If I told you this plate of grilled fish for two cost forty dollars you would I trust recoil in horror; we did but we forgot to check the price when ordering.
It was good, a river fish so it tasted muddy like catfish but we sat an hour waiting to be served cafe it was out on a patio so it was not fresh and cool. We did have a nice view of the Rio Branco (“white river”) which is only white if you consider it is muddy brown but not tannic black.
That was our welcome to Boa Vista (“beautiful view”) the capital of Roraima (“hore-I’m-a”) State, the northernmost part of Brazil and as it’s just 130 miles from Venezuela we met numerous refugees and emigrants from the country who have made lives here in impoverished but much more prosperous northern Brazil. And they speak Spanish, an absolute life saver when we come across these emigrants.
US passport holders can’t get visas for overlanding to Venezuela so at this point we either follow the plan and drive on or turn back as we are the bottom of the sack. We have made our plan to visit the three Guyanas over the next couple of months so we will drive 70 miles east on Tuesday morning to see about entering the former British Guyana where they speak English and drive on the left. All change from Brazil.
It was a long day Saturday as we woke at dawn in our truck stop 180 miles south of Boa Vista and left at 6 am. Our plan was to get an oil change in the city and do a load of laundry before retreating for the weekend to a hotel room with air conditioning and a pool. We are really suffering from the intense equatorial heat and I apologize for being boring about it but it puts summers in the Florida Keys to shame.
The truck stops aren’t fancy but they have free cold showers, clean toilets, and assorted stores like tire shops, restaurants and convenience stores. Traffic stops at night mostly so they are quite quiet and it’s so hot we sleek with our doors open mosquito free in dry season. Our fiends in southern Brazil traveling in a pick up camper disagree:
So there you have it, differing points of view!
We had a choice of two paved highways to Boa Vista from Novo Jerusalem and we took the smaller highway leaving 174 to the truck traffic. The defining limit for this road were the plentiful 25 ton bridges:
The bridges usually have nasty holes at each end where the road doesn’t quite match up with the planks so getting on and off requires a low speed and a little angling to avoid bumping the bottom of our van protected by a skid plate. On the long stretches off decent asphalt we could drive 55 mph but there were sudden descents into potholes and rippled asphalt and of course more bridges. Highway 432 to Boa Vista:
We also saw our first hills indicating we’ve left the Amazon Basin for now. The hills are covered in those bright yellow trees with those flowers that grow in the Keys whose name I can’t remember as usual:
The land is covered in greenery growing out of control with fences and some attempt at ranching while the villages are small and impoverished with dogs looking not great mooching outside the grubby little homes, and you know how I feel about dogs so we and dropped off food for the worst cases.
I see this and read that Tesla wants to pay Musk a trillion dollar salary and I suppose it’s little wonder I find myself pondering what kind of world I live in. But I don’t decline the suggestion of a fifty dollar hotel room with air conditioning and a pool at the end of the day.
While the highway is paved approaches to the bridges may not be…
It is countryside that reminds me of the Africa I ride through on my motorcycle in the 1970s, when I was young and better equipped to handle what I saw in Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon. I have listened to all desire to take GANNET2 to Africa as I can’t stand the dismal quality of life I find in some parts of South America.
For once I managed to catch a milestone on the dashboard.
And finally we saw the promised land across the river, just before ten in the morning. Not this bridge:
This one over a low, dry season white river- Rio Branco. I figured in Florida the sandbar would be covered with boats, chairs coolers and umbrellas. Ponte do Macuxis apparently named for a local Indian tribe.
Boa Vista is built as a crescent shaped city in the backs of the river with the streets radiating away from a central industrial looking plaza where main government offices are located. It’s not a beautiful city by any means.
The first order of business was an oil change. We have oil filters purchased from Jeep dealers along the way and I got six quarts of 5w20 oil which is difficult to find, in Manaus and it was as well I did. What we discovered was it’s hard to find a place to change the oil in a town where most places want to raise the car in a lift to drain the oil and the Promaster is too big. We knew the solution was out there and we resigned ourselves to looking for the right shop. Eventually, with the help of a Venezuelan immigrant mechanic who felt sorry for us we found it. I spoke Spanish with him and he introduced me to the man below:
A refuge from the heat. We met another Venezuelan here who married a Brazilian but still remembered her Spanish. She told us of a fish restaurant so we went there and paid a fortune as explained earlier. We were just too tired and unfocused to do our due diligence and they took advantage. Such is travel. She was very sweet though.
