1st of November 2016
South of Brazil. Mostardas, a small friendly town with colorful houses. A long stretch of straight road lies before us. Neverending flat fields, marshes, pastures. Cows, horses, birds.
The weather forecast announces rain for this afternoon and tonight. Heavy rain even, and heavy winds. The next town is over 150 km away – São José do Norte. Between here and there, right in the middle, a small village on the map.
Bojuru.
That’s our aim for today. There’s even supposed to be a guesthouse.
Let’s go. The sky is still blue.
The air starts to smell of rain. Horses are wading around in marshy fields. A long straight road between pine trees. Boring.
Rain drops start to fall. Let’s pedal on, the rain is not strong. It’s not worth putting on our rain pants, not quite yet.
The rain gets stronger. We hear thunder in the distance. By now, our pants and shoes are soaking wet.
There’s not point anymore putting on our rain pants.
Early afternoon, pouring rain. We reach Bojuru.
The guesthouse is there. The owner gives us the ground floor room so we can put our bikes in, too. The room is horrible. We haggle the price down…
There’s no electricity because of the storm. In Brazil, this means no hot water…
We spend the afternoon at the café on the other side of the road. They can’t use the coffee machine, but they have gas to make warm milk.
For dinner, they send us further down the road to a small restaurant. It’s just us there and we don’t choose what we eat. Rice and beans and meat, the usual Brazilian fare.
When we go to bed, the rain is pouring down again. Thunder and lightning keep us awake for a while.
Will the streets be flooded tomorrow morning?
Maybe the ground floor room wasn’t such a good idea… Will the water start trickling into our room through the space below the door?
Before falling asleep, I pick up my hip belt bag from the floor and take it into my bed. You never know.
Enjoyed reading this? Here’s the full series of Diary of Last Year.
Or else, browse around other posts about our trip here.