After a goodbye barbecue with incredible honey-spare-rips and cool cocktails the ways of all of us finaly go seperate. The family from South Africa is heading towards Florianopolis south. They want to top up their travelbudget with teaching english. The Venezuelan-Connection want’s to travel to Manaus, to go by boat through the Amazonas. We stay and drive to Jericuaqado through the dunes. Staying sounds relaxing and easy but is developing into a kind of stress! At every corner locals are ready to be your guide, for dollars for sure. They jump in front of the car as it is all about life or death. They advertise that the way to Jericoacoara is dangerous and a guide is strongly necessary! Hm, the open streetmap gps knows the route…various routes… we have 4x4, higher suspension than the tourist taxis. well… don’t know what should be guided. As expected, the road was easy. The route was so easy, no diff-lock no low range, not even deflating the tires was necessary! Jeri appears to be one ultra touristic village. Every one wants to rip up the tourist a little more. The beach with the dune view keeps its promises and is really very very nice, a must see. To escape from all the stress of the last couple of days, we want to allow our selves a night in a hotel. While walking on the beach a particular one just caught our sight, it is with a private pool at the place were there’s usually a balcony. „So… just do it“ we think and there’s a discount by the way! The hotel was not opened yet, we were the first guest two days before the premiere opening. To ease on the travel-budget we do camping on day two in Jeri.
After a day with all kind of sightseeing we are hiking back from one of the only hikeable spots of Jeri (big rock with a whole in the middle while sunset) The sun is almost set an we drive by the beach while every thing is getting dark and darker. One pumped up Toyota Hilux with huge rims and bling bling got stuck in the very deep and soft sand and asks for help. With my juvenil headlessness i think to my self: „Just go reverse and pull the thing out, easy!“ —NOT! The sand is so soft that we got stuck ourself. Moving the Landy reverse towards the upcoming high tide was possible, just not forward. So let’s go down to the water and then with speed through the dune! Unfortunately the high tide was already too high, so there was no hard sand in front of the water to drive on. With the last bit of momentum the Defender finished digging herself into the soft sand about 28 meters before solid sand road. Kathrin is a little bit pissed about me playing rescue-hero with the result of our home might being flushed away by the high-tight. So now it’s time to use the winch the first time ever. 28 meters of the 30 meter of rope rolled out, hooked up to a just passing other car on the solid sand, low range first gear digging towards solid ground. Meanwhile it’s completely dark, a sandstorm is coming and we are very happy about being out of the deep sandbox. Now just 40 minutes through the dunes and we are at the campsite, easy!
We leave Jeri and head towards „Lençòis Maranhenses“. On the GPS it looks pretty close, but on the calulated route, it just doesn’t want to go a 36km road instead of that it leads us the way all around the place with a 400km d-tour. Kathrin thinks it’s becouse of the free gps software, that doesn’t whant to go over some stupid bridges, I for myself think it’s a wanted bug from the programer so that customers buy the TomTom maps for MapFactor (yes I named it… MapFactor, I curse you!). So we decide with one voice: these few kilometers we have to look on the map. At this point we didn’t know that the gps just didn’t wanna go on 4x4 areas, hm… at the last junction the road ends in a lake. We ask locals who know the area and they confirm „YES THIS IS THE ROAD“
For these 36km, through waterholes that are only possible to cross with a snorkel, over wide areas of gras, dunes and very deep sanded roads, it takes us three hours. On sunset at the end of the 4x4 area, we reach the entrance to the Lençòis Park , Barreirinhas.
Our hunger for water crossing was fed up for now, so we decided not to go with our own car to the „Lagoa Azul“ Very deep water crossings all the way through the bush until you reach the dunes. So one day a tour, the other day we follow a touristic Hilux with the landy to „Lagoa Bonita“ We spend a full-moon-night in the wilderness and apparently have the park just for our selves.
Actually we are way too long in Brasil. To stay the whole football world cup it would be just too much, anyways we want to experience some of the flair. Our route is planed: From Lençòis through the capital Brasilia to Corumba and then to Bolivia. In Brasilia we just want to watch the opening Game. On the way there we notice that the air-condition just stopped working. At a gasstation, we also sleep at, the error is diagnosed quickly: A rubbed and grinded hose, perfect. Interested locals support us with the result that we drive back 80 km to take the help of Bruno, an english speaking farmer. Thanks to the loss of language barrier, the hose is repared professionally at a workshop of Brunos friend in no time. So now there is time for things Brazilians usually do all day long, eat. After lunch Bruno invites us also to his farm, so in the evening we will have had meat again.
Completely full and satisfied we sleep on his farmyard in the middle of nowhere in between fields of soy. Because of our full schedule we cant rest, we have to go on. A very long drive to brasilia with sleeping at gas stations is exausting us (luckily with a working air condition). Late at night we arrive in Brasilia at rush hour, so there really were no other options than sleeping at the gas station again. There is no gas station like we used to know it, here are no trucks at the posto. Locals advise us not to sleep at the chosen posto, we should better sleep at theire place at a shopping, much more safe. Our rescue heros were Claudio and Marcio. We are invited hospitably to a barbecue and watch the first game with a group of Brazilians on the rooftop of their apartment tower. A good start.
To catch some more foreign fans we move to a campsite / hostel closer to the center of Brasilia.
Claudio gives us a goodbye hint: Just ask the german embassy about their exclusive private public viewing. Request sent per s-Mail, answer arrives the following day, so we watch the game in the german embossy with like-minded fans of Germany.
The invite sais „special German“ food will be offered to buy… that means specifically: Paulaner Weißbier 25R$ (8€), Frankfurter with sourcrout 30R$ (10€). The local Brahma beer is just 7R$ (little more than 2€), so we have the German special food on our return, and then something like „Schäufele“ and „Schweinebraten“. A fabulous 4:0 against Christiano Ronaldo shows the path were the games could lead to. In the eventing we check out the public viewing at the FIFA Fanfest. USA vs. Gana. Some of the fans from Gana party, but the American fans party more. One of them is Aaron, who we met on the campsite before. He is on the road with his KTM and made it to the copa in just 3 month from the US. His beard is longer then mine and is growing since he bought is motorcycle (ca like with me and the Land Rover). Aaron is kind of the leader of the US-fans and they did good in early cheering about the victory against Ghana. Good work, Klinsi :)
Our route has to go on, so we head towards Bolivia to the border-crossing at Corumba. We have to change oil, all that we will to in Brasil, and than bye bye an hello new adventure, the rest of the journey. The German team will make it, even without us…
Add-on: round of 16, said it…