Belém, Brasil

From fifty miles out the highway leading to Belém widened to four lanes and became thronged with traffic.  Thus began a near non-stop urban sprawl to this port city of one-and-a-half million inhabitants one hundred miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean on the Pará River, which connects with the Amazon.  At least it was flat and I could hum along at better than twelve miles per hour, a rare event in these travels.

The highway was accompanied by a decent shoulder much of the way.  For the first time I was sharing it with an occasional cyclist, some with a passenger sitting on the rear rack.  In the more thickly populated pockets before the actual metropolis swarms of people stood at wide pull-offs beside the road awaiting buses.  Most were clogged by buses or vans semi-obstructing my way loading and unloading.  For the first time Brasil took on the flavor of a third-world country, complete with an assortment of street vendors.

As I closed in on the city I should have been exalting, finally reaching the gateway to the Amazon after nearly two months of pedaling.  I’d come over 3,000 miles, the equivalent of cycling across the US or in south/north terms, as that was what I was doing, from Costa Rica to Chicago.  I was in a celebratory mood, but I was mostly concerned about an assortment of tasks I had to tend to foremost of which was acquiring a ticket for the twice-a-week, twenty-six hour ferry to Macapa departing the next day, hoping it wasn’t fully booked.  I also needed to find a bike shop to finally replace my front tire and to adjust my front hub.  And there was the matter of finding a place to stay and changing money one last time and stocking up on food.

I had ridden an extra fifteen miles the day before right up to dark to get within forty miles of Belém so I could arrive not much after noon to allow me as much time as posssible to tend to these matters.  I feared I’d end up in a motel, but I was lucky to find a dirt road to an orchard with thick grass not conducive to ants allowing me a fitful sleep.  I only regretted missing out on a free breakfast and also the opportunity for email in case a Warmshowers host I had heard from the day before had gotten back to me.  She said she would be out of town, but that she’d check around to see if any of her cycling friends would care to host me.

I stopped at the first gas station the next morning for its WiFi, but it had no restaurant or WiFi and such was the case at all the rest in this urban environment of smaller-scale service stations restricted to  just gas and cold water and none of the other amenities of the mega-complexes out in rural areas.   I hadn’t really been counting on hearing from her as she had ignored my initial email a week before, only responding to the second when I was within two days of Belém.  

When I closed to within seven miles of the ferry terminal, traffic was reduced to a crawl, going no faster than I was. I was startled to hear someone call out, “Are you George?”  I turned to a guy on a motorcycle who added, “I just emailed you half an hour ago about Warmshowers.”  

This was a miracle of all miracles, such a miracle that it couldn’t be a miracle.  “I live three miles from here.  I’ll lead you over if you still need a place to stay.”  He was on the way to a hardware store and had no idea when I might be arriving.  He was as startled to spot me in this maelstrom of traffic as I was to meet him.  I told him of my plans to get a ticket for the next day’s ferry.  He said the ferry was near the hardware store he was going to.  He’d lead me there from his home.  He also knew of some bike shops he could take me to.  And just like that all my worries were gone.  The cycling gods were looking out for me as well as ever.

When we got to his home that he shares with his mother, a university professor forced into early retirement when her school ran out of funds to pay her, Rafael apologized for not getting back to me sooner.  I had written him a week ago even though his Warmshowers profile said he was presently unavailable, just in case he might be.  He said he was preparing to leave this weekend for a prolonged motorcycle trip around Brasil, and regretted not responding to me, so finally did this morning to tell me he wasn’t available.  But when he saw me he thought otherwise and was happy to help me out.  

I told him I needed a new tire and also an adjustment on my front hub.  The axle that the mechanic in Palmas replaced two weeks ago was grating and had significant play. Among Rafael’s many talents ranging from being an electrical engineer and computer programmer was bike mechanics.   He took great pleasure in working on bikes so was delighted with the opportunity to work on mine.  As eager as he was to be off on his journey, he greatly regretted it would delay his project of building a bamboo bike with bamboo that he had harvested.

A close look at my hub revealed one of the cones didn’t have a seal and so much grit had got in from all the rain that it was deeply pitted.  Rafael replaced it with one of the cones from my original axle that did have a seal.  The mechanic in Palmas hadn’t tried that. With the axle issue resolved I didn’t need to take my bike to a shop, so that meant I could ride on the back of Rafael’s motorcycle on our rounds to the ferry terminal and bike shop and hardware store and bank. 

He had a spare helmet, required by law.  My bike helmet would not suffice.  It was wonderfully relaxing to sit on the back of his motorcycle seemingly without a worry in the world taking in the sights of this city founded in 1616, a mix of old colonial buildings and modern skyscrapers.  As a former race-car driver, Rafael was fast to accelerate and fully at ease wending his way through traffic, causing me no alarm whatsoever.  He was further adapt in the thick traffic having worked as an Uber-driver until a passenger stuck a gun in his face.  Even though the cops tracked him down and shot him dead, as justice is meted out in Brasil, he has no urge to return to such work.  

Flying around on the back of a motorcycle heartened me back to the last time I was on a motorcycle two years ago in Bamako in Mali when Kafune was piloting me around in a quest fo a visa to the Ivory Coast.  We had more success on this mission.  The ferry wasn’t fully booked.  Not only was there no charge for my bike, but my ticket was half-price, the senior rate—less than $25 for crossing the vast mouth of the Amazon.  We had to go to two bike shops to find the tire I needed, but we found what I had gotten in Brasilia to replace my rear tire.  

My legs were getting revitalized, enjoying their first afternoon of leisure in over three weeks since Brasilia, 1,200 miles ago.  They have been looking forward to a full day off aboard the ferry for weeks.  It’s just what they need before the final push, 350 miles through the jungle on roads paved and unpaved to French Guyana and then another 500 miles to the Carnegie Library in British Guiana.  With luck I could be home in time for the Super Bowl on February 2.  It is in Miami.  My flight to Montevideo took me through Miami and my flight back from Georgetown most likely will too. If the Bears are playing, I just might have to stick around for the game.