The next day I woke to my alarm and packed up. I was out the door by six as promised. It was still dark when I reached the flooded part of town. I stopped at a roadside stand and got a cup of coffee and bola cake for breakfast. The bola was filling and I was in a good mood.
My first ride was going to Belo Monte, not very far. They dropped me off at a ferry. I walked around and asked some truckers if they were going my way, but they were staying there. I tried hitchhiking cars getting on the ferry, but nobody stopped. Finally, I decided to ask the ferry crew what the pedestrian fee was. They said there was none: only vehicles had to pay. That sounded fine. So I took the ferry across and walked to the edge of town
It was good weather for traveling. I got a ride with a trucker for much of the way. He was experienced with the muddy Transamazônica.
"I was talking to a guy the other day," he told me. "It was his first time on the Transamazônica. He was frustrated that the trip was taking so long. He just didn't know what to expect. This isn't an ordinary road. Lots of trucks break from the large potholes. And many get stuck in the mud. I've been doing this for years so I know how to go about it."
Broken down drivers would break branches off trees and prop them up in the road to alert drivers of their disabled vehicle around the corner. We passed a branch, then a broken-down truck. "See, there's one! The people who live out here have to pay a lot for their goods because the truck maintenance is so expensive."
I saw one truck struggling to get up a hill, but its wheels just spun in the mud. A half dozen trucks were waiting in line behind him to try their luck with the hill. My driver hesitated, and seemed like he was going to get in line. But then, he accelerated past them all and charged up the hill, hugging the drier edges of the path.
I got a lot of rides on this day and made great progress, though our vehicles usually couldn't go very fast on the rough terrain. I slept that night in the outskirts of Novo Repartimento. In an internet cafe I emailed my family that I was starting to get tired of this big jungle.
^ 2014/04