Jose Bonifacio, Brasil

Night was coming on and I had yet to find a place to camp.  I was going to have to be creative  as I was in a stretch where pastures with fences lined the road.  The occasional patches of trees along the fences were too thin for camping.  I was prepared to stop at a motel if one presented itself when I passed through the outskirts of Lins, but I didn’t care to head into the town to look for one.  At the end of town a police officer sitting outside the station whistled at me, no doubt to warn me about riding into the dark.  I pretended I didn’t hear him and kept riding.  

A mile down the road I came to one of my favorite sites, a mini-rest area, a traveler’s refuge with toilets and ice cold water and coffee and WiFi in a small air-conditioned room with three plastic seats.  They may not be as palatial as interstate rest stops in the US, but they certainly exceed anything in France and most of the world.  I couldn’t appreciate them more, especially this one, as the last service station I’d stopped at in Lins didn’t have a cold water dispenser.  I had enough water for the night, but all tepid from my first 90 degree day since Uruguay.  

These rest areas adjoin a highway maintenance and road assistance center for motorists in distress with a crew of several people on duty.  I could have asked them if I could pitch my tent behind their building, but it wasn’t particularly secluded or grassy.  I wasn’t that desperate yet.  Two miles further I came upon a gas station that already had a dozen or so trucks parked for the night.  It had more parking space than most gas stations and some trees along a fence at the far end.  I had camped on occasion at service stations in Turkey, so asked if I might join the truckers overnighting here.  Two attendants unhesitatingly gave me the go ahead.

I selected a spot behind a burned out relic of a truck that would give me a modicum of privacy. A nearby trucker sitting bare-cheated outside of his truck came over and offered me some food. Before I put my head down to sleep quite a few more trucks pulled in and even more as I slept, so I ended up having some neighbors, but none that more than momentarily interrupted my sleep.  I wasn’t concerned with dew, so for the first time could sleep without a rain fly, giving me cooler and fresher air and the moon as a night light. It wasn’t camping at its finest, but it was one of my most welcome and satisfying campsites.

It was back into the forest the next day, when I seized upon a sprawl of trees along a river well before dark, more than two hours before dark, as I was trying to make this as much of a rest day as I could, stopping after just thirty miles.  I had earlier spent an hour talking with Janina thanks to the marvel of an internet phone service as I sat in a service station cafe before the lunch rush while the two attendants buried their noses in their phones.  Janina was preparing to spend the day at Facets for a tribute to its founder Milos Stehlik with ten films that all had meaning to him being offered to the public for free.  I was sorry to be missing it, though I did make it to an earlier tribute in October at Chicago’s Arts Club cutting short my ride around Iowa to make it.



It had been another hot day, and even in the cool of the woods it was still close to 90.  After an hour of eating leftovers from my lunch while reading Paul Theroux’s “Deep South” on my iPad I was ready to exit the tent and tend to a slow leak I had discovered that morning on my rear tire.  But rather than repairing a flat tire I had to beat a hasty retreat, as I discovered I was under siege from a battalion of large ants. I couldn’t simply wipe them out, as they had eaten a hole the size of a quarter in the bottom of the tent and would no doubt send reinforcements later and could eat their way in anywhere.  This was a serious assault.  

Rather than scattering about the tent, the survivors fled through the hole they had created.  I couldn’t just tape it up and feel safe.  I had to get out of here.  Fortunately there was still an hour of light remaining and a town with hotels nine miles away.  I had been contemplating it originally before I came upon this forest.  I was just glad this hadn’t happened after dark.  I might have just been left to the mercy of the ants.  But it now makes me extremely wary about camping, though I had gone ten days since my last ant attack. Both occasions I was near water, so that is something to avoid in the future.  And perhaps I can find an ant repellent to put around my tent.

The terrain has begun to moderate, allowing the legs some respite.  But they are depleted enough that I wasn’t able to take advantage of the flats other than to just glide along with minimal effort rather than upping my mileage.  My spirit wanted to attack and go fast, but they legs wouldn’t allow it.  Even with the extra nine miles at the end of the day, it still amounted to a rest for the legs, so hopefully there will be some 90 and maybe even 100 mile days ahead if the terrain flattens as I try to reach the Guianas, still nearly two thousand miles away, before it becomes too ovenish.  I long for the opportunity to put my cycling on autopilot with no shifting necessary, letting the legs spin with no prodding and my thought simply drifting wherever it may.