We left the crystal clear lake behind us and drove to further north along the coast. We spend the night close to the city Ilheus. We also went to the immigration police here to try and see if we could renew our tourist visa. We automatically got 90 days when entering. This would have been enough if the car hadn’t needed a new engine, which took over a month. Officially, being Dutch, we can’t renew. Brazil uses the system of reciprocation. Meaning that they treat tourists the same way a Brazilian gets treated in the tourist’s country. And since Brazilians can only stay 90 days in most European countries without the possibility of renewal, most Europeans, including the Dutch, can’t renew in Brazil either. A fair system but a bit difficult given our situation. And we had already heard from several people that they managed to renew anyway, depending on the officer. So we gave it a try but got denied. This left us with three options:
- drive like crazy to get out of Brazil on time; (almost impossible)
- overstay our visa with one day and then pay the fine and get the 60 days to leave, or;
- try again at another location, but we felt it was very likely we would be denied again.
We decided to go for option 2, which would mean going to the immigration police again in about two weeks. The problem with this option however is that officially if you leave the country after overstaying, you’re not allowed back in for 6 months. And we would need to return after no more than 4 months, because there’s simply no direct road between Guyana and Venezuela, you have to drive through Brazil. We would just have to hope for a very friendly officer and ask for a short term transit visa.
While looking for a place for lunch we just happened to stumble upon the Michelin plantation park. A beautiful and free nature area. Its always nice to come across these little surprises and we spend the afternoon there.
We drove on to a spot near the beach to spend the night. Here we would have another surprise, albeit not so nice. When we arrived at the beach it looked like high tide coming in and in order to reach our destination we would have to drive across the beach for a few km’s. Since it was also getting dark we decided not to risk getting stuck in the sand with the high tide coming in and camp right there. We were fast asleep when around 2am somebody started banging on the door, screaming. Great way to wake up and of course also a bit scary. Kilian only saw one guy and went to check it out. Turns out this local had driven his regular 2wd car on the beach, got stuck close to our van and with the salty water now about a meter away, he was panicking. He wanted us to use our van to pull him out. People don’t realise that once we have set up “camp” we can’t just move. When we set up camp, we open up the pop up roof, which has to be down for driving. We put all the stuff that’s on the bed while driving, on the shelf in the pop up part. And some of our stuff goes on the front seats. And we blind the windows with screens for privacy and to block out the lights and sun. Kilian borrowed the guy our spade and the guy also started calling some people. To be honest we weren’t in the most helpful mood. Not only because of the rude awakening but also because of the stupidity of this guy! There we were, just stupid tourists, doing the sensible thing, and then this local who should know better goes and does something stupid like this! Anyway he managed to get out with some help from his friends as well and we went back to bed although we didn’t get much sleep anymore.
We were now in the area south of Salvador where wild camping was even harder and after moving on every day we went to look for a campsite where we could stay for a few days. We found one with beach front access where it was nice for Finnley too. We enjoyed our stay here. But on the last night Finnley decided to “fool around and find out” with a millipede. Being in Brazil, bugs tend to be a bit nastier. I saw him starting to do this and put the millipede out of his reach (he was on a leash) I didn’t see anymore millipedes but a few minutes later he came running back to the van. Panicking an drooling heavily. I gave him some Norit powder to absorb anything poisonous and kept a close eye on him. This happened on a Sunday evening while camping near a small town and everybody was out celebrating the outcome of the local elections! Fortunately he soon seemed better. Well enough to go after another millipede he spotted in a tree, if we hadn’t stopped him….
The following day we arrived in the colourful Salvador. With Finnley in his backpack with us (too hot to leave him in the van) we went to explore this fun city. It has a Caribbean feel to it with the colourful houses and the sounds of drumming everywhere. The Pelourinho area is the most famous and has many beautiful buildings While enjoying some ice cream I gave Finnley some water and his favourite; a Churu. This liquid snack used to be Binkie’s favourite too. However Finnley didn’t want any! And he still didn’t eat the following morning, so we went to the vet. Turned out these millipedes can be irritating and his tongue was too irritated to eat. So Finnley got a nasty shot, some oral medication and they took some blood to check for toxics. Fortunately this came back negative and so with Finnley eating again we moved on.
So far the coast of Brazil had been mainly disappointing. Too crowded, too much trash and mostly bare instead of palm trees. So we decided to explore the inland of Brazil and started driving in the directions of Palmas. This city was 1400 kms away from Salvador but there were some interesting natural areas to explore. These distances are normal in Brazil. Its almost as big as Western Europe and the 5th largest country, even bigger than Australia! That’s why its also taking us so long to cross it. It’s not our favourite country, it’s just the biggest and we don’t want to spend all day, every day driving. And the condition of the roads and other traffic, mean that we drive around 40km per hour on average. Fortunately on our way to Palmas we found a great place near a river. With clear water, no trash and some cellphone reception this was one of the best places in Brazil and we spend several days there. Finnley got to go off leash, he left the Brazilian wild life alone but chased away any dogs that dared to approach our van! Yeah he is definitely not one to stay out of trouble! We hope he gets a bit wiser when older, sigh.
In Palmas we went to the immigration police again. After reading some positive news in the Brazilian overlanding WhatsApp group, we decided to try and renew once more. If it didn’t work out then we could still go for option two. We made an appointment online and arrived at the office on time, dressed nicely. Here a friendly officer immediately helped us in a special office marked extrangeiros. And then to our surprise, without any questions asked, started the process of renewing our visa! He let us type in our data ourselves to avoid spelling errors and even asked if another 90 days were enough! He also offered us coffee. We couldn’t believe our luck! We quickly took the paperwork to the bank to pay for the service and went back to get our passports stamped. Wow! With this and the car papers Kilian went to the Receita federal the following morning to renew the temporary import permit for the car. As it turned out they had no clue how and he was told to come back at the end of the day. This was a Friday. And the end of the afternoon they still hadn’t figured it out! So we now had to wait for Monday 🙁 We decided to drive into a nature area, Xerente native lands, about 120km north of the city, a 3 hour drive. This area was alright and we even found a small spot at a river. We did a bit of exploring and saw some traditional houses.
Early Sunday evening we then had a deja vu as Finnley came running back to the van, drooling! This time it was worse, his vulnerable left eye was completely irritated. We had no idea what he had gotten in contact with, would he get worse or better? So we hurriedly packed up and started the three hour drive back to Palmas. Over bad dirt roads in the dark. By the time we were in Palmas, Finnley was doing better although his eye was still irritated. Not enough for an emergency vet visit so we had him checked out early Monday morning. He got some eye drops and that was it fortunately. Then by the end of the day we also got the renewed import permit. We don’t know why they needed two full days for this, its one A4 with some basic data on it.
Glad to be able to leave the city behind us (Palmas itself has zero points of interest) we now drove to Jalapao, the area of the fervedoura’s, one of the reasons we drove to Palmas in the first place. A fervedoura is watering hole but with an interesting aspect. The water comes from a spring that, with some pressure comes up through the white sand. You can’t touch the bottom where the water comes out. You also can’t drown there or dive and touch the bottom with your hands! And if you put your feet in the sand around the spring, the sand starts shifting and you go lower, but since you move towards the spring, at some point you get pushed out again. A funny and strange sensation. We spend one night at a campground with one of those fervedoura’s on it (it’s Brasil so they are all privatised for money) and went swimming in it several times.
After the fervedoura’s we drove around 400 kms to reach a canyon. We drove through a dry area with lots of farm land and lots of burned down nature. With no water and temperatures between 38-45C it was really hard. It’s probably a nicer area shortly after the rainy season when there’s water and the trees have leaves and therefore offer some shade. Now it was just boring, hot and dry.
Finally we reached Canyon do Viana. Which was also bone dry, not surprisingly by now but still disappointing. I’m sure it’s a very nice area if there’s water but now this wasn’t really worth the detour. We did see a few nice rock formations.
We wild camped in the dry area and in the morning we had an invasion of black bees or black flies that can sting. They were attracted by our water. They gathered en masse at our sink and underneath the van where our waste water ends up. They aren’t aggressive at all but it’s still very annoying if you have about a hundred flying bugs in the van that can sting you if they really want to. This happened two more times as we were the only source of water in the area.
Our last stop in October was at Gruta dos Bois in the national park Serra das Confuses. Here there are some interesting rock formations and we went on a walk between them towards the cave. It turned out you could walk quite far in to the cave. It’s a cave/ narrow canyon. We didn’t know how long the cave was exactly, we walked about a km in to it before coming what looked to be the end and had to turn back. It was a really fun little expedition, also because it was a lot cooler in the cave. It was clear the cave is visited more often, there were even a few ladders. But we were the only ones there and with the jungle like nature it could have been a set for an Indiana Jones movie. So October ended on a positive and interesting note.
