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Published: June 27th 2006
"On the road again, goin' places that I've never been, seein' things that I may never see again, and I can't wait to get on the road again..." Fortunately today we are only heading 300km northwest to the town of São Luís. We enjoyed our time in Barreirinhas, but we were glad to be heading to a different location. So without further ado…
January 21, 2006
Day 7 - Jesus Juice São Luís is the capital of Maranhão and is located two degrees south of the equator. The city is full of history, it is the Brazilian capital of Reggae and has many old buildings that have been well maintained, so well that São Luís was named a World Heritage Site by Unesco. Our first stop in town was to eat some lunch and Samuel ordered us some soda pop that was called Jesus Guaraná or as I called it, Jesus Juice. It was a neon pink color and a flavor of Bubba-licious Strawberry bubble-gum. The interesting thing about this beverage is that it is the most popular drink in the state of Maranhão, it out sales Coca-cola (number one soda in Brazil), but is unheard of in
other parts of Brazil.
Our stay in São Luís was a very short, but it was a beautiful city and we enjoyed our time here. We walked around, took many photos, and enjoyed some local Reggae music. We stayed at a nice hotel in the historic district and music was being played in the square across the street so we enjoyed that for a couple of hours after the sunset.
The next day we planned to leave early, not 4am-early, but early enough to reach Fortaleza by evening-time.
Day 8 - The “Short-Cut” Samuel did some asking around and was told that there was a way to return to Fortaleza that would decrease our driving time by two hours, but there is a stretch of road that is really bad (full of pot holes and such), but it is worth it because of the time you save. This sounded good to us since we had about 1200km to go, so we loaded up and were on our way when 60km out of Sao Luis we had rental car troubles. The two back tires were bad, one was flat and the other was warped. Fortunately, this
occurred near a little local tire shop and after only 30 minutes of waiting, we were back on the road.
We made it to the stretch of road that was "bad" and Heather was under the impression that it was only 20km of bad road, so worst case scenario we thought would be 30km. The road was the absolutely horrible - so much for just pot holes - there were so many chunks missing out of the road, you had to swerve every 2 seconds to miss a big pot hole which just bled right in to another pot hole. The road was one big pot hole! Half of the time we were driving on the other side of the road, which was a little freaky when going up inclines and unable to see oncoming traffic.
We stopped off in a small town about 20 km in and were told the bad road actually stretched for 74km! Oh joy! We broke it up by stopping for lunch half way where I learned some thing new that I will share with you all: If you are outside eating and you are having flies flying around and landing on your
drink, just take a little lime slice and rub it on the edge of the cup and they won’t bother it anymore. There were a lot of flies here so I rub the lime on my cup, plate, and hands and I had no problems!
After we made it through the “short-cut” the roads were good except for trying to avoid hitting all the animals. It seems that they don’t put their animals in fenced areas around here. We saw goat, sheep, donkeys, chickens, dogs, cows, ox, and pigs at least every 10 minutes running across the road. Somehow the animals would just sit there until you got close to them then they would run in front of you. Unfortunately, we had a running in with a little piggy pig-pig and the good news was there was no car damage, but the pig wasn’t as lucky as the horse (from 8 days ago). We even had a bird fly up and crash into our windshield. We started our journey that morning at 8:30am, but didn’t arrive in Fortaleza until 2:30am…that was 18 hours of car time! Good news was we made it there unscathed and the next day we
would be picking up the car and heading back to Recife…or would we?
Day 9 - The Car in Disguise Samuel and I woke up early and headed to the mechanics to check the progress on his car. We walked in the shop and looked around for his car but couldn’t see it. Then we looked at the car we were standing in front of and it was his! It didn’t have a front bumper, a side mirror, or a window. The only thing that had been fixed was the dents had been taking out and paint applied. It looked like we wouldn’t be leaving Fortaleza today, but were told it looked good for leaving the next day.
Since we had two cars, Felipe, Amanda, and Ita decided to head back to Recife today, while Heather, myself, Samuel, and Ana stayed in Fortaleza to wait for the car to be completed. Samuel and I once again made multiple trips to the mechanics, to the insurance agency, etc. etc. and it ate up most of the day so we went out for some pizza and drinks to unwind for the night.
Day 10 - I Was Stranded in Fortaleza and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt
Woo hoo! Good news, the car wasn’t done and we wouldn’t be leaving until following afternoon. Instead of sitting around doing nothing we all decided to load up in the car and head to the Centro do Mercado (Center Market) to do a little shopping. It was a four story building just packed full of little shops selling many different things like clothes, jewelry, beverages, hammocks, etc. We didn’t buy anything, but Samuel and Ana had their hands full of bags when we left. After this we decided we could all use a little beach time and some crab did sound good. At the beach Samuel and Ana got some Henna tattoos, while I got a cut on my head from running into a wooden box, and Heather got a little sunburn on her back where I missed with the sun block.
After the beach we had to return the rental car since it had been a week. Samuel had me drive the rental car back for him and it was the first time that I drove since being here. For some reason they think I lack the
experience needed to drive in Brazil, so instead Felipe does a lot of the driving, but he wasn’t here so I finally was able to assist. After being here for two month, I have a pretty firm understanding of the driving around here and had no problems at all. It has been weird not driving and at first, it was hard to be the constant passenger, but I starting to get used to it. Looking forward to returning back to Recife tomorrow!
Day 11 - Sunshine and Ice Cream Good news! The car will be done today. Bad news, it won’t be done time 4pm which means we won’t leave today for Recife because driving at night isn’t safe here due to the conditions the roads (animals includded), and especially into Recife because of crime. While sitting around at the house I was reading a magazine and learned that Recife is now the number one city for crime in Brazil, followed by Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. That was interesting to know.
So we decided to just head back to the beach today and relax until the car was done. We arrived at the car shop
around 4pm and after an hour of finishing up the details on the car, we were out of there. We grabbed a nice dinner at a steak house with the friend of Ana’s that we have been staying with and then afterwards we went for some ice cream.
The ice cream here is great, especially the fruit flavors, but they also have a few flavors you wouldn’t expect like prune, tapioca (not like the pudding), and corn. Their ice cream joint was empty besides us and the gentleman at the counter realized that I was foreign and decided to give me a sample feast of ice cream. I lost count after 5, but the guy just kept bringing me the flavors that he knew were common to Brazil and it was great! Afterwards we headed home, watch the new Dukes of Hazard movie and went to bed. I asked Samuel earlier in the day what time he wanted to leave by and he said not 4am! I last remembered him saying 5am, so I set my alarm for 4am and went to sleep.
Day 12 - Air Conditioning Not Included I woke up at 4am, showered, packed
everything and decided to make breakfast. I woke Heather up and she got ready, but Samuel and Ana were still in bed. She finally decided to wake them around 5am where they proceeded to tell me that they didn’t plan on leaving until 6am. Sure wish I would have been part of that conversation!
We were on the road by 6am and everything looked like it was going well. It was still cool out so we had the windows down, but about 200km later the sun was roasting so we kicked on the A/C. One hour later, it seemed as though the A/C had quit working and then all the sudden we smelt a rubber burning smell…oh no, more troubles. We pulled over and it seemed as though his A/C compressor had locked up and was smoking the belt, but if we turned the A/C off it didn’t have any effect. Samuel was sick of being on the road so he said "Vamos" - "Let’s Go" and we kept driving. Fortunately the car made it all the way to Recife!
We were there, we finally made it back! But we didn’t have much time to celebrate it was
4pm and we were leaving the next morning for another trip for the weekend about 400 km west to visit Felipe’s family. Since we had been on the road for so long, we had no clean clothes so the night was dedicated to taking care of laundry. No rest for us yet!
Trip details:
Total KM = 4200
Total hours in the Car = 54
States visited: 6
Snakes seen: 1
Car problems: 5
Number of times I want to do this again: 0
We were wishing there would be no more unfortunate events, but our wishes didn't come true. Read the next blog,
The Final Chapter, to learn more!
Love Ben and Heather
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non-member comment
What the heck didnt you guys do? Envious!