On the road to Angra
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Well, I went ahead and took some time off and had some pretty good luck and rediscovered a few things I’d forgotten. Used to be you could fairly well count on reasonably dry weather this time of year down here - during the winter. Maybe I just don’t really remember, but it sure seems to have been a lot wetter than usual. But the day I went to Angra dos Reis, it was beautiful. Not a cloud, deep blue sky and the road was better than I remembered. I remembered the curves all right and the farms and cows and horses. But it seems like there were more small towns right on the road and more people around. Of course it was a great day and a Saturday. Not a lot of traffic and most of it always easy to pass. The part I don’t much like is the road from here to Barra Mansa which has a LOT of heavy truck and bus traffic and is mostly two lane and dangerous. Nothing like coming around a blind curve and seeing two eighteen-wheelers barreling straight at your face. Or a couple of those huge Mercedes inter-city buses having a race. Probably wouldn’t even notice the splat if it weren’t for those full-height front windshields. Nice adrenaline source, if you like that sort of thing. Good thing about a bike is the very minimal amount of road you need to avoid those morons. I’ve never really understood the Brazilian passion for passing where you can’t see more than 50 feet ahead. Or for seeing just how close you can get your bus or truck to the rear end of whatever’s in front. My theory is that a significant number of drivers - and almost all bus and truck drivers - go insane the moment they get their hands on a steering wheel. They actually have a psych evaluation you have to do when you get a license here but mine consisted mostly of listening to the guy tell me about his family. Anyway . . . Once out of Barra Mansa, it’s a mostly two lane all the way over to the coast. Some places with a third lane for passing (ho ho). It was an incredible ride up to the pass. And here’s what I’d forgotten - not one tunnel, 3 of them. Almost but not quite 2 lanes wide. Hacked out of living rock and dripping all over. Even a few BIG puddles. In between the tunnels, the road surface was nice slippery mossy damp stones - yup cobblestones - just like here in Vassouras but even slipperier. And jungle on both sides. And when you exit the last one, same surface for a long downhill stretch until you hit asphalt again. Wicked curves, jungle all over and in places a view toward the ocean you wouldn’t believe. High up on the mountain there you can see all the way out to the islands off the coast. And the color of the sea is something to dream about. That night the neighborhood where my friend and his wife are living was having a Festa Julhina - a July party. Sort of a winter tradition to have June and/or July parties with lots of traditional food, old-time farm style costumes, 12 foot speakers and a DJ (not TOO traditional). The “mayor” of the street was wandering about with bottles of cachaca (an evil concoction distilled from sugar cane and aged as long as 2 or 3 days) making everybody do shots and toast Mexico for some reason. Plus the whole churrasco (barbeque) thing with sausages, ribs, chicken wings and huge chunks of beef of various types. And an ungodly amount of beer, a hot spiced wine and cachaca thing, and caipirinha (limes, sugar and, naturally, cachaca). The next day it was my friends combined birthday barbeque. Lots of family and a few survivors from the night before. An awesome amount of beer and barbeque and six or seven deserts and pitchers of caipirinha. Got off to a slow start around noon and trailed off around 1AM. That was it for the partying. A few laid-back goof-off recovery days and then I had to come on home and go back to working. Really glad they ended up there. Now I’ve got good friends in a beautiful spot at the end of an awesome ride that you can’t get tired of. It’d been a long time since I’d been over that mountain, and it was even better than I remembered - and shorter too. Of course, it always seems longer in a cage, doesn’t it? Live to ride, it works for me Rick |
