Dear
friends and family
We last emailed you on July
15 from Presidente Epitacio, São Paulo State, Brazil. From there we continued up the next
reservoir on the Paraná River. With no current to fight we ran the Honda 2HP
slow and cruised for four hours on one liter of gas! We cut across the lake’s
huge arms, navigating from point to point, threading through forests of dead standing
trees. Weekend fishermen anchored their boats in the river and sat fishing under
colorful umbrellas. We camped behind low islands and in secluded creek mouths,
luxuriating in the quietude. The landscapes were open and watery, full of low
greenery and wildlife, with farmland beyond and bright southern constellations
overhead.
Steve read books about Brazil’s
expansions in the 1700s and 1800s, aided by the fact that we had already
travelled many of the waterways by which the country was opened up. He looked
up unfamiliar words in a dictionary but, having found that he couldn’t remember
from one time to the next the meanings, he made lists of synonyms. There are so
many ways to say something in Portuguese! Similarly, when he tired of trying to
remember the conjugations of the words for “to see” and “to come,” which are
maddeningly similar (ver and vir), he made flash cards, one for each
conjugation (I see, you see, we came, they came, etc.). We then drilled each
other until we knew them all.
The reservoir narrowed, current
increased. At the next dam up, the Jupiã, we caught a ride into the city of
Tres Lagoas, Mato Grosso do Sul State. Our host was minister of a new
congregation. “This area is growing like wildfire,” he enthused. “Soon we will
have all the major fast-food chains!” The land was perfectly flat, the city
widely spread. A pair of blue macaws sat cawing on the cross of yet another new
church. We got a four-monthly vaccination for George and worked in a cyber café,
then caught a bus that meandered through dusty new neighborhoods back to the fishing
settlement where we had left Thurston.
That dam locked us through, for a
rise of twenty meters. The next one up, Ilha Solteira, didn’t have a lock, but
our Couch-Surfing host Vinicius in Sao Paulo had connected us with his friend
Vicente there, who quickly got a truck and trailer together. When he pulled us out of
the water Ginny and George were still in the cabin and Steve was sitting on the
bow to put weight on the trailer hitch. We expected him to stop once we were
out of the water but he just kept going, so we all carefully stayed put, with the
wind in our hair, as he drove eight kilometers to the ramp above. Dam number
six under our belts. Only one more to go!
With our visas running out on
August 26th we needed to buy advance tickets back to the States. But
where should we fly from? Projecting our progress we saw we wouldn’t reach Belém in time, so
we bought tickets online for a flight leaving from Goiânia, the capital of
Goias State.
A cold front hit. The southerlies
were too cold and violent to sail with George aboard, so we rowed, the waves
rocking Thurston as they passed under.
The flatland gave way to low, rolling hills with few houses. It reminded Steve
of the big Missouri River reservoirs in Montana except the grass was greener, often
growing right down to the shore. The sun was blocked by flying grey clouds until
it reached the horizon whereupon it peaked through a slit, firing to golden-red
the trees growing interspersed among the pastures. Many were palms with small
nuts growing in long clusters. As we veered left into a bay the waves diminished.
We then steered into a the full protection of a small, north-facing cove.
The best thing about the way we
cruise is the campsites. This cove was formed by a hook-shaped spit of pebbles
the size of raisins and the color of peanut skins. After washing and hanging
diapers we stepped from the bow directly into the colorful, crinkly gravel: no
mud, no wading! Beyond a narrow belt of woods stretched pasture land of low, soft
curvature. We hiked cow paths with George in his “wrap.” At one point we almost
stepped on a big armadillo! His scales were yellow-brown with sparse, coarse
hair. He played dead until we stooped down, then scuttled into a nearby hole. We
also saw green parrots with patches of red on their shoulders and a flock of hopping
emus, the South American ostrich. Here and there the land was split by tapering
waterways where the bay divided, its armlets extending further into the land. The
only sounds were of wind, waves, and birds.
On July 24 we arrived at the
junction of the Paranaiba and Grande rivers, which together form the Paranã. We had
followed the latter to its source but still had plenty of navigating to do. We
continued up the Paranaiba, now with Minas Gerais State to our right. Then Mato
Grosso do Sul State, to our left, gave way to Goias, the most central of
Brazilian states.
We had chosen cotton diapers to avoid
garbage and to be good citizens, but it wasn’t easy keeping up with all that
laundry, not to mention the bottomless pile of clothes and blankets which
needed to be washed as well. Ginny scrubbed and rinsed in the river a few hours
every day. Steve wrung them and hung them on a line running overhead from bow
to stern, with room for about fifteen articles. Fortunately, wintertime in
central Brazil is extremely dry. On big days we filled up and emptied the
clothes line three times! We missed out on some good sailing because the
working of sails and booms was incompatible with clothes-hanging.
The days were hot and sunny, the
nights cold and dewy. A new kind of no-see-um appeared, with butterfly-like
wings, and a new mosquito that, when biting, aligned his body vertically, looking
like a little thorn stuck in our flesh. One evening, as we relaxed by a brushy
bank, a giant ant-eater strolled past, like the one we saw on the Orinoco!
On the 28th we reached
the final dam, São Simão. Here we hung out at a boat ramp a couple days until the
president of the local fishermen’s union loaded Thurston on his trailer and took us to the upper ramp.
This final reservoir was smaller.
It took only two days to reach the mouth of the Rio Dos Bois (River of the
Cows), whereupon we turned left. Steve, tired of rowing, turned the sliding
seat over to Ginny. Per custom he then gave her a “Port!” or “Starboard!” order
until she was on course, then said “Mark!” so she could row directly away from
the landmark of her choice. Steve plucked his guitar until he noticed she was
drifting off-course. “Port! Watch your mark!” he said.
“I was using a cow!” Ginny
laughed. “I guess they move too much.” She went back to using hills or trees,
and we stayed on course.
At first the Rio Dos Bois was
impounded by the São Simão Dam. Then it became a river. A new species of tree now
grew out over the river with long-extended branches, as if evolved to catch
more sun than the others. The river corridor included long strips of marsh
separated from the river by slender natural dikes. Where openings revealed
these swamps we saw spongy waters full of floating grasses, lilies, and algal
clusters. From our campsites we walked the fields. What we had taken for
harvested corn was actually millet or sorghum, with hard, red seeds the size of
baby peas.
On our second day on the Dos Bois
we hit our first rapid. It was too shallow and fast for the Honda 2 HP outboard
so we got out and pulled Thurston
through. At the next rapid we switched to the 5.5 HP little-tail motor. This
reduced our draft and increased our power. Even so we barely made it, Steve
poling with a bamboo staff while Ginny wrestled the long little-tail tiller. There
were rapids around every island, and sometimes in between as well. Our progress
slowed.
On August 2 we turned left (northwest)
onto the Rio Verdão. We had been studying the upcoming portage off-and-on
since Manaus, when we decided to hop over into the Paranã basin. The
transfer from Vila Bela, on the north-flowing Guaporé, to Caceres,
on the south-flowing Paraguay, had gone well. Now we were a thousand kilometers
ESE of that portage, ready to jump from a different tributary of the Paranã to a
different tributary of the Amazon. As for the latter, the 2,000-kilometer-long Araguaia
was the logical river. We could launch in the city of Barra do Garças.
The best place to pull ourselves
out was less clear. The Verdão went in the right direction, but we didn’t know how high
up we could navigate. Google Earth doesn’t show topography; so we didn’t know
how tall the banks would be. There are no big cities on the Verdão,
therefore fewer transport options. Only one town touches upon it, Maurilandia.
But would we reach it? Would there be a place to pull out?
The river was 150 meters wide,
lined with fist-sized stones, rarely more than waist-deep. Sharp rocks protruded
here and there. We swerved left and right looking for at least a foot of depth.
The rapids got more and more frequent. They would have been easy for a kayak,
but for a sailboat they were nearly impossible. With a narrow stern (no planing
surface) and nineteen feet of waterline length Thurston’s maximum hull speed is about 5.9 knots. “We’re not going
to make this one,” Steve kept thinking, but we always kept creeping up, motor
wide open, our GPS registering one or two kilometers per hour. We reached the
critical spot, where the cold water bubbled over a shallow ledge, swirling white
around the black rocks. Thurston’s
bow lifted perceptibly; we stopped dead relative to the banks. Then we shifted
a little to left or right, found a slower eddy, and inched through.
Eight kilometers before
Maurilandia we stopped for the night at an island. Three interrelated families
were vacationing at a rancho
consisting of a kitchen, bunkhouse, and bathroom in separate cubicles of stuccoed
brick. “Bem vindo, fica a vontade!”
they said. (Welcome, make yourselves at home!) They had tents and coolers full
of cold beer. While the men and boys went fishing in an aluminum boat the women
and girls gushed over George. He loved the attention and the jumping they all
gave him, their arms lifting, his legs pushing against their laps.
The next day the river was faster
than ever. Once we hit a rock so hard that two floorboards clanged together,
pinching Ginny’s toe! Each rapid had only one possible route. But the banks
were low and here and there dirt roads touched down; so one way or another we
would get Thurston out. Then, at
11:00 am, August 3, we reached Maurilandia.
It lay on the left (west) bank. A
bridge entered town from the east. Under the bridge raged the worse rapid yet.
We tried it but the current was too swift. No matter, just below the bridge on
the east side was a little ranch with a smooth bank and shady trees. Seven
months after heading back upstream in Uruguay we had reached the head of
navigation! We were later told that only five people navigate the river up to
Maurilandia, in aluminum skiffs with 15- or 40-horse outboards, and no one
navigates above.
The property consisted of a couple
acres of bare red earth, well-scratched by chickens. Numerous mongrels barked
but never bit. There were four houses of tubular red brick, each inhabited by a
section of the Nortenseu clan. The oldest member, João, spoke
softly if at all. He might be seen watering a dusty mango tree with a bucket,
but mostly he sat in a shady spot in front of his house. Diego, a young
truck-driver, his wife Evelyn and their 2 year old son Pedro also lived there. João’s
stepson, Aldin lived across the way in a modern ranch style home with his wife Kelly
and eighteen-year-old daughter Karen. Aldin dredged sand for a living. He was knowledgeable,
hard-working and always grinning. “Maurilandia began right here,” he said. “My granddad
came in 1945, mining diamonds from the riverbed. There used to be a ferry here
before the bridge got built.”
We started walking across the
bridge and were promptly enveloped in a cloud of dust as a huge truck loaded
with sugar cane barreled past. Dust, the bane of Maurilandia! The
truck-trailers haul cane from the fields all around the town to an alcohol plant
near the Nortenseu place. The locals attribute their colds to the dust and the
extreme dryness of the winter air. We learned to cover our noses and mouths with
a cloth whenever trucks passed.
A water truck sprinkled the main street,
settling the omniscient red dust. The town was five blocks wide and fifteen
blocks long. The cyber café manager said we were the first foreigners he had
ever seen there. A loudspeaker car slowly worked the street, detailing a new
loan now available at the local bank. Another car with a loud sound system
passed the other way blaring bizarre electronic music. In front of a
construction materials outlet a guy tied a fistful of half-inch rebars to the
tail of his motorcycle and zoomed off, the steel rods snaking behind him with a
zingy sound. Everything was loud and dusty, but the people were the soul of
hospitality.
We looked for transport, but
nothing economical fell into place. Meanwhile the Nortenseus offered to store Thurston for us, so we decided to leave
her there and do the portage when we got back. Whenever we stopped by João’s or Aldin’s
house they offered us a shower, or a meal if there was food in the kitchen.
Lunch was their big meal of the day, with rice, beans, chicken or meat, and cucumber
or cabbage salad.
On Sunday there was a birthday
party for a five-year-old relative of Aldin’s who lived in town. Family members
came from all over. Babies were compared. Everybody held and “jumped” George. It
may have been his best day so far! Then we went for a long walk along a farm
road where the cane fields butt up against the riverine scrub. Toucans flew
from tree to tree, and small owls stood guard next to their burrows.
On August 15 our friend Douglas
took us to a junk yard where we borrowed a chain-fall and some tubes suitable
as rollers. Back at the Nortenseu place we used these implements to pull Thurston up the bank, beyond the
rainy-season highwater mark. She now sits under a mango tree, which will cover
her with mangos while we miss the mango season. Where’s the justice? We found a
hole in the bow below the waterline, caused by a sharp Rio Verdão rock,
perhaps when the floorboards pinched Ginny’s toe. It hadn’t leaked because the
hull there is backed up by pour-in-place foam. We will repair it when we get
back in six months.
On the 17th Aldin and
Kelly drove us to a nearby city where we caught a bus to Goiânia, a city about
the size of Seattle. Ginny had a Couch Surfing date with a sweet couple, Felipe
and Waldeska, lined up in advance. We are at their house now enjoying their
company and our last taste of Brasilian hospitality for awhile. In a few days we
will be in Atlanta, Georgia.
Warning: we have encountered a real
live Brazilian Wiggle Monster and are bringing him home with us! We call him
Georgie, but he also answers to “Georgão” and “Gordinho” Wish us luck getting
him through customs.
See our new photos starting with #215 at: https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BrasilPart3
Lots of love,
Steve, Ginny, & George
