Morrinhos, Brasil

Despite the seeming robust Brasilian economy, strong enough to announce today that it will be paying its $465 debt to the United Nations, I come upon an occasional closed down service station, even some of the mega-stations with multiple businesses.

I had to fend off a pack of stray dogs at one I stopped at for a snack.  When I stood to fetch a pen from my handlebar bag one of the mutts tried to snatch my peanut butter and banana sandwich, as audacious as Janina’s cats, one of whom has learned to paw open her refrigerator door.

I was able to take advantage of another last night as a place to camp, pitching my tent behind one of the side buildings that had an open door.  It was reassuring to know I could retreat to it if I were besieged by ants.  There was a rumbling of thunder as I set up my tent, so I was hoping a rain storm might keep the ants from foraging.

I was the beneficiary of rain the night before.  When the sky grew ominously dark at 5:30 and lightning stabbed at the horizon, I camped prematurely hoping to avoid a soaking.  I didn’t quite finish erecting my tent in a thick brush before the rain came, forcing me to enlist my bandanna to soak up what moisture had penetrated the tent before I could get the rain fly up.

But I was very happy to be just a bit damp and not dripping wet sitting in the tent, lucky to have come upon a place to camp on nearly a moment’s notice.  I did execute a couple of scout ants before they could report back and left their corpses along the edge of the tent as a warning to others.  

I feared though I might have to break camp prematurely when at four a.m. a deluge hit and a lake began to form below the bottom half of my tent.  I was on a slight slant with the lake not advancing much higher, so I was able to curl my legs up and get another two hours of sleep, greatly relieved I wasn’t flooded out, having to pack up in the dark as the rain fell as I once had to do on the altiplano in Bolivia.  These travels are adventure enough without that much more.

As I close in on Brasilia, just two hundred miles away, the traffic has increased and the road has widened to a four-lane divided highway.  The rest areas continue to be spaced every thirty or forty miles.  They are numbered.

They have slightly increased in quality with a larger room and vinyl couches to sit upon rather than plastic, molded chairs.

They also are accompanied by a map showing all the rest areas on this highway, 153, that I have been following for nearly a thousand miles, the main inland south to north route through Brasil.  I just learned that I will have a Warmshowers host in Brasilia.  One of my many questions for him will be if any songs have been written about 153.

One of the potential hosts in Brasilia I contacted told me the solution to the ants was to sleep in a hammock.  One definitely wants to be off the ground in the jungle of the Amazon as it is so ant infested that a single acre of the rain forest can contain 3.5 million of the critters.  It is estimated that they comprise a quarter of the Amazon’s total animal biomass. They are everywhere.  I frequently see them along the road marching in lines lugging kernels of corn or other food.

I don’t think I’ll resort to a hammock, as mosquitoes are an issue too.  I’ll be hoping for service stations at least every twenty miles that I can camp at where the terrain might not be so conducive to ants.  Either that or letting motels dictate how far I’ll ride each day.  

The past three nights I had the potential of reaching a town with a motel, but the hills thwarted me.  If I had been desperate,  I could have dug out my lights and done some night riding, but I know that’s not advisable.  Lonely Planet doesn’t even recommend driving after dark.  Robbery isn’t so much an issue, just inattentive drivers.  I’ve come upon a few wrecked trucks along the road.  Many drive through the night, enough that most of the service stations are open 24 hours.

If the heat becomes an issue, night riding might become more attractive if the shoulders continue to be wide and relatively smooth.  Riding in the dark out in the country certainly heightens one’s senses.  Riding under a full moon in Baja was exemplary with the shadows of the giant, multi-armed cactus quite eerie.  I am eager to see how the lush rain forest of the Amazon compares.