Further tales of suspension, a lot of mud and the ongoing search for the amazon rainforest

---

So where to start, again its been a while - apologises.We are currently on the banks of the amazon after what has to be our silliest idea yet but more of that to come!

We decided to bomb it up to the north coast of brazil and put in a few epic days needing to recover for about a week on the caost as a result. Daisy i now over 21 (and only just 3 months old) which is the equivalent to driving half way around the world on the equator! The last few weeks we have been so far off the tourist route that we seem to have ended up being the tourist attraction. Literally anywhere we stop to get pétrol, fix things on daisy or just have a bum break we end up surrounded by a crowd of 20 people all having a look or gabbering portuguese at us. The number of crazy photos i feature in now on peoples phones in brasil is quite high!!!
Aaron also broke a new record on the way up of running out of petrol twice in 1 day!!! Yes it finally happened - we ran out of petrol in the middle of no where! So cue us flagging down a local motocyclist who rolled daisy to this school and then headed off with Aaron on the back of his bike to the nearest petrol station. That left me at the school with the children (obviously i was in my element!!!) but supposedly only for 20 minutes! 2 hours later i was beginning to wonder what i do as no sign of aaron or the petrol. Here i am stuck at a school with a bike that has no petrol and no one speaks english - interesting. I was just about to accept my fate as the latest new supply teacher when Aaron and the motorcyclist turn up - apparently on the way to the petrol station the guys bike had also ran out of petrol and so they had to push it the last 4km!!!
The journey up though was interesting we've camped in coffee plantations, seen spiders the size of my hand (didnt hang around!)and oh yes - i got hit by a bus! I wasnt even crossing the road but stood by the side sorting out daisy when all of a sudden bang and i'm left wondering what happened! Dont worry pops no injury just a bump and a bit of surprise but i thought it was bolivan bus drivers that were suppossed to be the worst (apparently not!).
Anyway after leaving the north coast we decided just for a laugh to drive across the amazon basin to the amazon river. Now on a map this really doesnt look that bad, 700km on tarmac and 800km on dirt - easy we figure should take about 3 days. Sadly we didnt account for a few things:
1) Its curently the wet season
2) Aaron coming down with some weird tropical fever!
3) The trans amazonian highway being the worst road possibly ever made. Not only was there so much mud it was unbelieveable but bogged trucks, crazy buses and metre deep pot holes (i exagerate not!!) seem to be quite common. We also found a 10m stretch of the road that had been washed away over night and had to go on a 30km detour up a crazy 4 by4 forest track following a random local (we fell over 5 times in times in the mud!)
4)50km in to the dirt our suspension snapped in 2!! Cue many a day spent in every towns motorbike shops (obviously accompanied by the whole town!) doing various things. Bless daisy we had to buy the wrong suspension for her as it was the only one available and as a result she was so high aaron could hardly reach the floor and pretty much every bolt or screw in her fell out as a result of all the shaking!

8 days later we pulled into santarem covered head to foot in mud, with a bike that sounded like a rattle - success! Need a few days rest here tough before we attempt the next mission though - a trip down the amazon and north to french guiana!!! Wish us luck!!!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

---