We’d given zero thought to how we would get across from the coast to Iguazu Falls, the next obvious target on our journey. I’d assumed it would just be a leg to “get through” on the way to the next interesting place, but like everything so far in Brazil, our expectations turned out to be completely wrong! The trip inland to through the south east corner of Brazil and into Argentina has been incredibly beautiful and given us the chance to test our legs for the Andes on some wicked climbs, and perfect in our wild camping technique. It’s also introduced us to all-you-can eat truck stop buffets as a daily routine (they have to be seen to be believed).
Firstly though, as you’ve probably figured out, we didn’t get kidnapped or have our bikes stolen despite the last blog’s cliffhanger! However, despite a convoy of 6 heading out through Prahia Grande (claim to fame – highest number of CCTV cameras per capita in the world, until London took it’s crown), we didn’t quite manage to foil the bike gangs. Almost making it to the end of the 20 mile beach that marked their turf, Andrea started to be followed by a young guy on his phone, as had happened last time before they got attacked. Though we don’t know if this slightly emo looking chap was really a professional gang banger or just a kid chatting to his girlfriend, being in the care of Alfio and Andrea we took their advice and cycled back to the bus station for the short hop to the next town a few miles on.
OK, back to the last fortnight. We had a few route options for getting to Iguazu Falls, which sit on the Brazilian border with Argentina, & Paraguay. In Rio, we were offered a place to stay in Curitiba by the brother of our hostel owner. An amazing offer (thanks Rodrigo!) and definitely the quickest route, but it would mean busy roads most of the way. Another idyllic sounding option recommended to us was to stick to the coast for a bit longer, leaving the road behind and cycling on the sand with the hope that fishermen would take us between between beaches and islands. This one sounded like an incredible adventure, but a final peek at the weather forecast for the next 10 days had other ideas….
With a little help from Google Earth, we settled on a route that would take us through the PETAR national park and keep us off the motorways. We came up with a logic that would result in some interesting riding over the next few days – that if we could see a car on the road on the satellite picture, then it was good enough for us! Always loving a good stat, Tom looked up the elevation profiles and broke the news that I was going to need to start working those legs of mine a bit harder. I mentally prepared myself for a soaking and put my entirely inadequate £10 pac-a-mac at the top of my bag as we set off inland from Periube.
The road turned immediately through humid banana plantations to Registro, via a short stint on a highway, and 3 hour lunch stop our first truck stop buffet (partially to hide from the rain, partially to stuff our faces some more). An interesting short cut through someones backyard put us on to a gorgeous quiet road that followed a curving river up into the spiky green hills that been constantly to our right as we’d ridden down the coast. Eventually, the road abruptly ended, depositing us in tiny Iporanga, clinging to a steep slope that with the days rain gushing down the main street all felt a bit apocalyptic.
Weaving through banana plantations on the way inland
Following the river to Iporanga
Leaving me sheltering from the rain, freezing and exhausted after our longest day yet, Tom successfully found us a place to stay. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he asked on his return. The good news was it was dirt cheap. The bad….he pointed up the ridiculously steep hill that cut through the town down to the river and I quietly sobbed.
The next morning, the beautiful ball of yellow that I’d been missing for so long majestically reappeared and started to burn away the mist that had been clinging to them for the last week. From our little pousada on the hill we saw the view that had been masked.
Finally waking up to sunshine in Iporanga!
The PETAR national park is known for it’s underground cave network, and we set off on our bikes for a day trip, intending to hitch-hike to rest our legs but ending up doing a 30 km ride that gave us a taste of what “roads” were in store for us over the next few days. Our comedic run of fails continued when, with a conversation held entirely over Google Translate, we were told that it wasn’t possible to visit any of the caves today because they were flooded from the unusual amount of rain. Gutted but undettered, we did manage to sneak into one of the caves, thanks to Tom’s amazing AlpKit headlight. A tiny entrance opened up into a vast cavern about 100m high, pitch black, we clambered over rocks smoothed by dripping water below us and looking up to gigantic stalactites above. We got about 500 meters inside before stopping to look back towards the light from the entrance and it was incredible. I was absolutely petrified, but it was incredible (and impossible to take any photos of!).
Leaving Iporanga, the sun was shining and it stayed that way for the next 10 days of wonderful riding. Being the absolute fair weathered cyclist I am, I was instantly happy and I’m lucky Tom breathed a sign of relief that he’d get a break from me moaning about the weather. Our bikes became mobile washing lines for our wet clothes, with socks, t-shirts and shoes clinging on with bungy cords flapping in the breeze. With a little help from an enterprising lady with a truck who took us back to where we’d cycled the day before, we set off.
From 300m at Iporanga, we rose up to 900m, then 1100m, the road keeping us high for a week through sparsely populated countryside, farms that started as smallholdings clinging to the steep slopes, changing to vast commercial cornfields as the terrain flattened out, and immense logging forests. Sadly the rain killed my camera so you’ll have to trust me and my phone camera that the views were great!
Climbing up through the hills of PETRA national park
Up on to the plains at 900m
Some of the views from the road
The towns there were were along the way were mostly small and perfectly spaced apart, meaning we spent most of the day riding through countryside but with enough along the way to make filling up on supplies and sleeping options generally easy. Whilst all perfectly friendly places, they all seemed to be in a competition to outdo themselves in dullness, becoming deserted as soon as the shops shut at 6. The busiest place in town was always, without fail, a church, and countless times we got excited as we heard the buzz of conversation and lights from a window, only for the voices to breakout in song as we got closer. In Brazil, the churches are usually evangelical Pentecostal rather than the traditional catholic churches of other South American countries, which can be very deceptive when you are on the hunt for the buzz of a local bar! But I think the prize for dullness goes to Guarapuava where after hunting around town for somewhere to eat, and disappointingly discovering that “London Pub” was closed on Mondays, we resorted to drinking beer in a petrol station forecourt.
The more interesting, if not downright bizarre, towns we stumbled upon included Carambei, where we appeared to step in to a mini-Holland (not the Walthamstow version…) complete with windmills and clogs, and Prudentopolis, a little Ukraine in the middle of Brazil.
Closer to the national park , there were few urban areas and we were ready to wild camp. It was time to put all that gear we’d brought to the test. The first night, at about 5pm we started to keep our eyes open for a spot to hide, and dragged our bikes into the forest to set up camp. It got dark quickly, and not realising how much colder it would be at 1100m altitude, we were forced into our sleeping bags in the pitch back of a moonless sky by 7pm. Of course our minds immediately started to imagine noises in the forest and I was relieved when the alarm went off at 6:30am.
Our first pitch in the forest
And where we stopped for 3 coffees the next morning to defrost
The morning was biting cold, and were were slow getting on the road having lost all feeling in our hands and feet as we were packing up. Our next couple of camping nights were even colder, and having woken up cold in the night we were still surprised to open the tent and be greeted with frozen bikes and helmets and a sheet of ice coating the tent!
Waking up on icy grass
Frozzen surly
Frozen hemets
And a cold Tom
However, we now had a plan for the morning to help us maintain some sense of feeling in our limbs.
- All items required for packing up must be kept inside the tent and do not, under any circumstances, open the tent door until ABSOLUTELY necessary.
- Pack everything possible whilst still in sleeping bag, ideally with your teeth to remove need to take hands out of bag.. This may make you look like a wriggling worm.
- Sleep with anything that will touch your body the next morning in sleeping bag. This includes the insoles of yours shoes, gloves, socks, t-shirts, pants. Inevitably this means little remaining room for your actual body, and waking up with shoe insoles in strange places.
- Be on faff watch. Evil looks at other person for faffing are encouraged. This plan only works if you are at the same speed.
The pain of day 1 stayed in our mindse and by day 3 of camping we had gotten our morning routine down to 40 minutes. I could even still feel 3 of my fingers and a couple of toes by the time we set off, which is really all you need for cycling. Success.
Room with a view
Cold? Nahhh.
There’s been miles and miles (1000 to be exact….) of quiet, perfectly asphalted roads with mostly with 2m wide hard shoulders just for us. It’s really a bit of a cyclists dream. The truck drivers are even friendly! Yes they drive at 100mph in 40mph zones, but they give you a friendly toot and a thumbs up, and a wide berth whilst doing it.
However we did have an unexpected day of off-roading thanks to our Google Earth planning! The beautiful road that we’d climbed up and around the hills on out of Iporanga, suddenly disintegrated to mud and rock tracks that went straight up and down any hill in it’s way. Our loaded up suspension-less bikes were reluctantly transformed into mountain bikes, as we slogged up hill after hill and held our breath and hoped for the best as we plummeted down the next one, hands numb from braking as hard as we could. Everything on the bikes shook, Tom’s front panniers broke, screws holding in bottle mounts unscrewed themselves with the vibrations and our wheels were battered . It was rather good fun though…..turns out I’m quite fearless on the rocks and for once I was faster than Tom!
Muddy rocky roads from Apai
I gave up
Having a break from the mud
Stopping for lunch after 4 exhausting hours of this, we checked our route and realised at the speed we were going we would have another 3 days of the same. Right on cue, the owner of the cafe who had been hovering over our table whilst we ate, told us about another road, pointing to a tiny white road on our map. Based on the hand signals he made it sounded like this one would take us up a little higher, then give us a 30km slow downhill to the next town. Whilst we considered that this, combined with all the photos he’d been taking of us and our bikes, could all be part of an elaborate kidnapping plan, the thought of the alternative was enough to make us risk it. We were glad we did when we joined a wide dirt road that seemed to be used only by logging trucks and passed one other car in the next 2 hours. Trying to beat sunset, we sped through an arrow straight channel sliced into the pine trees, making the most of our newly acquired mountain biking skills to race to the next town 500m below us just before dark.
Riding along logging trails for 30km
So now we’re in Puerto Iguazu , officially in Argentina after firstly sneaking in accidentally via another backyard shortcut. We’ve feeling properly worn in to the trip, and we’ve hopefully eaten enough brazilian steak to power us across to the Andes. Brazil was brilliant. And Iguazu falls? Yep, they were pretty amazing! All the better for the 1700km and 16,ooo meters of climbing we did to get here….
Us and the falls (and a lady with an umbrella)
Yep, that’s an actual rainbow
Brazil side in the clouds
Argentinian side in the gorgeous sun
Argentina!
Argentina take two
Grrrls On Tour 