My apologies for the delay in updating this blog. At first, I had little to write about, on reflection I realized that now my trip is winding up I wasn’t sure who I was writing to. It all boiled down to procrastination but I still have a big mouth so will get back into it.

Rio de Janeiro is a city that sucks the sleep out of you. I was exhausted but staying another night would mean another bender. I dutifully got out of bed at 6.30am, stopped at a juice bar for one last acai (the delicious berry from the Amazon only seen in Brazil) and hit the road. I headed about 700km to Riberao Preto, all the while ridiculously tired, to meet my friend Lucas. Lucas is Brazilian and unbelievably lives in New Zealand and had ridden his motorcycle in Argentina where we met up. The road there was long, I got cold from a sudden downpour of rain. The tolls were expensive. The gas was expensive. The road was dull. I was done with Brazil.

I was also torn. I knew there was much to explore to the north. I was excited by the possibility of the Pantanal, South America’s most abundant wildlife park. I knew Bolivia had much to show me, yet. I wanted one last adventure. I also knew that I had no stamina. After every ride for the last two months, it has taken me several days to recover. At first I began to be alarmed at my lethargy but I think I have just been on the road too long. I no longer have the energy or insight to explore the local cultures. I suppose I wasn’t done with Brazil, I was merely tired of being on the road, and making only temporary friendships, as genuine as they may be.

I found myself drawn to the computer, getting in touch with friends along the way. I had hoped to sell my bike to a friend in Peru. Sending him an email to let him know I wouldn’t make it was very difficult. The Brazilians are enthusiastic everywhere for a motorcycle. They couldn’t believe the trip I had made. Explaining it to them, it felt like an account in the third person. It has been a long time on the road.

Lucas was heading back to New Zealand and was tying up loose ends. I was disappointed not to spend more time with him in his own city. It was a nice place. I slept a little. I was ready to head to Paraguay when the mechanics I met invited me on their Sunday dirt ride. I had cleaned the bike up in Rio and it was looking good, a good way to deliver the bike to my friends who were buying it. But wouldn’t one last blast be perfect? So I got up on Sunday and we had a hoot through the red clay and sugarcane of Sao Paolo state. As always, local knowledge leads you to the best tracks. The boys were impressed with the KLR, as was I. I have kept learning with this bike, right to the end. Although heavy, and requiring a lot of precision, I kept up with smaller trail bikes on knobby tires, scooting through mud and single track. It hadn’t rained in two months here and the dust was unbelievable. To keep up with the leader I rode about 5 metres behind him where the dust wouldn’t rise up to my helmet and I would judge the terrain by looking at his helmet to see the bumps! Of course at the end of the day I looked like I had been given a thorough spray tan at the beauty salon. The boys got me a caiparinha in a jam jar, about a fifth of a bottle of sugarcane rum. I had to wait until dark to be able to ride home. It was a lot of fun and gave me a sense of what Brazilian dirt riding promised – a lot of fun. A taste was all I could manage but I was glad for the diversion from tarmac which I have been on almost exclusively for 6000 km.

The charm of central Brazil must surely be the small towns and friendly people. As such, it is difficult to tour as there are no set highlights and the highways so mundane. I made good time to get south and see the famous Iguaçu waterfalls, a natural wonder of the world. I had seen these 5 years ago and due to the drought the water level was very low, yet they were still spectacular. The following day, I toured the Itaípu Dam. Between Brazil and Paraguay it is the largest civil work of the 20th Century (I think they measure that in amount of concrete poured). It was impressive but reiterated to me that the grandeur of men is a pale imitation when compared to something like the waterfalls of Iguaçu.

I got in contact with my new friend, Julio, in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. A notorious city for the contraband trafficking into Brazil it was a little less dangerous than I expected. More like an open market, akin to anything you see in Bolivia or Peru, complete with rubbish-strewn streets by the end of a business day. I could have bought a cheap Rolex but to be honest didn’t really care about it.

Paraguay is an enigma of a country. It has an absolutely fascinating but dreadful history of loss after the independence from the Spanish crown. The major economic power over Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, it controlled 70% of commerce in the shared port of La Plata, nowadays Buenos Aires. In a similar but more extravagant fashion than the First World War in Europe, Paraguay was involved in the War of the Triple Alliance which led to the loss of around 90% of its male population circa 1870, fairly obviously devastating the country and leading to the loss of the majority of its territory. This was followed by the 1930s Chaco War. Reading history of war is always bleak but in Paraguay, it was on a scale the country is still crippled by. The first democratic elections were in 1993 and the country is mired in corruption, monopolistic companies, crime, and inefficient police et.al.

Despite this, as elsewhere, the Paraguayan people are generally very friendly, hospitable people. They are glad to see a foreigner and like to ask how I enjoy their country. Embarrassingly I have to admit I only know about one city, which is a pretty grubby one.

I had a good time with Julio, his brother Julian who purchased the bike and their riding buddies. I got to take a 1500cc chopper around the block and got to wheelie someone’s CRF250. If it hadn’t rained on my last day I was going to ride Julio’s Harley. They were all keen to show me around and great guys. But, as a moto-traveller, they treated me a little like a dignitary which I was a little uncomfortable by. They understood exactly my motivation as it is their dream also. But they envied my opportunity, being young, without commitment. The only thing I could honestly advise them in was that the hardest part was getting started.

All this brings me back to Rio. I am sitting now in Copacabana. My flight leaves South America on Monday. I have to find a way to pay my credit card. I have to do a CV again. I will have to get a suit. On the road, the clarity of your decisions is so easy- it is a difficult process to go back to everyday life. Many times I have recited an essay into my helmet about fear and anxiety over status, money, being popular. This trip was in large part about beating that fear but I feel it slowly creeping back in. What if I can’t pay my debt? What if I don’t get a well-paid job? What if I can’t find any business direction that will give me some freedom in the future? It was a fear I felt very strongly at the start of the trip. A fear of failure, a fear of disappointing myself, just a general fear.

I understand and accept the futility of this fear. I think all of us are bound by it, to a large degree. I think the point of the fear is that I don’t want to get caught up in direction-less consumerism again. I don’t care much about clothes, small comforts, cable and flat screen TVs. I do care about good food, getting a good night’s sleep, my friends, making new friends. The only thing we can do is plan for the future and prioritise what we want. I’m considering life on the cheap in London. I may even give up on beer for a month! Perhaps I am just going insane.

A Simple Thank You

Well, if you have made it this far down the page you are the sort of person I haven’t yet thanked and need to. Jonno and I were blown away with the attention and positive comments our website has received. I am a little unsure what direction this website will take from here as the nature of my adventure will be changing. I hope to get back on a bike in Europe but that will be a few months from here. I think I may continue the blog but probably make it a separate page for a new chapter.

Thank you for reading and sharing our experiences. I regret not having time to write more, in greater depth. My motivation for writing is partly to create my own record of the trip, partly to share my experiences with friends and whoever may be interested, partly to be able to share my own mistakes as part of learning from others and partly a sense of joy at having been able to do exactly what I wanted to do for a year (ego).

Here I am at the falls of Iguaçu. I thought it was a good place to express thanks for your support and motivation.

One last request – please say hello. Sign the guest book or leave a comment. I see how many hits the site receives but very little idea whether they are real people, or search engines etc. If you have any requests for information, reviews of equipment, stories, routes, experiences in specific countries, anything really, I will be glad to respond to you. One last thing, I regret having run out of time to see more parts of the continent but most of my regrets have been seeing a lonely road winding up a hill and that I will never know where it leads.
Thanks again, and no I have not yet gotten a haircut. Josh

Posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 6:43 pm in Josh's Journal.
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