Brazil

 We arrived in the Peruvian border town of Iñapari around 8am.  We had read iOverlander entries in reference to this border so we knew what to do. First we passed the line of trucks waiting to check out of Peru.

And pulled up behind a Brazilian car being checked out by customs. There was no line of cars waiting to leave, and we were the only foreigners, ie: overlanders  from a country not Peru or Brazil.

They took our Temporary Import Permit to cancel it and waved us through the barrier. Now we were in Iñapari but our vehicle was checked out of Peru. Slightly weird but we presented ourselves to immigration to check ourselves out.

The officials were cheerful and professional and we were done in ten minutes with the bureaucracy. It was dead simple. 

Now, let’s talk money as we were leaving the land of the sun, the Peruvian Sol, 3.5 to one dollar. Across the bridge we would be using reals, the Brazilian currency at 5.5 to one US dollar. We wanted to enter Brazil with some currency even though they have a reputation for universal credit card use  but the changers only offered 5 to one so we only changed a hundred dollar bill.

Bolivianos are the currency of the third country that meets at this point  but Bolivia is such a basket case their currency is in free fall which makes visiting very cheap. Except we can’t get visas to enter because the current government is not fond of the US. The socialist party in power got trounced in elections last weekend and won’t be represented in runoffs in October so we are hoping maybe next year we will be allowed to visit with a more centrist president in power. Anyway we drove past the northern tip of Bolivia over the bridge directly into Brazil.

A word about pronunciation. The Brazilian real looks like it’s pronounced “Ray- al” but it’s not. Portuguese I’m discovering is weird and not easy to understand. If a word begins with an “R” it’s pronounced like an “H.” Go figure and don’t ask me to explain. An “L” can sound like an “I.” Equally nuts, thus a real is pronounced “A-I” which is totally off the charts. And that ladies and gentlemen is why knowing Spanish and Italian does very little to help in making conversation. I can read Portuguese reasonably accurately but speaking or understanding spoken Portuguese? No way. 

The colors of Peru are red and white, Brazil is yellow and green. Around the corner lies the border post. 

Ironically the border town in  Brazil is named for the most famous Italian from Umbria, Saint Francis of Assisi in Portuguese “Assis.” Even more ironically the entrance road is before the customs post which seems idiotic to me but it’s not my problem. We were going to the border post to visit the country and we’d have to miss visiting Assis. Oddly enough motorcycles and cars rushed through the border post as we did our papers, and all I could figure was they were locals from the town in the wrong side of the border. 

So everyone now knows what to do first, right? Park to one side, exit the vehicle with documents and find immigration. Check in took ten minutes and we got ninety days. Then we walked across to customs and the dude spoke some English so that helped.

He admired Rusty, asked the value of the van (we always say ten thousand dollars) and in twenty minutes we were done. No dog papers required which we had been told by other travelers. It was very easy and friendly. 

We drove off round the corner and found a gas station where  travelers have slept at as reported in the iOverlander app. It was 9am so we just stopped for gas and drinking water.

I checked the toilets and they were clean, equipped with paper and toilet seats and also had a cold shower all for free which I was tempted to use but Layne wanted to press on so we did. 

I got “original regular” gas, the one with the least ethanol. It cost about the same as Peru around $4:40 a gallon even though here it’s sold by the liter as opposed to the gallon in Peru.

Rusty enjoyed the break and I took advantage of some free coffee.

We bought gas, filled our tank with drinking water, dumped trash.

The road out of Assis is terrible for thirty miles, pot holes and gravel patches at random everywhere.

Stretches like this would get my hopes up but they didn’t last. 

Eventually we got on some smooth asphalt and started rolling at 50 mph through ranch land on either side of the highway. 

We came to the town of Brasilea another border town across the river from Bolivia to the south. 

We tried to draw cash with our debit card with no luck and bought some rather crappy fruit from a cash only fruit stand. It’s important to understand we are on a very non tourist route and what we find isn’t typical of what most people, even overlanders find on their travels through more populous areas of this vast country. 

The road kept improving, there was not much traffic and we saw more cows than cars. 

Then we turned off seeking a destination recommended to us by some Spanish overlanders in Peru. 

Dr Borracha taps rubber and makes shoes mostly for export. The rubber plantation is quite a long way down a dirt road, a forty minute drive on red dirt. To get here:

We had to go here, good practice for what’s to come in the jungle: 

The rubber factory consisted of several crude wood plank buildings in a very hot airless glade.

I got a $30 pair of organic all natural rubber pixie shoes. Better than Crocs? 

Layne couldn’t find a pair to suit but there is a store that sells them down the road so she’ll have another chance. 

Purchase made we drove back to Highway 317 and kept driving east toward Rio Branco and Porto Velho. 

We saw a lot of school buses running around but this one I liked. It looked perfect as a camper conversion. 

Rusty stayed comfortable in the shade when we stopped for lunch. 

It was a blazing hundred degree day. 

A modest building we came across: 

An extraordinary lunch for ten dollars including two coca colas. Brazil promises well. 

We chatted, not easily with the language barrier but they got the gist of our journey. 

The evening drive was lovely but at five, a half hour before sunset we found a gas station for the night. 

Our first day in Brazil, Thursday, our 31st wedding anniversary. A strange coincidence.

Puerto Maldonado

 Claus the owner of Kuporo Lodge cane down the hill promptly at seven to let us out. He’s spent most of his life in Peru but still English riding his bicycle every morning. He warned us to be careful as the government is going after the illegal mining and logging and tensions are high. 

We got going and I have to admit there was some trepidation in my mind. Layne and I have driven some odd spots in our thirty years of marriage, Bosnia after the war as well as Albania in the Balkans. I’ve seen war up close when violence was in Central America and I was threatened by a youngster with a knife once in St Petersburg, Florida actually. I got a black eye that time so I guess I was lucky. This time I had Layne and Rusty to worry about. The countryside nevertheless started out beautiful. 

But there were roadworks of course. 

The area we had to pass through was about an hours drive and my plan was not to stop no matter what. Strip mining is how they make money but the government won’t recognize their right to mine. Thats why they were striking across Peru a few weeks ago shutting roads down. 

And now here we were driving through their front yard. iOverlander:

 It was obviously a very poor part of the world, few cars and lots of motorcycles and tricycles and trash and people stacking around.

The countryside had changed completely by now as we descended to less than a thousand feet. We turned a corner avid could see treetops to the horizon, the flatlands were there. Temperatures rose from a perfect 73 degrees at Claus’s lodge to 95 degrees in the flatlands.

There were signs along the road advising businesses that buy cacao seeds and then those that sell rice by the sack. It’s all agriculture in this part of Peru where 5% of the population lives in more than half of the land in the Amazon jungle. 

The countryside reminds me a bit of Florida, road on a levee, lots of water and miles of big leafed trees and thick grass. 

I have to most of this area is trash free but in the area of the illegal mines it was a different story: 

Open face mines visible from the highway. I can’t imagine what’s going on out of sight.

Gasoline sold by the jug surprised me as there are a great many gas stations, too many in our opinion. Layne the lawyer thought the gas stations looked like money laundering operations. And here they are selling gas at the side of the road.  

A Peruvian postal clerk moonlighting by selling ice sorbet sticks of some mysterious fruit we’d never heard of. She and her husband work in Cusco but will be retiring to her village where she was born, San Lorenzo on the highway north of Puerto Maldonado. We enjoyed her ices, she enjoyed a tour of our home and we got back on her way. 

Florida or Peru?

We arrived safely and without incident at the regional capital, Puerto Maldonado. The idea was to find a campground and we had a look at one which had no room to park which I thought was weird. 

The town didn’t hold much appeal so I said let’s go for the border which was three hours away. We got lost in town when Google sent us astray and got jammed in a dead end. A live cop helped us out and we took north out of town toward Iñapari at the border. 

The yellow jackets are motorcycle taxis; you hire one for the ride of your life. 

The more motorcycles the poorer the community is in my observation. 

Over the Billinshurst Bridge and north to Brazil 150 miles away. It’s the second longest bridge in Peru at about 750 yards and it was named for a Peruvian President (Billinghurst? Who knew?) and it was completed in 2011 at a cost of 26 million dollars. 

The highway to the border at Iñapari was in great condition and there was hardly any traffic so we should have made excellent time. But every time we got to 60 mph we seemed to come across a speed bump. There were dozens of them, well marked with these damned white stripes. 

But we got to the campground an hour before dark around five o’clock on Wednesday. I was exhausted and we all were. Rusty had a huge dinner and passed out. We had a cooks night off. 

Dinner with a view over the lake hence came the paco fish:

Our spot for the night. Free with dinner. A little warm but very quiet and peaceful. Good night.