coast

Last time I posted was in Rio which feels like an eternity ago - I'm going to do a mainly photo based blog until I've caught up a bit.

We left Rio into a headwind (classic us) but along a beautiful beach front cycle path that lasted for a round 30k. There was a stunning bridge over crashing waves onto rocks, but unfortunately this was barriered off because of the strong winds. We spoke to some other cyclists who told us that it had collapsed before the Rio olympics and 12 people had died! They said we'd be fine and we trusted them. I didn't spend too much time looking at the crashing waves though. After we'd survived this we had chips/cheese/bacon on the beach. Delicious.
We managed to make it to a campsite that night which it turns out was a big mistake as we paid a lot of money to sleep on the beach. Literally metres away you could have the same experience for free (although illegally). We also had a brief excitement when somebody told us there were two more cycle tourists 2 minutes up the road! We never saw them... The next few days continued in the same vein. The road was one of the most gorgeous I've ever cycled on (at that point anyway) with lush green forest and beautiful beaches. They also are big fans of smoothies in Brazil so every morning we'd stop at some tiny shop and point at fruit and they would make us smoothies. The only problem in this paradise was the road. There was only one road at it was really really really busy. This was made worse by the hills because we'd be going really slowly. The hard shoulder alternated sides of the road and we had to hop across whenever it changed (this is accepted practise in South America). The sun shone but the living was not easy! We also kept

having traumatic experiences in shopping centres as we were trying to buy new mats (a feat we've still not achieved two months later). We would go in (alternately) and it would be massive. Then we had the problem of not speaking Portuguese. We'd regularly spend an hour trying to do this and failed every time. This was stressful and demoralising. South American towns are also a complete nightmare because they're huge and don't seem to have any kind of organisation at all, and have really busy roads. They all also seem to be on hills which makes everything worse. Traditionally mum and I have fights when we arrive in towns as we're both v crabby.

After a few days on the coast we arrived at the town of Santos. Arriving was very exciting because the town's on an island and they had a specific ferry just for bikes! It was absolutely rammed. At this point Mum got ill (our only food poisoning of the trip despite eating some seriously dodge looking food) which made everything worse. We arrived at a slightly suspect looking hostel full of Muay Thai fighters strapping their hands in a very aggressive looking way. Mum went straight to bed and I tried to be a proper teenager and went to a bar. I bought a beer but nobody made any effort to be friends, and actually if they had I wouldn't have

been able to talk to them anyway. It was all very depressing and I went to bed. The next day we had a day off and headed off to the coffee museum. This was actually rubbish I've got to say it. We also went to a talk on the history and making of coffee... In portugese. It was absolutely hysterical and I'm not sure why. The man kept picking on people and asking what they thought of the coffee and I was terrified he was going to choose me, luckily we got away with it. After this we climbed the hill in the town (we tried to get the cable car but it was shut). 495 steps were 494 too many. The views were pretty

stunning though. In Santos we did some research about our planned next leg and it turns out it was illegal to cycle on that road. This was obviously a problem so we made the decision to get a bus. This felt like the end of something after pushing on through all the times when I would have loved to get off my bike. We didn't really have a choice though and we were also behind schedule. We took a bus to Guarapauva and cycled again from there. This began our love affair with South American petrol stations. They do have everything you need to be happy! Food/ice cold water/showers/ice cream/wifi. Over the next few days we slept in a few of these. The people in rural Brazil were all unbelievably nice and friendly and many people stopped to help us. We also had a few times where people gave us our shopping for free. We stayed in one tiny hotel in a town and all the english speakers came over for a chat. Rather worryingly the english teacher didn't actually seem to speak english. Maybe that explains why nobody does. Everybody wanted selfies and they all regularly ask for progress updates on facebook. It's a common theme throughout the world that you have better experiences in towns that aren't touristy. There wasn't anything to see in these places but we had such a good time. Eventually we made to Argentina...

We crossed the border and entered the Foz do Igaçu national park. We knew the next few kilometres were a dirt road but it saved us a lot of kilometres and we were up for an adventure. The roads were very dusty but very ridable and we were 3k away from the tarmac when we decided to camp for a night outside a ranger's house. We weren't sure what the camping situation would be the other side and the roads were lined with impenetrable thick rainforest that was impossible for wild camping. We pitched out tent and went to sleep - the only slight worry being lack of water. It turns out we didn't need to worry about water as in the night there was a huge tropical storm. The lightening was so constant I thought somebody was shining a torch on us. In the morning the saucepans were all

overflowing with water. Our tent just about survived but the dusty road had turned to thick mud. Complete nightmare of epic proportions. There was no way we could cycle so we started to walk the 3k. Sadly we couldn't walk either because the mud jammed up the wheels so they wouldn't turn. We took off all our bags and started ferrying them across. After about 500m of this we looked like we'd been in a mud bath. Then like a mirage a few rangers came down the road and saved us! They dropped us off at the tarmac and we tried to salvage our possessions. The mud was next level. Triple your imaginings.

It was EVERYWHERE (it's still in some places). The only water we had to try and clean with was the muddy puddle in the picture. Feeling very war wounded we arrived at the famous Foz do Igaçu waterfalls. At this point I would have been very happy with a swim in the waterfall but we settled for a tap. We looked absolutely awful and we definitely got some stares. We got on the train to the waterfall and I never wanted to get off. Everyone else on the train had a valid reason for not walking and we felt the worst out of all them. Eventually we got to the waterfall and it was worth it all. I'm not going to write about it because I can't - it seriously is beyond words. We cycled over the border back into Brazil and saw it again the next day (including a boat trip) and I could have happily gone back every day for a week. After returning to Brazil we headed into Paraguay.