Road to Salvador

As soon as we hit the road leaving Rio the rain came and wailed on us for six hours straight. Dave and I had a run in with a grassy field on the side of the road around 10 pm on the drive. But thats another story for another day. it was a little sketchy so we went another 50 kms to the next beach town and stayed in a super cheap place that was acutally kinda nice. 

The next day we had a little bit of dry weather on our journey to salvador but sure enough the rain came again. after driving in it for a while it hit so hard we couldn´t go anymore. We ended up stopping at a truck stop to let a sprinkle pass over and that soon turned into an super downpour. soo... thats where we hung up our hammocks under the store´s patio/wrap around porch and called it a night. Somehow we all slept great.

Our Truck Stop Rain Camp

Weather wise, thursday was the best day for travel so far. But sure enough there´s always some kind of problem to slow you down. So Nian and dave are cruising along together when they come around a corner and two cops are standing there and wave for them to stop. The cops can stop you for no reason here. Anyhow they showed them their documents and all and then the tuff guy cop starts telling them that they can´t drive without a brazilian license. So then he starts giving them a spill on how they were going to confiscate their bikes and a bunch of other bullcrap. Anyhow in the end the cool cop brought back their documents from the car and told them that they were good to go. turns out the tuff cop was wrong and we´re ligit. Jim, on the other hand, blasted right passed the cops without stopping, but he suffered an intense sunburn while waiting for Dave and Nian.

Dave and Jim showing off their cool new sunburns

 So the journey continued until late in the night. night when dave turns up missing again. jim and Nina hung out for a cool 30 minutes until they decided to go back searching for him. turns out dave´s spocket is completely rounded off. so we limped his bike to the city of valença where we found another cheap place stay for the night (this one wasn´t as nice).

Jim´s Bed Broke on Nian

super ghetto

RIO de Janeiro

RIO de Janeiro!!! This place is NUTS!

The Cristo in Rio

(written by Nian and Jim) So last week sometime we arrived in rio where our lives changed from being bums who camp on the beach in hammocks to staying in an awesome penthouse on one of rio´s most beautiful beaches. We stayed at dave´s mission president´s brothers house, Manoel Amorim. Manoel, his wife Marcia, and the maid Carman treated us like kings. They were such an awesome family. They let us stay there for four nights. The only rules were that we had to take a shower immediately and we had to make our beds first thing after we wake up.

Rocinha Favella. (one of brazils most famous ghettos)

Night one in Rio we were about to call it a night around midnight when Jim made us leave all the sudden. We rode forever out into the outskirts of town to some Favella (brazilian ghetto). we were supposed to be going to a happining part of town but Jims gps had two streets with the same name. As we pulled up to the street the gps took us to there were 5 dudes smoking crack while sitting on the sidewalk. so we soon found that we were in the wrong side of town. As we rode out we heard loud music so we stopped and I guess the neighbourhood was having a concert/party night all night. We watched the concert until it got over and rode back towards town. Around 2 am we found our street we were looking for. We went into a food place to enjoy some guaraná and discovered that they were showing the UFC fights. sooo we watched fights unitl 3 or 4 in the morning. Finally dave fell asleep so we went on back to bro Amorim´s penthouse for the night.

The Amorims live right on the beach! sooo awesome!

The next day was sunday so of course we got some good church time in. After church we went to the famous hill/rock/cable car pão de açucar. Nian played with some monky things and As we were there it started raining and didnt quit...... This put a damper on the day.

Nian´s monkey friends

 Rio was great except we had bad weather the whole time. We were still able to see the major sites though. Tuesday the weather finally cleared up until we decided to leave.

Cristo

The Amorim´s kitchen where we spent a lot of time this stop! Such good food! and Great people! Irmãs Marcia and Carmin (Irmaõ Manoel had left for work in sao paulo already)

Sao Paulo to Angra do Reis

Today we cruised the streets of sao paulo for a while while we continued searching for the kid nian had baptized that was serving his mission there. We finally found out that he was serving in a different city an hour north so we rolled up there and ate lunch with him and his companions. after lunch it started raining so we went back to Guisti´s house and got ready for the road. We said goodbye to the Gusitis (who were sooo great to us! fed us, washed our clothes, basically treated us like family!) and we headed for Daves mission presidents place.

The Guistis aka nicest people in the World

 on the way there Nian and Dave decided to go all nascar through the traffic and i got way left behind. We were seperated for like an hour, luckly we met up at his presidents house thanks to my gps. Pres Amorim lives in a gated community outside of sao paulo which reminded me of florida. His house and neighbourhood are super nice. i´d live there in a second! We spent the night there got ready for the road again and made tracks. We rode for a few hours when we looked back and.... no dave. So Nian and i kept riding a few hours til he finally called. we told him the name of the place where were were going to stay and Rode onnn. as it got dark the gps took us on a shortcut dirt road into the middle of nowhere. It felt like we were riding up some canyon road in Utah. After 2 more hours of windy mt roads we made it to angro dos Reis. Super pretty place, we spent the night in a motel and when i woke up dave was there! I thought he was gone for good. We woke up the next morning, went on one of the prettiest rides ever though landslide central, and hit the road for RIO!!!!

On the Way to Rio

To Sao Paulo and Beyond

Our cave diving spelunking adventures soon came to an end when Lineus told us that it had rained to much for us to do Caverna Casa de Pedra. (house of rock cave) I guess its the biggest opening in the world and has a steady river flowing though it so if the water is to high you can get trapped and die in there as many have done. The Cave is almost 2 km long and drops over 100 meters over its length. You enter in the top and come out on the other side of the mountain. We were super stoked to do it but he told us that it was a terrible idea.

Caverna Casa de Pedra... The One that got away

So we each gave him $10  for his guiding us around for the day and we let our horses run back towards sao paulo We took and awesome mountain road full of curves and fun semi passes and road 3 or 4 hours until we were almost in the outskirts of Sao Paulo. We met a Drunk guy at Bar we Stopped at for snacks. He sang a whole Beatles song without a word of English or Portuguese! ha ha so funny!
 

We were going to call it a night around there somewhere but we couldnt find the hotel or a campsite and we were only like 70 kms from Sao Paulo so we pushed on into the night. Upon arrival in one of the biggest cities in the world, we got some gas and ask some cops were a good place to stay was. He advised against camping out and said we should get a hotel near my friend Guisti's house. After riding in the rain for three hours looking for a hotel that would let 3 people sleep in a room for under a million dollars it was like 3:00 in the morning. we found a place so i went in, told em i wanted the cheapest room possible, paid in cash and we ran our stuff up. This was acutally a Motel, where you can get room by the hour... Pretty gross. As i prepared to spend the night sleeping in my rain gear due to the nastyness of this place the security guard shows up wanting me to go talk to the front desk. I go down tired, wet, and upset and the lady wants me to pay for another room saying that three of us cant stay there. So i gave her a piece of my mind and she called my bluff on leaving at like 4am.. needless to say, i got my money back and we got back on the streets.We rode pointlessly for like an hour as it was kinda pointless to get a room at that hour. All the sudden i recognized the hood we were in. Praca do Se. My buddy had shown me a picture and told me that it was one of the most dangerous areas of Sao Paulo. And there we were, 3 white boys, riding around on big wheels. at like 5:30 we made it to Guisti's house where we leaned our bikes up on on the wall and fell asleep on our bikes with our helmets on!

Dave and I woke up completely numb and bent out of shape, so we laid down on the ground and slept like bumbs, (helmets still on) until he heard "Elder?" Elder? Im looking for an American Elder. haha it was Sister Guisti waking us up at like 7 am. She invited us in and I dont really remember what was said as i was so tired but Bro Guisti said we couldnt stay there because is married daughter was there for a few days as her husband was out of town. I told him we just wanted to please take a nap which he was fine with. After they forced us to shower of course.. Weird, I though we smelled great after days of camping and non stop freeway riding in the rain? Our Shoes need to be burned! We took our naps which turned into waking up at 3pm the next day. it felt great to sleep in a bed again! We just chilled and washed clothes for the rest of the day. It was pretty awesome! Brother Guisti cooked up a super delicious Churrasco dinner! After dinner Nian found an address for a kid that he baptized that was serving a mission in sao paulo. So we set out to surprise him. After more night riding through sketchy parts of town we were unable to find the missionarys house. Nian had written down a phone number with the address, he called it and it was brother Guisti's cell number. Nian then argued with himself and Dave about whose fault it was that he had the wrong number. Pretty funny! Brother Guisti did end up inviting us to sleep at his place and we enjoyed another awesome nights rest along with warm showers....

Dave Refused to Leave the bike alone in Sao Paulo

Injury Report: All previous injuries healed, Nian... millions of Flea bites. Whole Team... lots of bug bites, rashes, and soggy feet.

Coming up quick on Sao Paulo and making great time, when all of a sudden we see this sign that says, "caverna do diabo" (the devils cave) hmmmm, so we took a quick left and headed about 60 miles in the opposite direction! . 

 Pathway to caxoeira meu deus (my god waterfall)

A little bit before the cave and a little before sunset we saw a sign for "caxoeira meu deus" (my god waterfall) so we pulled back the barbed wire fence and started cruisin the trail. Hiked up about a mile up a stream and green brazillian jungle until we found this awesome, 100 ft waterfall! Tried to swim and get behind it but it wasn't happening, i'm pretty sure there's an awesome cave behind it though with tons of treasure.

Got back to the bikes, suns going down fast, and lucky me i'm rollin flat tire number two! so we fix a flated it better, and stampeeded a herd of cattle back down to the fence, just avoiding getting kicked by some jackass/burro that was wondering along the trail and hates motorcycles!!

There she is.

Cruised into a small town called, Iporanga. Found a dude by the name of Lineus who led us to this boat where we crashed for the night. In the morning our buddy Lineus came and woke us up, took us to a place to get Dave's tire fixed and we headed to the caves. Lineus decided to ride on back with Nian, which he quickly learned was suicide! but ol Nian held it together and just gave him a few scares and never actually threw him off.

 Our Iporanga Campsite

Deep within the earth. Caverna Ouro Grosso. Waterfall inside. and another 1200 meters that we didnt even explore, cuz we didn't have ropes or harnesses. Next time.

 

Oruo Grosso

 

Nian and Jim Sliding Down a Tight squeeze

 

 yes there was a waterfall in the cave.

  

 just swimmin up the underground river. no worries, no anacondas here, just huge cave spiders that Dave throws on Nian to make him scream like a girl! haha

                                                                                                           

Dave Portraying our Chain That we bought to lock up our bikes in Sao Paulo

gettin rested up at Bernardo's place in Curitiba. Hung out there for two days, visiting a few people, some of which were portuguese whose accents were music to my (Dave) ears. Took me back to my portugal days.
Ate a ton while we were there, think we all put on a few kilo's, went to church and headed to Sao Paulo

setting up camp just outside of Curitiba and Dave walking into giant spiders

Midnight mechanics. 4 hours outside of Curitiba.
Bike problems as of today, Nian, busted throttle cable, jimmy rigged until fixed in Curitiba
Dave, Two flat tires, what a suprise.....
Jim, 100% awesome until he busted his blinker off last night in a fit of rage because we got kicked out of hotel romantico!! haha

a true "jimmy rig" job, Nians throttle cable decided to be difficul around 11 or midnight in the middle of nowhere, so Jim fixed it up with some bailing wire and we got back on the road. After having a pizza with the local drunk of course.

Paraguay and the whole shot from hell!

So we're packin up from our iguasu adventure when we heard you could buy iphones in paraguay for 150 bucks! so we saddled up and headed to the "ponte de amizade" which is where paraguay and brazil boarder. What we came face to face with was probably the eighth wonder of the world. Traffic was backed up for miles before the bridge, luckily we bought motorcycles so we could evade such problems! well we're weavin in and out, hopin up on medians, cuttin across lawns, and got seperated, jim cut around a bus and i never saw him again. I took brian off the freeway and down into a neighborhood where we flew down the street, to the frontage road, up the side grass hill and jumped back on the freeway right before the bridge! cutting in front of all the traffic! haha. we cruised through the brazillian checkpoint into what i can only describe as this. . .. if you were to take two motorcross races and line the whole shots up directly across from each other and then drop the gates, then you would have this outcome! haha, it was AWESOME, imagine a four lane highway, ( same size as a two lane back in the good ol u.s. of a. ) two rows of cars coming, two rows of cars going, extremely close to eachother because in between the coming and going you have two lanes of motorcycles coming and going!!! so we're flying down the middle, elbows tucked and clippin mirrors! we make it to the other side and a dude with an ar15 pulls me over, asks me for some bike documents and identification, until he saw the american flag flyin proud on the back of my pack and found out i was american, saluted me and told me to have a good time!! haha. Then it was back to the races, cruisin down the road, throttle pinned. come up on a round about. no stop signs, no yield signs, its everyone, haulin ace, and praying for the best! thrown into the mix and hope you come out in one piece on the other side.

 Ponte de Amizade (friendship bridge) Craziest 5 mins on a motorbike EVER!!

we made it through, met up with jim at a gas station, bought a couple liters of cola, some snacks and such for 1.50, and continued our search for the i phone.
     After hours of being hustled by little kids and everyguy on the shoulder to shoulder streets, and finding out that the 150.00 dollar i phone was a fake we got back on the hogs and fought the traffic out of the the filthy streets and said peace out to Paraguay.
    It was balls to the wall till about 2 or 3 in the morning, when we saw a rest stop and decided to set up camp. Strung up or hammocks, walked through some gigantic spider webs and had the most pissed off narly 8 legged furry, furocious, beast of a spider on my chest ready to take my head for destroying his palace. don't worry, i won.
   Then we rode the hammocks all the way to snoozerton, woke up, took an awesome ice shower, except Brian who got all soaped up and the water shut off on him!!! haha, then it was back on the path to Curitiba!!

FOZ de Iguacu, Argentina, and Paraguay

Iguacu is Nuts!! We woke up after sleeping in a freezing cold room of heaven. It felt soo good! We soon were on our motos and on the Road! We set course for Argentina but stopped along the way at the 3 frontiers. Thats were Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil all meet up. We then crossed the river into Argentina and rode down to the falls. It was kind of expensive to get in so I convinced a guy that I was brazillian and got all three of our passes and drinks for almost less than one pass would have cost us. The Falls are absolutely indescribable! I couldn't even describe how big they are. We walked to the the other side and its almost a mile across!

 

  At the falls we walked all the bridges and stuff.. took a bunch of pics, and fed the Kuadi Mundi. Even though we werent supposed to. Feeding one turned into a frenzy and we got out quick!

After all afternoon at the park it got way too hot so we grabbed our motos and cruised around Argentina for a while. We went back to Brazil and crossed the other bridge to Paraguay. I don't even know how to describe Paraguay... There's no visa check station, no entry procedure, and as soon as you get off the bridge the roads turn into a dirt/old crappy asphalt smokey mess! I guess everyone goes there to buy cheap electronics and stuff. We went over for a while and rode around.. It almost seems like there are no rules. Traffic circles were so crazy! It got dark so we took off. On the other side of the bridge i went  to take a pic and i felt like if i didn't get out quick I was goin down!! So I started my bike and got the freak outta there! Once again we retired to the Hostel and slept like Kings!

Last Week or So..... -25.690636,-54.443836

 View From My Cockpit... Feet up and Flyin!

My greatest apologies for no updates in a week! Last few days just flew by.. mainly because we were cruising the streets of southern Brazil on our bikes at 110 km/hr! lets see... Saturday was another carnival party but we decided we were over that and went to a Kaskade concert in some super fly brazillian club. it was nuts!

 Kaskade Concert.. 10000 people that love Electronic music

Turns out it didnt get over til  5 am so we went back to the pad.. showered, packed, strapped the packs on our bikes and hit the road! we rode up Picarras where I visited caio from my mission again. He Invited us to stay there and it started pouring rain.  we were wicked tired so we hung up hammocks and camped out at his house for the night. He was awesome to us. Fed us, and made sure we were taken care of! What a good guy!

 Sunset on the Beach

Next morning we woke up fresh and got back on that open road. We rolled hot all the way to Porto Uniao. About an hour and a half out we visited a kid Nian Baptized on his mission and then it started pouring rain. We suited up in trash sacks and kept on truckin, it got dark and suddenly i was wet and cold and the road turned into a Trashy pot hole two lane highway. We road hard til like 10pm when we rolled into porto uniao. We were planning on staying at a Members house there but after a bunch of calls and no answers it started pouring again. SOooo we rolled past the mission house I lived in 5 years ago. Turns out the missionaries still live there and were kind enough to let us sleep on their floor.

 Dave and I Getting my moto ready

Awesome View

Ghetto Rain Gear

Instant Soaking Rain!

First thing the next day we hit the dollar store and bough rain gear! Forget being soaking wet on the road! Then off to Sister Leni's house for lunch. I had the wonderful opportunity to baptize her on my mission. Shes still way active and Awesome! Turns outs she had the young woman over for a pajama party last night so its good we didnt sleep over haha. She cooked up the Best BBQ I have ever eaten! so awesome! After eating Her daughter Ana and a friend took us to the countryside and showed us some awesome waterfalls and farms by where they grew up. After that we saddled back up on our bikes and rode up the city's Cristo Hill right at sunset! SO Pretty! Ana was all over us about going out to the last night of carnival party with her. so we went haha. It was super rowdy and way trashy! haha but still way fun.. tons of yelling and dancing. I got all sick feeling from all the smoke so we went back to Sister Leni's house and had an amazing nights rest in beds!

 Waterfall With Ana

Last Night of Carnival

Next morning we broke the bikes out super early and started the journey for Foz de Iguacu! We Rode hard for 600 straight Km's through the Prettiest Mountain range and farmland I have ever seen! We made it to Foz de Iguacu around 9pm and crashed straight out! Such a long ride! I think my butt is paralyzed... or permanumb!

 Far from EVERYWHERE!!

Singing the Open Road Song

Fri Night 2-14-10 by Nian (Location -27.439184,-48.50054)

we almost went to jail last night. not really but we got a good scare. so we parked our bikes on the road in a rich neighborhood last night. went walkin around for an hour or so and then went back to the bikes. when we showed up there was some cops about 50 yards down the road from our bikes. when we get to our bikes the cops cruise up get out of the car and ask for our documents for our bikes and what not. and of course we didn´t have them casuse they were back at the hostle. then they started drilling us on what we were doing. anyhow it turns out there was a car stolen right next to our bikes and some people in a house near by said they saw three dudes messing around near our bikes. so the cops pulled our spark plugs so when we showed up we wouldn´t be able to take off. anyhow after they talked to us for ahile they fixed the plugs and told us sorry. its funny that it happened the second night that we had our bikes. anyhow i´m sure we´ll have a bunch of good stories like this to come. thcau.

Ponto Das Canas

``Hey guys i bet we can get in this house party!`` NOPE!!

I didnt think this fool was real!

CARINVAL!! The boys enjoyed an eventful morning of surfing and crab fighting on the southernmost beach this morning. Before leaving we took a trail beach hike to Solidão beach and then up to this bomb waterfall. Dave walked through a massive yellow bearded biting death spider on the way up. At the waterfall Nian did a big rock jump into the pool of water. we messed aroud there for a bit and i decided to look for a vine to swing into the pond. upon arrival at the top of the rock i grabbed a branch which instantly broke and left me on my butt fighting not to fall in the water with my bag, camera, wallett... you get the picture. SPLASH!! in a went. so i frantically tore off my bag and threw it with my camera in it to shore and my camera hit the rocks.... what luck!

Dave and I Makin people look bad on the dance floor again!

Ready to roll the streets!

Dumb waterfall i fell off of with my camera

Nian´s girl is gonna be PISSED!!!

Doubles

Turn and a Half... Unsuccessful