Brazilian Road Blocks

Veronica and I connected via CouchSurfing.com I posted my itinerary and profile, and she extended an invitation to stay at her family home north of Recife. Inviting a traveler is not typical for Veronica. At best she is very selective and only excepts requests that she likes. My case was unique, a rider navigating South America by motorcycle does not appear on CouchSurfing.com everyday. Veronica rides a motorcycle herself, so the decision was made to invite me. After three days it was hard to leave Recife and the warm home Veronica and her mother have. I wanted to stay longer, but my schedule called and I had to ride south.

 

Veronica has an assortment of plants and trees in their yard, featuring my favorite fruit, mangoes! I packed as many as I could and got ready to leave.

I think I didn’t get packed and on the road until 1:00 or 2:00 PM. It wasn’t too difficult to get out of town. I rarely remember to ask for the best route out of city and some times the GPS doesn’t select the best route. I had the feeling there was a better way as I left Recife, but managed to get clear of the city after some time.
My new  goal was to get to Salvador in time for lunch the next day with Frederica, a friend of my sister Judy. They knew each other when my sister lived in Italy. Frederica was a teenager when I last saw her, ten years ago. The distance from Recife to Salvador is just over 500 miles, which always take longer than expected. The roads aren’t like ride on an interstate highway in the US, where you can count on traveling 60 miles each hour. In the best conditions it would be over 8 hours. With rest breaks and refueling it takes longer. My route planning software said it would take twelve and a half hours. And then there are the surprises that appear out of no where. Floods, accidents, construction detours are a few examples. In my travels I never had to wait for a land slide to be cleared, knock on wood.
An hour south of Recife, while getting gas a guy on the street was telling me that the road ahead could not be passed. Language barrier strikes again. I smiled and nodded, knowing that there clearly was a road going south. I missed his point. He was trying to tell me there was a trucker strike and they had blocked the road. Not long afterward I encountered a teenager trying to wave me down. I’m not stopping for nothing, especially not a teenager in the middle of nowhere. A mile later I had to slow down because there were trucks parked at rakish angles…blocking the road.
There was a cluster of unhappy men standing around, one was holding a very large stick, like a tribal king. I figured out instantly what they were doing. No need to ask. What to do? I didn’t want to take a detour through the countryside. Pulling up to the cluster of strikers, I lifted the face shield of my helmet. Its a “modular helmet”, so the whole front of the helmet lifts, showing my face. After pausing long enough for the crowd to get a feel what I look like, then I tried to communicate. I might have given a small smile, tilted my head or put my hands together in prayer, more of a “please” gesture than anything else. After a brief moment, branches that were blocking the road were pulled back and I was allowed to thread my way through the jumble of trucks. There were make shift kitchens tucked here and there, evidence that these truckers had been there for some time and were prepared to stay a while longer.
This encounter with strikers would be repeated four more times. Each time a teenager tried to waive down a side road, then I approached the actual road block, paused briefly, then was allowed to pass through. Some times is was challenging to find a large enough space between trucks to get the motorcycle through. Other times the strikers were letting passenger cars through in the other direction, so I had to wait for a chance to squeeze past them. I must have lost an hour or two getting through the five road blocks. Each road block was a stressful, but I was confident their fight was with someone else and they would let me pass.
I pressed on into the night, now beyond the last road block. At some point I would need to get some rest. Near midnight I found a love hotel and checked in for five hours. That would give me enough time to sleep and still make it to Salvador in time for lunch. Frederica had plans to attend a birthday party and only had a short time to meet, so I had to press on. All too quickly the alarm went off and I dragged myself onto the bike and left. Regardless of estimates, I still had four or five hours, and six hours to cover the distance.
As I got closer to Salvador I stopped for gas, coffee and something to eat. A group of Brazilian motorcyclists out for a Sunday ride stopped chatted with me. One helped me straighten out a problem with my food order, then agreed to call Frederica to tell her I would be a few minutes late. Great guys. I can’t remember their names, but hope they see this post sometime.

Reaching Recife

Brazil is known for its friendly people, music, soccer, slightly higher gas prices and the large distances to cover when traveling through this leviathan country. The trip from the dunes at Lencois on the Caribbean to Recife on the Atlantic would span 1000 miles. I covered the stretch in two days.
On the second day, I spotted a telephone pole factory by the highway. The visual design of telephones poles fascinated me. Why make telephone poles out of cement? My only guess, its cheaper to manufacture telephone poles from cement, then to source wooden poles. It could be that no one will steal a cement pole for firewood. I really don’t know.

Another long monster day, riding ~550 miles in the dry north of Brazil, ending with a midnight arrival in Recife.

I had several Couchsurfing.com invitations in or near Recife. All of the hosts had interesting profiles. There was a film maker, a lady who invited me to party in the countryside and Veronica, who rides a motorcycle. The choice was obvious to me. I was in touch with Veronica, letting her know my approximate arrival date and sharing the link to the SPOT satellite tracker, so she could see my location. From her Couchsurfing.com profile I knew she lived with her mother and went to bed early. So, when I hit Recife near midnight, it was too late to show up. Veronica’s house is in the suburbs of Olinda, on the north side of Recife. After trying several “love hotels” (hotels that rent a romantic room by the hour) I settled on one in Olinda and waited until the morning to contact my host.

Olinda Odyssey

I reached the north Atlantic and Recife too late to go to my CouchSuurfing.com host's house. I spent the night in a love hotel, pay by the hour properties. In the morning I navigated as close as I could to Veronica’s house in Olinda, a northern suburb of Reife. As with many addresses and sets of directions, actually arriving at a given destination requires interpretation and usually the advice of a local.  A friendly pet shop owner placed a phone call me and moments later Veronica showed up on a bicycle.

Veronica lives with her mother, who has Parkinson's disease. There is a nurse in attendance 24/7 to assist her mother. My Portuguese is worst than my Spanish, but I learned a few words to say to her. Despite her physical challenges, she is a ray of sunshine.

That afternoon Veronica and I jumped on the motorcycle and went to see Francesco Brennard’s ceramics studio, Oficina Brennad.  The studio and gallery are housed in a roofing ceramic tile factory in Varzea the outskirts of Recife. His work is very whimsical, cartoon-like, and powerful. Sadly, my camera battery ran out of juice shortly after arriving. After visiting Brennard's workshop and galleries we went into Recife where we saw more of Brennard's work installed in public sites and visited an art and craft show. Veronica also showed me around the old sections of Recife, so cool