to a couple of BBQs and a traditional
Saturday lunch outing with Johnny
and his partner Juliana, along with
some of their friends and family.
The Brazilian’s are damn good at
their BBQing, and it came as a pleas-
ant surprise as we were under the
impression that the only country with
exceptional BBQ skills was Argentina.
The other thing they do particular-
ly well is Caipirinha’s; the traditional
cocktail made with Cachaça (pro-
nounced ca-shaska, produced from
fermented and then distilled fresh
sugarcane juice), mixed with lime
and sugar. It’s bloody lovely and cer-
tainly has a kick. Juliana even made
us a slightly altered version with red
wine, which went down equally as
well. The Brazilian national drink,
it was also very cheap, unlike the Ar-
gentinian wine which had suddenly
jumped from about AU$4.00 to almost
AU$16.00 a bottle due to import du-
ties … no more wine for us!
The Brazilians have a love of buf-
fets, and this is where we went on our
Saturday lunch outing with Johnny,
Juliana and Glen. The queue was
huge, which was a good sign as many
other places were struggling for cus-
tomers.
Apparently, this place had amazing
feijoada. Another traditional Brazil-
ian delight made of black beans and
pork, apparently originating from
times of slavery however, there are
several arguments about it’s origin. I
have to say, we thoroughly enjoyed
the buffet experience and having a
huge choice of different foods was
fantastic and allowed us to sample
so many different things we’d never
tried before, and most of it was deli-
cious.
We’d only been in Brazil a week or
so, and although I was struggling with
the new language, we were starting to
fall in love with the place. The new
challenges kept our brains active!
Sad to say our goodbyes to the
truly wonderful people we’d met and
TRAVERSE 25
a protracted stay due to bad weather
it was time to leave Foz do Iguaco.
Worn tyres, and a failing shock on
Kelvin’s bike meant we decided to
keep to the tarmac for a while. We
would venture off-road again however
we were saving it for particular areas
as we needed to get the bikes to the
finish line of our 27-month adventure
without too many additional costs.
We weren’t visiting the large cities of
Sao Paulo and Rio so finding a decent
shock specialist would be a challenge
and something we were hesitant to
spend our limited remaining time on.
We headed north-east for about 400
kilometres, through a tonne of tolls,
but the progress was quite swift as
the roads were so good. With the fuel
being about AU$2.00 a litre, we also
burned through our daily budget very
swiftly.
The next day it was off to Prudento-
polis, an area recommended by Joel
back at the hostel.
Prudentopolis is a beautiful, lush,