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Published: February 13th 2008
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Back in Brazil and at the end of our year-long round trip around South America, the dreaded moment was now upon us - it was time for Beruška and us to go our separate ways. As emotionally attached as we had become to that Toyota Banderainte, the time had come to let go.
Or not.
Letting go was, in fact, not the hardest part. This instead became the difficult task of convincing someone to take her off our hands. It seemed that Beruška’s inner beauty was visible only to us, and everybody else saw only the damaged and rusted body of the car, or what was left of it at least. It became very clear that if we were going to sell this car for more than just scrap, we would have to patch the holes and cover the cracks.
In the small and friendly town of San Lorenzo we found a local panel-beater willing to do the job at roughly a tenth of the price and a quarter of the time if we would help him do the hard-work. So for the next 3 days we became his ideal employees. We arrived at 8am, worked (and worked
hard) until 8pm, taking only a short break to eat the lunch he served us at midday. Along with his wife and kids (and the uncle playing the guitar in the background), we sand-papered and polished and painted, and even had fun doing it. Finally, with our new patched-up body that was sparkling from the wax, we were ready to knock ‘em dead. Those buyers were gonna be queuing in line for her now!
Or not.
Day in and day out we tried hard to get someone - a dealership, a jeep-club member, or anyone that looked like they would be interested in buying a 1981 ‘classic’ Toyota jeep - to buy our car but it seemed hopeless. There was barely any interest at all, no serious replies to the ad we took out in the paper, and only one offer (if you can even call it that) from someone who was either joking or trying to insult us. Either Beruška’s outer beauty was also only in our eyes, or the way we were putting forth the car in our shoddy Portuguese was working against us. This was, after all, Porto Alegre, Brazil’s richest per-capita city where it
really should have been easier to get someone to buy our jeep to tow one of their boats or something.
Enter Aramis Paz.
Aramis was a young Pepsi delivery guy that we met at the cheap and rundown ‘Hotel Uruguay’ where we were staying in downtown Porto Alegre, and he had been staying for the last 3 years (long, but not as long as Roberto ‘Betinho’ who’d been there for 6, and not even close to the old granny with red hair who was making it her 25th year this year!). We met him in the reception where all the locals at Hotel Uruguay hang out each night, cramming into the small room to watch the evening news and movie.
Almost instantly he came to our rescue and joined us each day for a week as we handed out flyers of our red beauty to car dealers all over the city. Eventually, we gave up on Porto Alegre and Aramis decided we would have better luck in one of the smaller towns in the surrounding mountains of the Sierra.
So the next day we left together with him to the “Germany of Brazil” - lots of
Alps-type towns with white dudes that still speak German today. Still, though, as we missioned through all the dealerships of the Sierra things were not looking much better. Until, finally, on the fourth and final day, at 7 in the evening and at the last dealership on the list at the last town, we struck some serious interest.
There and then we struck a deal with the Banderainte-crazy dealer. He claimed he wanted the car for himself but was short on cash. So we negotiated to have him pay half in cash and for the remaining part we would take the Ford KA (a very liquid car around there) that he had in the showroom. The next morning we took the Ford and sold it to a dealer in the neighbouring town. Both dealers were happy, and we, after netting $ 2000 more than what we had paid for Beruška 6 months before, were thrilled and relieved!
Travelling without Beruška just wasn't the same. So soon after that, we changed our flights and returned back to South Africa two weeks early to have some fun surprising everyone back home.
Odometer at start: 33 900 km
Odometer at end: 58 542 km
Total: 24 642 km
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