Conceição do Tocantins, Brasil

Ever since I set out from Montevideo over a month and two thousand miles ago, I have known that the equatorial inferno awaits me.  It has been hanging over my head like a fifty-pound weight.  It’s blast of heat finally hit me when I descended over 3,000 feet from the Chapada National Park to Teresina da Goiás and left the relative cool of the highlands that has been my savior all these days.  

I felt fortunate that it took this long.  For days I knew it could turn hot at any moment.  So now I have a month of coping with the heat. I have dealt with 100-degree heat on many a tour.  I have vivid inferno-memories from the Madagascar, Venezuela, the Philippines, El Salvador, Arizona, France this past summer and elsewhere.  Those all came in relatively small doses.  This stretch of nearly two thousand miles to the Guianas will be a new test.

I had no chance to ease into the heat, as it was immediately extreme and excessive, 103 degrees in the shade when I took a mid-afternoon break, and 115 degrees in the sun on the bike. The water in all my bottles, even the pair of insulated ones, turned more than warm, it was near scalding, hot enough to consider hard-boiling eggs.  I had to break into my packets of powdered fruit flavoring for the first time, which made the water perfectly palatable. It’s been like drinking pineapple and mango and peach flavored tea.

I was drained enough by the heat to take a mid-afternoon nap along the road on my sleeping pad, a first.  With fifty miles between towns on my first stretch in the furnace-like heat, and no service stations between, I filled five extra pint-bottles to go along with my four cycling bottles.  At the half-way point I was lucky to be able to fill the two bottles I had drunk with somewhat cool water at a house along the road that had a table on its porch with a thermos bottle and a tray of glasses, a rare site in Brasil.  The thermos was full of hot coffee, all that was for sale.  In poorer countries in Latin America I could always count on homes along the road with a table out front and a Coca-Cola sign selling cold bottles of soda.  There has been none of that here.


An occasional tree along the road provided a patch of shade.  I stopped every ten or fifteen minutes when I came upon one, especially on a climb, for some momentary relief.  I wouldn’t have minded if a motorist stopped to offer me fluid, as has happened elsewhere, but so far no one has. 

Those moments in the shade were almost as reviving as a cold drink, as was any cloud that passed in front of the sun, momentarily blunting its fury.  If I noticed a cloud-provided patch of shade on the road ahead I’d accelerate to reach it before it disappeared and then let up a bit as long as the sheltered stretch lasted.  This is the rainy season, so I am anxious to see how much relief the rain will provide, or if I’ll be overheating under my rain jacket and want to forego it and just enjoy being soaked.  

I completed that first fifty-mile stretch an hour before dark.  The small town had a hotel, but I couldn’t squander that last hour of the day of less intense heat and sun, so just filled my water bottles and continued on.  It was refreshing to ride the final hour of the day shirtless, putting off camping until the last moment.  I turned down a dirt road and then pushed off into a thin forest.  

No need for a rain fly this night.  It was still 89 degrees at nine p.m. when I laid down my head, hoping to awake at five as it began to get light.  As I lay oozing sweat I awoke every hour or so dry-mouthed needing a gulp of water.  At two it had finally cooled enough for me to put my shirt back on.  It was then that I noticed that my tent had been taken over by tiny ants, the fourth time, but the first in over a week since before Brasilia.  I worked up such a sweat smashing them, I needed to shed my shirt.

Day Two in the inferno was a little more tolerable, just 96 degrees.  And the terrain leveled a bit more.  It still had its ups and downs but was more undulating than rolling with only an occasional climb demanding my lowest gear for a few moments rather than minutes that went on and on.  Even in the heat it was pleasurable cycling.  At last the terrain was allowing me seventy-five miles a day.  

With only an occasional demanding climb, I wasn’t overly concerned about overheating.  I lost half an hour though when I ventured into Arraias in search of a supermarket, rather than taking the bypass around it.  It was two miles of cobbles, down a steep incline and then a steep climb out.   When I returned to the road there was a supermarket right there.  

At least the gas station on the outskirts had super-cold water.  I drank a couple bottles while I ate my buffet lunch, stocking up for a 63-mile stretch without services.  I would have to camp before I could restock, unless I happened upon another small-time  entrepreneur, which I didn’t, though if I were desperate I could have stopped at one of the occasional homesteads for water.  

After fifteen miles I had only drunk one bottle and then just two more before I stopped to camp.  I was confident I wasn’t too dehydrated and had enough water to get me through the night and then the eighteen miles in the morning to the next town. as I ate dinner I did take two mouthfuls of water for every mouthful of food, but only expended six of my nine bottles by the time I reached the neat gas station.  Hopefully that is the longest stretch I’ll have to contend with.  

When I return to the main highway to Belem in four days after Palmas, the service stations will be more frequent, but at the price of having to share the road with all the truckers.  Every billboard I see in the distance I’m hoping will be advertising a gas station ahead.  It was a bit disheartening to see one for a service station 115 kilometers away as I entered Arraias.