I didn't expect any problems on the border. I personally didn't have them before, but I met people who did and went through cross questioning. This time it was going smooth, the World Cup was already on and Brazil was trying to impress the entire world. Immigration officers were like robots, stamp and next, stamp and next.

The day was hot and humid, the air was filled with this suffocating but in the same time exciting smell of the tropics. I was told there was no bus from the border to the city centre, and I didn't want to pay for a taxi, so I stuck my thumb up on the speed ramps just at the exit from the border terminal. In a minute I had a lift with two women from Paraguay on their way back home. Foz do Iguaçu was a triple border so there were plenty of cars with plates from all the three countries. It looked like Paraguay wouldn't be that hard place to hitch in the future, but now I had to cross a large part of Brazil to get to Rio. And I remembered very well how hard it was, how much time I had to spend on posto BR in order to find a lift. Now I had to find one such posto, Hitchwiki had no info about Foz.

As soon as I got to one petrol station an intense storm broke out and stopped me for a few hours. It wasn't a good spot at all, it was not the end of the city yet and mostly locals were refilling their tanks. The staff was cool and explained me how to get to a good posto on the motorway. Once I got there it was almost dark. A whole day wasted just to get to a right place. There were plenty of trucks parked around and with a bit of luck it was possible to find an overnight lift straight to São Paulo. From there I would have only four hundred kilometres to Rio. I had a great chat with many truckers, but most were either going to Paraguay or heading towards Curitiba but only in the afternoon of the next day. Got stuck at posto BR again?

I crushed for the night on the car carrier trailer of one truck, obviously with the permission of its driver. By now I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't make it to Rio for my birthday and the match of Chile against Spain. Well, there would be other matches and other birthdays. I only hoped that Francisco would still be there when I arrived.

I woke up early and after a row of strong coffees that most stations offered for free I located myself at the exit from the posto. Nearby there was a large U-turn which on Brazilian motorways worked as a junction, so people weren't driving that fast. Maybe I'd find a ride straight from the road? Hours were passing and only around midday I was finally picked up. Joys of hitching in Brazil. It was a convoy of two lorries going all the way to São Paulo. The guys were talking on the radio most of the time and I was listening to this smooth music that Brazilian Portuguese was and reminding myself many words that I already forgot. We were driving the whole day, stopped for the night and continued the next day until late afternoon. I was dropped off close to the city centre. Now I had to get out of this eighteen million inhabitants madness.

I hitched through São Paulo once and I didn't have a good recollection of it. This time I searched the maps and other websites in advance to be ready and skip it fast. I went straight to Tietê Terminal and got on the bus to Jacareí which was already behind the metropolitan area of São Paulo. Just before the exit to that city there was a petrol station with large restaurant that looked very good on the Street View. Only a mile behind it there was also a toll station and I really wanted to try them out. I couldn't find any info about hitching on tolls in Brazil. In case it wasn't allowed to hitch there I could always go back to the station.

In the morning I went to the tolls with a sign where I wrote Rio de Janeiro and put a big smiley face. After a minute one of the workers started to approach me. Will they kick me out? No, I just had to move further out. Fair play. It wasn't maybe as good as tolls in Poland or France, there was no parking or toilets, stopping was officially not allowed and the marginal lanes were for the electronic toll collection, so higher speed on them. But it still did the job. In just five minutes! I had a lift straight to Rio with a private car. What a change!

I arrived in Rio a few hours later welcomed by a pissing rain. I got off quite far from the centre, but just round the corner there was a station of suburban train so getting there was easy. After another bus ride I ended up almost at the top of Santa Teresa, a quiet neighbourhood near Lapa, the central part of the city.

It took me a while to find the house of Daniel, Monika's boyfriend. The place was full of instruments, the drum set was occupying large part of the living room, guitars were left in the corners. Daniel, whose big eyes had this friendly spark, was an English teacher as well as a musician and singer. His roommates were also into music, some tunes were constantly on. That night I sent a message to Francisco, but didn't receive any answer. Pancho where are you?

The next day the sun came out and we went for a walk with Daniel. He helped me to buy and register a new sim card, my old one after one and a half year without a top up was disconnected. Gee, a year and a half passed since my last time in Brazil. And I spent most of that time in Chile. I would never imagine that. Being a long time traveller means that one day you will run out of your savings, no matter how much you save in advance. I always wanted to live in Chile, but one of the reasons I stayed there for so long was money. And I actually didn't save that much, it was not like Ireland, the salaries were low. So my budget was tight. I started to realise that in order to continue this trip I had to take any opportunity to make a few bucks. And it looked like such opportunity existed in Rio.

Celebrations on the streets of Rio

On my second day I went to Copacabana to see the Fan Fest and feel the World Cup vibe. While the beaches of Rio were always full of people from all over the world, this time it was really packed and all the people were proudly displaying where they were from. The colours dominating in Copacabana were actually blue and white, the place was filled with Argentines, they were even camping on the beach, something that normally wouldn't be allowed. Now police didn't care and in the same time their presence made the place very safe. Many Argentines were selling either food or beers on the beach and after a little chat with one Porteño* I realised I could do the same. And I saw a styrofoam box in the house of Daniel. Fuck it, let's try!

Before hitting the beach stuffed with beers I wanted to celebrate my missed birthday. I was hoping to do it with Francisco but he was already in São Paulo. What a pity we couldn't meet. But, I'd found out that Greg who was working with me in La Valija was also in Rio and we soon met up in the place where he was crushing. There were other English lads and a group of people from Cape Verde. What a mix. After a few we went out to Lapa and soon after lost each other in that endless crowd. I didn't manage to find him, but I still had an interesting night.

'Good luck!' told me Daniel patting my back.
'Thanks man, I will need it' I replied grabbing the portable fridge full of beers and then headed to a bus stop. I had to take a bus and then metro to get to Copacabana and I was afraid all the beers would get warm by then, but the ice was still on top of the blue cans when I got to the beach. I remembered my first time as a beach vendor many years ago in Poland. It was actually my first job ever. The first word didn't want to pass through my throat for a few good minutes. And now I was about to do it in Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro, in Portuguese. One big breath... cerveja!** The first sale was in ten minutes. A group of Brazilians couldn't believe that one Pole was selling them beers. From that moment on all my shyness and anxiety was gone. I was walking around with a big smile excited as hell. What an experience!

More people were coming over as another match was just about to start. I couldn't sell inside the Fan Fest, but the screens were really huge and well seen outside of it and many people preferred to watch it without entering the Fest. Every time I sold a beer I felt free to enjoy one as it was covered, so I could be on the beach all day long, watch the World Cup matches and have some beers without spending my savings. It costed me only a bit of the effort. At the end of the day I even had a few reais left in my pocket. Cool.

Daniel was very curious how it went when I came back. We had a great connection from the very beginning and Monika was so happy about it when we talked on skype. One evening Daniel was playing a gig in one bar in Santa Teresa and I was invited. That night he played many covers, mostly Brazilian tunes, including Novos Baianos which I liked a lot. The bar was small so no crowds but people seemed to enjoy it. I did.

On Saturday Brazil was playing the round of sixteen match against Chile and some kind of tension could be felt. Chile did very well so far and most Brazilians weren't happy with their team. They were afraid of losing it. I obviously supported Chile and was very curious what it would be like if Brazil really lost it. How would the streets and the beach look like. After exciting match Brazil won and every corner turned into a party. I thought I would do well with my business, but it was quite the opposite, I was struggling that afternoon. The last few beers I just left for myself, no point to push it too hard. Rio, soccer and samba... and I was inside of it.

I stayed in Rio a few more days and some were better some worse for my business. I saved almost nothing, but I didn't have to touch my savings which was good enough. During these couple of days I also did some more sightseeing and visited places I didn't have a chance to see before, for example The Sugarloaf Mountain. We also went out once or twice with Daniel to Lapa to grab a few drinks. After Monika I was the second Polish he met and that probably made our conversations deeper. He missed her a lot and was a bit worried about how would it all turn out. Monika bought a house in Ecuador and wanted to run a hostel and live there together with Daniel. He liked the idea, but in the same time he loved his life and career in Rio. When he'd found out that she booked a flight to Rio he was all radiating with happiness.

'Hey, you wanna impress this chick when she arrives? Learn this tune!' I showed him a song called Whisky Moja Żono by a Polish band Dżem. He started to work hard with it and I was surprised by his ability of pronouncing Polish. The fact that he was Brazilian was probably helping him, both languages had similar sounds. Maybe that's why Portuguese was so easy for me?

After a goodbye hug I went to the bus stop in front of Daniel's house.
'Are you heading downtown?' I was asked by a guy putting some stuff to a car.
'Yeah I'm going to Central.'
'I can get you to Lapa if you want.'
'Yeah sure, why not.' Sweet, I had a lift in the city centre of Rio de Janeiro. Some strange change again. After a long bus ride I left all the skyscrapers and favelas of the city far behind and got to the tolls on BR-116. This pedágio*** looked very well, there was a bus stop with a lay-by just behind it as well as shops and restaurants.

'Hey, do you think you will still be in Brazil in September?' I saw a message on the screen of my phone after finding a wifi. 'Today I will book a flight and I want to go there for three weeks, I'll go alone and I would like to meet you in Brazil.'
'Wow, wow, Aileen is going to travel! But I think I won't be here. Two months, a lot of time. Maybe in September I'll be in Ecuador or Colombia.'
'Other option is Tumbes, it's in Peru and only thirty kilometres from Ecuador. I would go in the second week of September. But I want to know where you will be before buying the tickets so we can meet. I'll have three weeks of holidays. I have to buy tickets until tomorrow.'
'Okay, Peru is much more likely than Brazil. And why until tomorrow? Any offer?'
'Yeah...'
I was chatting with Aileen quite often, but this message completely surprised me. She told me she got motivated and started to save money, it seemed they weren't just empty words. She was thinking about flying alone to a country she'd never been to before. I was really happy to see that.

After the night at one station I walked back to the tolls. Again a sign with a smiley face and tah dahm... a lift straight to São Paulo. In less than a minute! Have I found a Holy Grail of hitchhiking in Brazil? This time I was picked up by a truck driver from Nordeste, a region I haven't been to so far. Maybe on my third visit to Brazil. Now I was heading back south. I wanted to see Florianópolis about which I heard so much. The driver after listening to my travel stories invited me for lunch and on our way back to the lorry put twenty reais into my hand saying: 'grab some nice dinner tonight, you look skinny.'

In São Paulo I watched another match in a porter's lodge of one company. I was just passing and guys invited me over and offered a coffee. 2-1, Brazil won against Colombia. After the game I went to Decathlon shop to buy the camping gas and then to Tietê Terminal which was just round the corner. This time I made a mistake, I forgot to check when was the last bus to Embu das Artes leaving. I arrived too late. After a bit of asking around I found a bus that supposedly could get me close enough. When the driver dropped me at some junction I realised I had like ten kilometres to Embu. And it was almost midnight. The area didn't look too bad but I didn't feel comfortable walking there by night, so when I found the first petrol station I stayed there till the morning. I woke up early and with two more bus rides I arrived at another toll station really far away from São Paulo. A piece of cardboard, a marker, a smiley face and the first truck pulled over. Holy shit!

I was dropped at one posto on Curitiba's bypass. It was dark already so I sit near a socket and started to browse the web totally chilled out.
'Where you headin' to?' a mid age man asked me suddenly when I was reading the Polish Newsweek.
'To Floripa.'
'I can give you a lift later, now I'm really tired, I need a nap. I'll be in my car, that white one over there. I'll let you know when I'm ready.'

It didn't feel like Brazil. No, it actually felt like perfect Brazil. I loved this country, the people, their vibe, the only thing I didn't like was that terribly slow hitchhiking. But now I was being offered lifts even when I wasn't asking for them. It was one of my favourite countries and I would love to stay here longer, live here for a while, polish my Portuguese. Not now, not now... I knew I had to go, still so many countries ahead of me, I couldn't stay in every place I liked, I would never finish this trip. And Brazil? It should still be here.

A few hours later we started to drive down south. The guy lived in the north of the country and was on his business trip. In Brazil it meant a few days drive. When we were close to my destination I was really tired, my head was falling down, but I forced myself to not sleep because it looked like my driver was falling asleep. Every time he got quiet I started to talk something, anything to keep him awake. I got off his car around 3 a.m. in the suburbs of Florianópolis.

Back to Pelotas! With Martha, Gabi, Átila and Bruna

In the morning I checked my email. No news from CS, so I decided to find one nice beach and camp for a night there. Florianópolis, also called Floripa, was located on an island and it had beautiful beaches all around. It was a popular tourist destination, but this time of the year the beach in Barra da Lagoa was really empty. This part of Brazil had already temperate climate and the winter was just beginning. It wasn't really cold the day I arrived but the next morning a strong wind started to blow from the Atlantic and I had to dig for the jacket in my backpack. It wasn't time for Floripa's beaches, so I headed on.

First there was this short and quick lift with one girl to the city centre. She told me that she'd never hitched in her life, but was always picking up and according to her Floripa was the capital of hitchhiking in Brazil. After a short bus ride I had the next lift very quickly again from one posto to the tolls thirty kilometres south. I was going to Capão da Canoa where I wanted to visit Natalia, Roger and Marcelo, the guys who gave me a lift in the north of Chile. Capão was not on the main road so I wrote Osório instead. It wasn't a big city, maybe it would be better if I wrote Porto Alegre, but I didn't have any cardboard left. After an hour I went to a restaurant nearby and very quickly found another lift with a trucker.  After around two more hours I ended up at a tiny station in a tiny town.

'The flight booked! For the first day of September :)' Aileen informed me that night.
'So you'll arrive in Peru on 1 September? I have to set up the alarm for that day to not arrive too late.'
'Hehehe yeah I'll be in Máncora on the first, you can't come too late.'
'Well you never know when you hitch. I will put my alarm for a week before and if I'm still far I'll start hitching planes;)'
'Hehehe you silly!'
'You wanna hitch, move around or stay on the beach all the three weeks?'
'My plan is to come to Peru, meet you, hitch together to Ecuador and then go back to Chile.'
'And what if I arrive late? Do you have a plan B?'
'Sit down and cry hehe.'
'Okay, so I have to find a map that shows runways.' It looked like I had a deadline.

In the morning I couldn't find a lift for a while so I scribbled 'Next station' and began to hitch at the entrance to the motorway. It worked very well, I had a few short lifts jumping from one posto to another. When I sit down for a second at one station I saw a bus turned into a camper van. It had Argentinian plates and was painted with Brazilian and Argentinian flags, faces of Neymar and Messi and a phrase 'A hug of the goal.' I exchanged just a few words with the driver and I was in. They were five friends from Rosario and they prepared the bus just for the World Cup. Now they were heading to Porto Alegre for another match. Cool guys. They dropped me off at the exit for Capão and after another quick ride I ended up in front of the shop run by Roger and Natalia.

That day they closed earlier, most businesses were doing so when Brazil was playing. Surprisingly one supermarket was open so we went shopping. There was one TV turned on. Suddenly we heard a groan of disappointment. Brazil - Germany 0-1. Soon after another groan and another and another. What the hell 0-4? After the fifth goal some people started to shout: 'come on Germany, one more!' And soon they got what they wanted. 0-6, 0-7 and finally one consolation goal that no one cared about anymore. We drove through the city and it was absolutely deserted, not even one person. On the faces of Natalia and Roger I could see more of a shock and disbelief than sadness. I couldn't believe it either. Later on we started to joke about it, the internet was already full of memes. That was probably the most sane reaction to such a disaster.

I stayed in the house of Roger and Natalia for a few days. They were great couple, both very smart and spiritual. Their clothes shop did okay, but because it was wintertime they obviously couldn't sell any bikinis, so they were thinking of going to Nordeste and sell clothes there from their hippie kombi. I thought it was a great idea, it would be holidays and business combined together. One day they brought me to Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic Forest that was covering nearby hills. Marcelo and his friends had an organic farm there. They were growing loads of food, they had so much avocado they couldn't eat it all. For me the most interesting were the juçara palm trees. Their tiny berries could be turned into nutritious and tasty pulp just like similar berries from the north called açai. The pulp served with granola was becoming a popular breakfast in Brazil and Marcelo was selling juçara as well. They needed volunteers from time to time and I thought I would stay there for a bit, but once Aileen booked her flight to Peru, I had little time. Marcelo was constantly coming up with new ideas, he was overwhelmed with them sometimes, joking that he would need two lives to realise them all. His latest experiment was juçara cheese. It's so great to see people really into something.

From Capão da Canoa I went a bit more south to Pelotas. I couldn't leave Brazil without visiting Martha again. Getting there was so easy, for the first lift I didn't wait more than fifteen minutes and the second one, from the tolls near Porto Alegre, was in just two minutes. On the way we were listening to the radio transmission from the World Cup final. So this time Germany. Martha was already awaiting me in the same apartment on Osório Square. She lived with her new boyfriend Átila who played in a band called Barrio Sur.

Martha as always was involved in so many things, now for example beside preparing for her thesis defense she was recording a video describing in sign language how to bake bread. Me and Átila took a little part in this project as well. She knew how to get other people involved. The first time I visited her we were spending most of the time in Munaya, the artistic collective run by her and her friends. Unfortunately the collective didn't exist anymore. She said the last time I arrived was probably the best time to visit her. Munaya was on, it was a summertime, but for me it didn't really matter, I still felt great in Pelotas, it still felt like home. Actually now Brazil started to feel like home, it felt so familiar, I felt like I knew this country, like I understood the people. And I never really lived there, I spent there altogether less than five months. Quite strange.

After a few days of preparations and many rehearsals made at Martha's apartment came the day of the defense. We went to one of the buildings of the Federal University of Pelotas where some friends were already awaiting with their fingers crossed. We entered a classroom and when all the professors arrived Martha started to present her thesis. It was called The paradox of the author-producer. Difficulties and possibilities of making theatre in the southern part of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The professors had many questions after and in my opinion it only meant they were really interested in the topic of her research. It all went very well. Congratulations!

The same evening Martha and Átila organised a churrasco, a typical barbecue in a house of their friends to celebrate the defense. First Átila and other band members had a rehearsal so we had some live music. I could call their style Panamerican. After that we began to enjoy great food and cold beers. Arthur and Francesco turned again into Barbra and Beth in their cabaret show, at the party there were also Gabi and Bruna, people I met a year and a half before. In the morning our heads were a bit heavy, but it was worth it.

After doing nothing for a day in the apartment we went the next day to Laranjal on the coast of Lagoa dos Patos with Martha and Átila. It was a warm and sunny afternoon and we were enjoying chimarrão sitting on the pier and taking pictures while Átila was playing guitar. On my last night in Pelotas we went out and while Martha and Átila wanted to go back home early I stayed with Arthur, Fransesco and Gabi and we soon moved to an after. For Arthur and Francesco it was a goodbye party. They were going soon to Portugal for their student exchange. So it was a kind of a goodbye night for all the three of us.

In the morning I had a short visit to the renovated Mercado Central where Átila was having a jam with other local musicians. After lunch Martha and Átila brought me to a bus stop on the main street. Another goodbye in this trip, but I didn't feel sad, I actually felt happy I had friends in this part of the world. And it all started in Ireland so many years ago. I knew we would see each other again, I was back and I would be back.

I found a lift straight from the road just before it got dark directly to Porto Alegre. I wanted to meet up there with Alex, Martha's ex who moved out from Pelotas some time ago. Unfortunately his phone was off for most of the day and after a few more tries to contact him I decided to grab the last subway and head to the outskirts of the city. Maybe some other time Alex. I spent another night on posto BR, but this time they were more like my hostels rather than places where I got stuck for hours.

After breakfast I started to head to my final destination in Brazil, the same place where I began my second visit to this country, to Foz do Iguaçu. Hitching was usually easy, only at one point I waited for like two hours. First I was taken by a family with kids, then by students and finally by a truck driver. Again it was a convoy of two lorries and the guys were chatting on the radio a lot. They dropped me some forty kilometres before the city in the early afternoon the next day. An hour later I was already in the city centre after two more lifts. The landscapes were changing all the time in those two days. Pampa near Porto Alegre, Araucaria forests in the interior of the state of Santa Catarina and finally the jungle of eastern Paraná.

'Take the bus to Vila C,' I read the instructions again sitting at the bus stop. Soon after a hard bench turned into a comfy couch on which many couchsurfers crushed before. I was in the house that three students of anthropology were renting. Taisa and Effy were Brazilians, though from different parts of the country and Maite came from Ecuador. They called their house Antro C and it was a place full of recycled furniture and an orchard where bananas and coffee were growing.

Iguaçu Falls

Taisa was of Polish origin and grew up in a Polish-Ukrainian village in the state of Paraná. It was interesting to listen to her stories about how her granny was cooking meals I actually knew. Effy was from the capital city of Brasilia and did some backpacking and hitchhiking in other South American countries. Maite as an exchange student from Ecuador had some tips for me about her country. I wasn't the only couchsurfer in the house. Fausto and Ana were from Colombia almost finishing their Brazilian adventure. Pretty much everyone spoke both languages so we were switching between Portuguese and Spanish in a funny way.

One of the main attraction of Foz were obviously the waterfalls and I couldn't miss it. I decided to see them only from the Brazilian side even though many people claimed it was better on the other side. After the recent floods some of the trails in Argentina were still closed though and including the prices of buses it was more expensive. I also didn't want more stamps in my passport I needed space for other countries. I went there with Fausto and Ana and it was absolutely worth it, especially the last part when I could nearly touch this roaring wall of water. Depending on the movement of the clouds rainbows were drawn and erased on the background of the furious river by invisible artists. Stunning view.

Antro C was such a chill out house that I actually stayed longer than I planned. And I'd love to stay more with that positive and intelligent people, but I had to go. I didn't have many deadlines during this trip, but Aileen now created one. I had to hitch well over five thousand kilometres in just five weeks if I didn't want to leave her with her plan B. And some beautiful places were probably on the way. After a bus ride to the main road I started to cross another natural border this time called River Paraná. After a year and a half spent in now familiar Chile, Argentina and Brazil I finally entered the territory of the country I knew almost nothing about. Welcome to Paraguay!

___
* Porteño - colloquial name for someone from Buenos Aires.
** Cerveja - beer in Portuguese.
*** Pedágio - in Portuguese toll.

I didn't realise how much police was around Salvador, I just didn't care before, but since I overstayed illegally my time in Brazil my eyes could spot them everywhere and my heartbeat was rising every time they were getting closer. After hours spent on the internet I'd found out I could cross the border with Uruguay without any control quite easily, but no exit stamp in my passport could cause troubles in getting visas to other countries in the future. Another option was to pay a fine which according to some websites was eight reais per overstayed day. There were people claiming they lived illegally for years and got away with it at the end just by paying the fine. Supposedly it was even possible to pay the fine on the next arrival in Brazil. The problem was, that I wasn't sure if all that info was still valid, just like the Polish governmental site about the visa extensions was outdated.

It took me maybe two hours to hitch the first ride out of Salvador to Feira de Santana and there I jumped on a mini bus that brought me to a posto. After another two hours I was picked up by a couple going to Itatím. They dropped me in a big service station on BR-116, one of the main roads connecting north and south of that huge country. Somehow I couldn't find any lift there till the end of the day, but one guy promised me to pick me up early in the morning. After speaking with the security and other workers I soon had a place to camp, a shower and a dinner - this time mocotó, a dish made of cow's feet, probably the most greasy stuff I tried in my life. Not the first time after asking just for a safe place to crash I was receiving for free all the rest. Once I showed that I was adventurous and not dangerous people were really open and helping. All I had to do was to crash that invisible wall of distrust with a positive chat.

At five am I said good morning to Jefferson and we started to go south together, as promised, for the next two days. From the beginning we were chatting a lot, and we soon started to talk about religion and philosophy, as Jefferson just converted from Catholicism to Protestantism. I was lacking words, but it was a great conversation. The time was going fast and with the time the distance to my next destination was disappearing. Priscilla, whom I met in Boa Vista, was doing a student exchange in the Federal University of Viçosa and that town was on my way. So why not pop in?

Two days on the road brought lots of changes behind the windscreen. Bahia was behind me together with its dry climate and in Minas Gerais I was once again in Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic Forest with different types of rich vegetation spreading as far south as Argentine border. I was dropped in Manhuaçu, hundred and fifty kilometres away from Viçosa, when it was almost dark. Intense green of the surrounding fields contrasted with heavy steel clouds, the rain was lashing and I was standing under my umbrella with a wet sign saying Ponte Nova. After half an hour a white van stopped and we started to drive through the darkness with a loud sound of wipers and a noise of disappearing radio signal. Ponte Nova was not really on the way of my driver, neither was Viçosa, but after many wrong directions from a GPS and loads of asking around he brought me all the way to my destination, making sure I was safe and sound and with my friend. He drove off his route for fifty miles. What a man!

In Viçosa I could stay in an apartment Priscilla was sharing with other girls and it was another episode of Student Life in Brazil. Beers and caipirinhas, gigs and nights out, loads of fun. And it was the time when many students were off for holidays. The town itself was quite small and the university campus was a significant piece of it.

Leaving this place took me a while as I was standing in a queue of hitchhikers, I haven't seen anything like that since my last summer hitch in Europe. After two lifts I got to the motorway from Belo Horizonte and stayed overnight in one posto hiding from a pissing rain and a wind blowing my head off. Only around midday I found someone willing to take me and going all the way to Rio. Yes, Rio de Janeiro, that Rio. The sound of that name was bringing me strange feelings, like a mix of fear and excitement. A couple that gave me a lift brought me to the international airport, from where I could take a bus to Leblon, a district next to the famous Ipanema beach. Just in between Leblon and Favela Vidigal was a little house of Yesi, an Argentine girl from CS, who lived there for a year.

The first night Yesi took me for a samba concert in the Northern Zone, which was poorer and more dangerous and because of that not visited by many tourists. During the next few days I was chilling out on the beach, climbed the Corcovado mountain with a statue of Christ and wandered alone through the city. Every night we were going out to different parts of town usually in a search of live gigs. Samba was all around, in a hidden pub in Copacabana, loud narrow streets near Pedra de Sal or never-falling-asleep Lapa. Yesi introduced me to many people and all the world was in Rio: Cubans and Germans, Argentines and Mexicans, Spanish and even one Pole and of course the chilled out Cariocas - the locals. We had many interesting conversations and when the politics were discussed by people from so different backgrounds they were sometimes turning into argues. But it was all inspiring and in a friendly manner. My head was buzzing and it wasn't caused only by beer.

I liked the time in Rio so much that I decided to stay one more day and as Yesi was going back to work after holidays and couldn't offer me her time anymore I moved to a house of Alfredo, a Mexican guy, who shared it with students from Europe. The most amazing thing was the fact that the house was almost on the top of a steep hill occupied by the Favela Vidigal. This favela was pacificated a year before and like many other shanty towns in the Southern Zone which police took over, it was going through rapid changes. Alfredo lived there for more than ten months and was amazed how life was improving in Vidigal. New businesses were being open regularly, so there were new restaurants and pubs, barbershops, supermarkets and many workshops either fixing or producing something. Moto taxis were introduced, so people who could afford it didn't have to climb extremely steep streets. Recently even regular taxis started to enter the area and since a few weeks the city began to provide rubbish bins and their collection when full.

There was a concern that all this was just a make-up before the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics in 2016. Another issue was that in many pacificated favelas police started to overuse their power to a level where bribes were expected for the protection, so it was turning into another cartel. But Vidigal as I could experience, was a safe place to be, also by night. It even started to attract investors from outside who wanted to buy property there and the house I stayed in was owned by a Frenchman. There were many favelas still forgotten by the government, especially the ones far away from tourist attractions and the ones already controlled had their own problems, like growing prices from investors pressure. Anyways something was changing in the case of favelas. What would be the future of these places and most importantly of their inhabitants? Probably no one could answer that hard question.

After Rio de Janeiro I wanted to move quickly to Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil to visit Martha, another person I met in Ireland. I was taking it easy while leaving the city, so before I got to a desired spot in the far suburbs near Santa Cruz, the day was nearly over. After a few unsuccessful hours I decided to crash somewhere. I found a beautiful meadow not far from a posto and while I didn't feel too safe at first, I thought it was just my paranoia caused by the proximity of the big metropolis.

Early in the morning I had a lift to Angra dos Reis and from there quite quickly to Paraty. This historical town was a huge tourist attraction with all the colonial architecture and it was located on the beautiful Costa Verde with its numerous islands and bays. After a chill out on a beach and some sightseeing I wanted to continue but couldn't find any lift till the end of the day. After another night in a hammock I quickly got to Ubatuba, a nearby town brought by a young couple, where I got stuck again for many hours. The coastal road BR-101 was beautiful but it was more like a tourist route and there were not many trucks passing. Late in the afternoon I arrived in Caraguatatuba and I had to make a decision about my further route. I wanted to avoid São Paulo metropolis where nearly twenty million people lived and go along the coast via Santos, but it was going rather slow so far and according to maps I had and drivers I met there was a stretch of a dual carriageway behind Santos without any service station. Getting badly stuck was very likely. Reaching again BR-116 seemed possible judging the registration plates of all the passing cars and there was a posto near Jacareí. With help from heavy rain I opted for BR-116 and it started very well with a lift within a minute all the way to the station.

Paraty, Costa Verde

The next day, with every hour passed, I was less and less sure that it was a good idea to go this way. The owner of a restaurant didn't let me ask around in front of his premises so I couldn't really hitch private cars. It seemed impossible anyway. People had so much distrust and fear here that they didn't want to speak with me and one guy even lifted his hands saying: 'Don't shoot!' Trucks were scarce and in the afternoon the petrol station turned into a bus station with dozens of buses stopping for a break and hundreds of hungry passengers rushing to the restaurant. Total mess that lasted till midnight. After another night behind an old abandoned building I started the same hopeless routine this time with the restaurant owner scaring me with police and the manager of the petrol station not letting me ask truck drivers near the pumps. Somehow I was saved by a trucker who brought me to the centre of São Paulo, a place I really wanted to avoid. A drowning man will clutch at a straw. With a help of hitchwiki I found another station on the other side of the metropolis. I could only hope it would be better, it was just hard to imagine a worst place than posto in Jacareí.

At the station in Embu das Artes I met three girls from Uruguay hitching back home and they had a lift in less than an hour. All three of them in the same truck. Cultura Machista was working in their favour. I had no luck till the night, but there was a positive incident, like a little light at the end of that long tunnel called São Paulo. One trucker was very curious about my travels and he invited me for some snack and let me crash for the night at the back of his empty truck. He also told me that after loading he would come back to pick me up and bring south, far south.

I started to ask around in the morning, but the rain didn't let me do my job properly and I was hoping I would soon see that white lorry with a broken mirror that was my hostel last night. Hours were passing and it looked more and more hopeless. In the afternoon one guy suddenly just waved his head in acceptance before I actually started my explanation. Finally I had a lift. Bye bye São Paulo.

It took us a lot of time to get to Curitiba as we wasted many hours in a traffic jam. I was dropped in the middle of the night at the station on the southern section of the bypass and after a short nap I started to hitch on the side of the motorway congested with the morning traffic. In half an hour I was picked up by a funny long haired trucker playing old hits and singing to them who was going to Itajaí. Finding another lift was also a piece of cake and that truck brought me to a station near Araranguá where I took a quick shower and before my hair dried I was already sitting inside another truck. I asked for a lift to Porto Alegre but after a short chat I found out that I could go all the way to Pelotas. That's the city where Martha lived. Brilliant.

Suddenly hitching started to be unbelievably easy, like I crossed some invisible border. Well, actually it was visible, I went through many natural borders. Near São Paulo there were still patches of tropical forest. Around Curitiba we were already in a moderate climate, with a Brazilian Araucaria dominating in the landscape. Soon they disappeared and in the backyards of many houses surprisingly I could see coconut and açai palm trees. Near Florianópolis they were gone as well and the landscape started to remind the European Mediterranean. Soon everything changed again as we entered grassy pampa full of cattle, the area of gaucho culture with yerba mate, here called chimarrão, drank all the time.

I arrived in Pelotas early in the morning and actually woke Martha up and during breakfast we started to remind the funny way we met in Ireland. It was a chilly October night and I was working with a rickshaw on the streets of Galway when I saw her walking around with her red suitcase and a sad look. I asked if everything was OK and found out that she had no place to sleep. It was nearly Halloween, so all the hostels were booked and Couchsurfing didn't work out. So she crashed in a house we called Merchants Freaks which I shared with other lads and which doors were always open for travellers, buskers and the like. Her few days stay in Galway lasted nearly two weeks. Big time.

Martha warned me before my arrival that she would be very busy with her work and she really was. I didn't really know what she did and she was doing amazing things. Beside studying theatre in the Federal University of Pelotas, she was running a theatre and cabaret company called Aurora and together with her boyfriend Alex and other artists she was involved in Coletivo Munaya an artistic collective where I met so many people the first day that I was struggling to remember all the names. Arthur, Francesco, Gabi, Tais, Juliano and Clevy were all actors. The art of fashion was represented by Sinara, who was designing and sawing clothes. Alex was a great musician with amazing voice playing in Massimiliano Blues, his open project where many guests were performing. Paulo and Anderson where involved in recording sound and Munaya had even its own nutritionist Lúcia. All this was happening in a rented two storeys building on Tiradentes street and it had its own backyard, recording studio, a small bar and rooms for rehearsals and events.

Martha loved to get people involved and I didn't even notice when I became part of Munaya. First she asked if I'd like to prepare something for the first Dionisía Urbana, an event where theatre and cabaret would mix with music, dance and poetry. I was also invited to join vocal expression classes in the university, where I had to remember quickly a short absurd text in Portuguese and act with it. Great experience. At the end of the class I read one Polish poem written by Bolesław Leśmian, an erotic I'd chosen to present during Dionisía. At the rehearsal of the dramatic lecture which would be a part of the event Gabi suggested that I could play one short role, so I started to prepare for my début in the theatre.

Dionisía Urbana proved to be extraordinary event and even though I had a little stage fright, it all went smooth. It was great to see all the faces trying to imagine what was that poem about, Polish must had sounded so exotic. It was also nice feeling to be an actor for the first time, like I entered some new undiscovered world. That night Artur and Francesco turned into Barbra and Beth presenting very funny cabaret and Ândrea performed theatrical dance show full of deep emotions. The stage was open for the audience so everyone brave enough could use it as well. Unforgettable night in Pelotas.

Massimiliano Blues @ Coletivo Munaya

Munaya became my home for the next days as I was spending there most of the time. There was always something going on, either rehearsals, recordings, concerts or just simply nice chat with lots of people that decided to pop in for a sip of chimarrão or tereré*. One day in Munaya I met Ediane, a girl working in a local radio station Radio.com and she invited me to the studio. We sat in front of microphones and started to talk about my travels, about my perception of Brazil and South America, about Poland and Europe, about politics and societies and of course about music. One tune 'Like a Rolling Stone' was inspired by my trip and at the end we had a piece of Miles Davis from his electric years. Buzzing! When I went out I couldn't believe in all that, I was chatting about all this things in the language in which I couldn't say a word just four months ago and it was live on the radio. Que massa**.

I didn't feel like leaving and I was postponing it again and again, but finally had to do it. It was nearly mid December and I wanted to get to Tierra del Fuego at the beginning of the southern summer. It was getting late. Finding the first lift took me half an hour and I was just standing on the side of the road with my thumb up. Easy. Near Rio Grande was even easier, an Uruguayan truck stopped literally after two minutes of waiting. Staring at the endless pampa I was thinking about that inspiring two weeks in Pelotas. It's good to belong somewhere, and when I decided to hitch around the world I decided to exchange that feeling for a blow of adventure. We can't have everything. Arriving in that town in Rio Grande do Sul was like arriving in Galway for the first time. It stole my heart straight away. It made me feel part of it. It also proved me again that the best places are not the ones with fantastic views, but the ones with fantastic people, especially if they know how to have fun. I was hoping I would have a chance to come back.

I arrived in the border town of Chuí after the sunset, and in this latitudes summer days were already long, so it was late. I took a big breath and went inside the office of Policia Federal, not sure what to expect.
'Leaving or entering the country? I was asked before I even took my passport out.
'Leaving. And there is actually a little problem.'
'Yeah?'
'I stayed a bit longer than I should. I travel only by hitchhiking and it's such a big country.' The policeman looked at the stamp, a piece of paper that I received on arrival and started to scan my passport. He tried once, then another one and I could see in his eyes something was wrong. He called other officer and they tried again.
'But we don't have you in our system. Where did you enter Brazil?'
'In Pacaraima, I arrived from Venezuela. There's a stamp...'
'Ah yeah. Their computer probably didn't work.'
'What does it mean for me?'
'No problems, you don't have to pay any fine in this case.'
'Yeah? And after how much time can I re-enter Brazil?'
'Normally you have to wait six months...'
'I heard it's three months now.' Both guys looked at each other.
'Or maybe three months, I have to check it out. But it doesn't matter for you, you were not registered.' He put the leaving stamp and gave me back my passport.

I started to walk along the road happy as fuck, followed by a group of dogs happily waving their tails. I spotted the last Brazilian petrol station as the actual border was in the city centre marked only by a sign. I crashed in the posto BR for that night and the same few words were coming back again and again to my head: I'll be back!

___
* Tereré - cold version of yerba mate with citrus juice.
** Que massa - in Brazilian slang meaning something like how cool.

'Don't forget to feed Mona!' Fernando reminded me about the dog one more time.
'I won't, don't worry. And thanks again for everything.' I gave him a hug. This big guy deserved really big hug. I met Fernando by Couchsurfing and I thought I would stay in Porto Velho just for a few days, but somehow weeks passed. When I arrived, first he gave me keys to the second house he built for guests and later a key to his bicycle. So I had my own place and the way to move around freely in that city on the border of the Amazon.

Fernando knew basically everyone in the neighbourhood and people really liked to come and have at least a few words with him and if they didn't have time, they at least shouted from a distance: 'Hey Fernando everything OK?' My host was sometimes staying in his aunt's house, especially recently after his mother's death, and in such case I was taking care of the dog, which at the end was sleeping next to my bed almost every night. If I was not chatting with him and his friends, or not showing him Polish videos about pigeons which he loved I was staying in my little house. I used this time to finally back up all my pictures, redesign my blog and read some books, something that was being postponed for too long.

After Porto Velho it was time to see the more developed part of Brazil and I decided to hitch straight to Goiânia without any stopover. It was twenty four hundred kilometres away, quite a distance, but I couldn't see every little town in that huge country. After an hour on the side of the road a truck stopped and it was going all the way to Cuiabá! More than half the way with the first hitch. Brilliant!

Inside the truck I had some nice conversations with the driver in my quickly improving Portuguese and every time I felt tired I could just crash on the bed behind me. I was trying to not sleep too much though to not miss the transition between climates and landscapes. We were slowly leaving the rain forest behind us and entering cerrado, the richest of all the savannahs of the world. Many people told me that Cuiabá was one of the hottest places in Brazil and I could only agree. Opening the door of the air conditioned lorry was like opening an oven to check if the roast was ready. The blaze brushed my hair and I touched my eyebrows to see if they didn't burn. The heat was different than the one in Manaus, it made my throat dry in a second. Luckily the afternoon storm cooled the air down and a thick layer of clouds covered the sky for the next whole day.

After the night in the back of a petrol station it took me a few hours to find the next lift and this time it was a small white car that brought me to Rondonópolis. Another two hundred kilometres behind me. The wild cerrado was in many places turned into corn fields, and the pressure from agriculture since the invention of synthetic fertilizers was growing constantly.

After another night in Posto BR* as many called petrol stations here I was struggling for hours to find a lift. I was asking drivers near the pumps and hitching on the road, than again at posto and back on the road. There were hundreds of trucks, but most of them were bringing grain to nearby purchasing centres. In the afternoon I decided to change something and began to walk along the road. After half an hour I found another station and this one had free showers. Finally.

'Did you eat?' suddenly one of the workers asked me and I showed him biscuits that I was chewing. He waved his hand with disagreement and soon I was devouring a massive meal he brought me. He didn't really ask me anything else, he was not curious what I was doing there, just fed me and went back to work. Strange!

With a full belly I went back to the roadside and a few moments later I was sitting in the back of a small ambulance rushing to Alto Araguaia, a town on the border of Mato Grosso and Goias states. Of course I didn't end up there because of overeating, but thanks to the hospitality of a doctor. The landscape changed completely again after reaching the top of a plateau. Vast soy or corn monocultures were spreading all around till the end of the horizon and the straight road was cutting it like a blade. All of this was washed from time to time by showers from huge cumulonimbus clouds slowly passing by. The sense of space was dramatically different here in comparison with the Amazon.

In Alto Araguaia I spent a night in a station, in my hammock hung between two trees. In the morning I was sipping coffee sitting lazily next to my backpack and some people started to chat me up curiously. There was a family with a daughter who began English classes and a guy called Eduardo who after a long conversation offered me a lift. He couldn't pick me up straight from the station because he was driving a tanker full of petrol and it was illegal to take any passengers. I climbed the cabin of the truck a few hundred metres behind the last houses and a steaming hot lunch was already waiting for me inside.

Around 4 p.m. I was dropped in the outskirts of Jataí and this time it took me around one hour to hitch another ride. My driver at first didn't want to speak with me but after buying some stuff he looked at me and my backpack again and asked me what the hell I was doing there. Before opening the door to his white van he looked with a glimpse of fear: 'You don't have a knife, do you?' I had one, but I didn't mention about it. Anyways my knife was not the one he was thinking about. When I arrived in the suburbs of Goiânia it was quite late, but with help of very organised public transport I managed to meet with João Paulo. He didn't change much since the time I met him in Ireland. He was one of the Rickshaw Mafia as we called our team of bike taxi drivers in Galway.

Soy monoculture in central Brazil

After coming back to Brazil João Paulo moved back to his parents house and that's where I stayed for more than a week. There was a slight chance he would find some work for me, but just before my arrival he lost his job himself so it didn't look too promising. After so many months on the road without any income it would be nice to make a few quid. My savings were not going to last forever. Goiânia was unfortunately not yet the place for that.

After the Goiânia chill out I decided to visit parents of another friend from Galway, Geovani. They lived in a town called Caldas Novas located less than two hundred kilometres to the south east from the capital of Goias and Geovani wasn't there for years. Finding a lift was easy and the guys who took me also gave me a bottle of homemade cachaça, a Brazilian liquor which they bought on the way from a farmer. I was dropped in Morrinhos when it started to get dark and there was no proper station to ask for a lift. It was only sixty kilometres away from my destination and I decided to take a risk and continue by night. First one guy gave me a lift to the town limits just to make my chances higher and from there I had a lift to Caldas in twenty minutes. The first night hitching on the side of the road in Brazil was successful.

Caldas Novas was famous for its hot springs and after one phone call from Geovani's mother I could enter for free one of the hydrothermal clubs and enjoy pools with hot and cold water. During two days I spent in that town I was communicating with my friends' parents solely in Portuguese. It was improving faster than my Spanish in Venezuela and I had never studied it before. And what was the most important I could understand people more. Brazilians just talked so much slower.

The next location I wanted to see before hitting towards the coast was Pirenopólis, an old colonial town, probably the oldest in this part of the country. Hitching was slow, but it was Sunday and the traffic was scarce on local roads. By late afternoon I managed to get to Anápolis and when I saw the outskirts looking a bit like shanty town I thought no one would stop. Five minutes later I was sitting in the back of a small black car filled with suitcases, with a couple going for short holidays to Pirenopólis. The chat we had was so interesting, at least for me, that I wasn't sure what happened when the car started to twist around. My heart was beating like crazy and when I finally calmed down a bit I saw a motorbike lying on the road. We were hit by it! Luckily we were all fine. The car was just scratched and had a flat tyre, the bike seemed okay as well. A guy who hit us looked like he had a few and my driver decided to call the police.
'The town is three or four kilometres from here. If you like you can walk, feel free man.' The driver, still shaking, said after a while. 'I just don't want to stop you, it will probably take a while till we sort it out.'
'Em, I don't know, I have to chill out a bit first,' I said. After maybe fifteen minutes I wished all the best to the couple and started to walk along the road in a darkness rhythmically disturbed by passing cars. Just before the city limits I spotted a nice, hidden place for my hammock. I lied down staring at the Milky Way, so much brighter in the southern sky and thinking about fragility of life. It was my first car accident in the whole hitchhiking career. Fifteen years of good luck. I obviously hoped for more.

Pirenopólis was a really beautiful town with a fantastic architecture and lots of handicrafts made by hippies who settled there. It was also the first place where I saw hitchhikers like me. There wasn't really strong backpackers culture in Brazil and usually homeless and poor were travelling this way. Together with the high crime rate it was making hard for a man to get a lift. I could experience that again the next day, as it took me five hours to get the first one. At least there was a huge mango tree growing next to me. The real feast.

In Corumbá de Goias where I was dropped off there was no petrol station to ask around, but surprisingly a car stopped just within an hour. It was a big four by four driven by Helio, a man with a strong scent of cologne, who was accompanied by his mother Clarisa, a lady with a beautiful jewellery. They were both lawyers living in the capital of the country Brasília. It was the first time I could speak English with someone who gave me a lift in Brazil. Literally after a few sentences they invited me to stay overnight in their house, so I had a chance to see that utopian city.

First I saw it by night as we drove through to the other side of Paranoa Lake, which like everything else around was planned and built by man. All the city was divided into sectors for specific functions and one of the housing areas was behind the lake. After a night in a room of a maid who had a day off, Clarisa gave me a tour around town and I could see the Presidential Palace, the National Congress, and many other governmental buildings. The city was built in just forty one months between 1956 and 1960. From above it was supposed to look like an airplane with the main axis and two wings along which all the sectors were located. After saying goodbye to my guide and host I went to see the futuristic cathedral and soon after jumped on a bus to Sobradinho, one of many satellite cities that grew rapidly around. Most of them were not planned at all. The capital attracted much more people than it was thought and the queues in the bus station were huge. Plans versus reality.

A petrol station in Sobradinho was a hitchhiker's nightmare. Hours and hours and hours of nothing. Practically no trucks and all the cars going just around the metropolis. Finally in the evening I jumped on a bus to another station in the next town called Planaltina. One guy who saw me hanging around there with my backpack started to ask me questions and with every answer I gave him his eyes were opening wider and wider. He invited me for pamonha, fantastic food made of corn and we watched a match in a TV, even though I had no clue about Brazilian league. His name was Eliel and he was running a company producing female shoes. At some point he introduced me to a driver who's truck was waiting to be fixed. If it was done in the morning I could go with him.

I spent that night in a shopping centre that was part of the station. No one was renting a space on the last floor so I crashed on a kind of balcony from where I could enjoy the view of silver lightnings on a distant black sky. The next day I was awaken by the sound of rain. I went downstairs and met the truck driver who invited me for breakfast. It looked like his truck was not going to be fixed by late afternoon so I had to find another lift, which I did only around lunch time.

Salvador

The next driver wasn't very talkative and we were swallowing miles either in silence or listening to Christian music, quite common stuff in many cars. I had a lift all the way to Luís Fernando Magalhães, five hundred kilometres closer to Salvador, where one girl from CS was already waiting for me. When we arrived at a massive truck stop it was dark already, so I asked a security guy if I could stay somewhere for the night, something I was doing many times before. They were always showing me some quiet place where I could sleep for a few hours, and this way I knew it was safe.

Even though the posto was full of lorries the movement was close to zero as it was the beginning of the weekend. In the afternoon I went to the other side of town and started to hitch on the road next to a small petrol station. After an hour one guy stopped holding something in his hand.
'There is a bus to Barreiras in a few minutes. Take it,' he said while showing me ten reais note.
'No thanks I travel only by...'
'Take it, it will get dark soon' he squeezed the tenner into my hand and drove away. I was still standing with a sign saying Barreiras, amazed with what just happened. I saw the bus already arriving hidden behind a truck when both the vehicles started to pull over. I was ready to take the bus when I heard from the truck driver: 'Hey, Barreiras? Jump in!' What a situation.

I spent another night in another posto and in the morning an old couple in an old car gave me a lift to the next station outside Barreiras. From there I had a lift in a few minutes for maybe forty or fifty miles, with two funny lads who bought me lunch and a few beers. Soon after a small truck stopped with an old hippie behind the wheel. Accompanied by a great music from the seventies I was observing the changes in the landscape. The cerrado was turning into caatinga, almost desert like formation where the dominant plants were tall cacti. I was already in Bahia state, closer and closer to Salvador.

When we stopped for a short brake, just after the sunset, the driver took something out of his pocket and asked if I wanted as well. First I was shocked when I saw him preparing lines of coke, but fucking hell I was in South America. I started to wonder how many of my previous drivers were using cocaine to not fall asleep. Maybe I just didn't notice. Is it better to go with a guy who's high or who falls asleep? Good question.

We continued till the middle of the night and I slept through most of it, until we reached a junction on which the truck turned towards the north and I went to a station close by. In the morning I was sipping coffee and thinking about my hitching through Brazil. I realised that since I left Porto Velho I spent maybe a third of the nights in Postos BR. If hitchhiking was easier I wouldn't probably have much to do with them, specially that most of the roads so far were single lane ones.

After breakfast made of granola and powdered milk I found a lift all the way to Salvador with an old man in his four wheel drive. Once we passed Feira de Santana we were back to the tropical rain forest as this narrow strip of coastal area was moistened by the ocean. Almost every hill in the outskirts of Salvador was wrapped with favelas, world famous shanty towns and they all had some kind of beauty in them, though they were probably hard places to live.

Denise, who invited me to stay at her place for a few days, was living in Pelourinho, the oldest part of the city. It was full of picturesque buildings, many of which were recently restored and I could walk for hours trying to take a good photo. It wasn't always safe unfortunately, once a girl saw me taking out my camera and she came closer to whisper: 'Be careful with that in Salvador' There was a lot of music and performances on the streets, especially capoeira and African influences could be seen everywhere.

In Salvador I had one important thing to do: extending my stay as the ninety days I was given were almost over. I handed my passport to an officer of Federal Police, he took it and disappeared for a moment. When he came back he was holding a piece of paper in his hand. I was ready to fill in the form.
'Tourists from these countries can't extend their time in Brazil anymore' he showed me the list he brought.
'What? But according to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs...'
'That's a new law. You have three days to leave Brazil.'
It was like a slap. What to do, what to do? What the fuck should I do? Cold sweat covered my forehead.

___
* Posto BR (pronounced posto beh ehee) - posto means station and BR is a brand of petrol stations run by public company Petrobras, as well as a short for a federal road.

Large drop hit my forehead, then another one and another and a minute later I had to hide myself in a nearby petrol station. Again. This time though it stopped me from hitchhiking for long hours. It looked like leaving Boa Vista was never going to happen. And it was so easy to get there. I had a lift from the border town of Pacaraima within an hour.

In the capital of Roraima state I stayed for a couple of days hanging out with Natascya, Priscilla and their friends from university. It was a great introduction to the student life in Brazil and it proved, not the first time, that students are quite the same everywhere. They manage to have the best fun with the minimum spending.

I finally found the first lift out of the city early in the morning after all night spent in the station. From all the trucks parked around none of them started the engine during that night, something I was really hoping for. From the town of Mucajaí another short lift brought me to a petrol station and what surprised me there was that they had free showers. Then another station and showers again. Hitching wasn't going too fast but at least I could refresh myself even a few times a day. Very useful in the extreme heat of Amazonian Basin. By the end of the day I ended up in Rorainópolis, where I stayed in a cheap hotel. It was Monday evening and I started hitching in Boa Vista, which was less than three hundred kilometres away, on Sunday afternoon. Very slow.

The next morning I was hiding again, this time under umbrella and not from the rain but from the sun. It was so powerful that I could nearly hear the sizzling sound coming from my skin. After two, maybe even three hours I had a lift for about forty kilometres from a guy who had a restaurant, so at the end I was invited for lunch. From there two more lifts brought me to a village very close to the equator, where I started to look for accommodation as it was getting dark. No hotel, no pousada, nothing. I spotted a palm roof with a massive tractor tyre and a sign saying: Borracharia. A makeshift tyre workshop. I put my matt on the ground and laid down staring at the stars through holes in the roof. I wasn't sure if it was safe to sleep like that, but I ignored my European imagination bringing me images of spiders and snakes. In the middle of the night raindrops sipping through the roof woke me up, but I ignored them as well, I was wrecked.

The next day welcomed me with the same heat and the same long hours at the roadside. The first lift was around noon on the back of a pickup with workers going to one fazenda* only a few miles up the road. I ended up in the middle of nowhere, but I didn't care, at least I had some shadow there and I could observe colourful parrots flying above my head. Luckily or not I couldn't enjoy this view for too long, one four by four stopped for me. The driver pulled the window down a bit with a mix of fear and curiosity.
'What are you doing here?'
'Just travelling.'
'Where are you from?'
'From Poland.'
'Ah, Solidarność**, get in! I'll get you closer to Posto Fiscal.'
I quickly jumped in wondering what Posto Fiscal was. I couldn't really get it as my Portuguese was too bad. When we arrived I realised it was some kind of a checkpoint, something like Venezuelan Alcabala, but more organised, basically like everything in Brazil.

This place was the last bit of civilisation for miles. I was at the entrance to Yanomami Indian Reserve that was on the border of Roraima and Amazonas states. The traffic was scarce, where all the trucks I saw earlier disappeared? But surprisingly finding a lift was a question of minutes and the blue old truck that stopped was going all the way to Presidente Figuereido, that was so close to Manaus.

When we entered the reserve I stuck my head to the window excited like a kid. Most of the time it looked like the jungle I saw in Venezuela, but the fact I was finally in Amazonia was bringing me a thrill. At this point all the roadworks on the federal road BR-174 were behind us. We were floating smoothly on the brand new tarmac and we got to Presidente Figuereido late in the afternoon, maybe thirty minutes before the sunset. I rushed for the outskirts and it was a good idea. Soon I was sitting in a car on the way to Manaus. The car had a strong scent of weed. I hope he's not too stoned I thought, but the young guy behind the wheel was driving safely through beautiful hilly areas with snow white rocks. It looked like a sandstone, but I wasn't too sure as it was getting dark.

I still remember how I imagined Manaus when I was a kid. Every time I saw this name in an atlas, I had a view of Indian village with houses on stilts and fishermen in their logboats. In reality it was a city with skyscrapers and more than two million inhabitants. The city centre had many old buildings made in the late nineteen century during the rubber boom. It was a picturesque place. Unfortunately it didn't smell that nice. After many days without any rain it stank with piss and rot.

Out of dozens of couch request I sent to members in Manaus I had just one negative reply. I went to a hostel and after refreshing myself I sat in a living room hoping to meet some adventurous people. All the faces were hidden behind the screens of laptops, tablets and phones. Oh yeah, maybe I should check what's going on in the world as well. But after a while I felt like I need to talk to someone. Every time I asked I had a quick answer, maybe even a mere smile and that was it. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and started to drink alone. One tall guy with curly blond hair came back from town and when he saw me with a pint he got a beer, came to me and said: 'fucking hell, someone is finally drinking here. It was so fucking boring.'

Manaus

Scott was from South Africa on his trip around Brazil and neighbouring countries and we got on well from the very beginning. Over a few more pints I realised how hostel life changed since I visited one the first time. Those days if there was one computer with very slow connection it was really good. When people needed information they were asking others. Nowadays they ask as well but in the cyber space. Luckily not every one was addicted to their electronic toys. Over the next few days the crowd changed completely and we all had some fun. One night we went to the famous Teatro Amazonas to see a modern dance show and later ended up in the traditional samba club dancing samba all night, well at least trying to dance it.

Every time someone asked me what was my next destination all I could say was: I don't know. I was considering two directions: east towards Belem and south to Porto Velho. Both of them didn't seem easy for a hitchhiker. To go east I would have to hitch a boat over the Amazon and BR-319, the only road connecting Manaus with Porto Velho and the rest of the country, according to locals was impassable.

Every day I was hanging out in the port trying to get through and meet captains of cargo and passenger boats. With my terrible Portuguese I wasn't too successful. Meanwhile I'd found out that BR-319 together with Transamazonica was built by the military regime in 1970's to colonise Amazonia and consolidate Brazilian territory. Many settlers arrived tempted by the free land. But after years of no maintenance, with deteriorating asphalt the jungle started to claim it back. Many settlers abandoned their property and moved out.

In late eighties the public bus company closed down the last connection between Manaus and Porto Velho, the road was basically abandoned. In 2008 Lula's government started the repaving program. After four years around five hundred out of nearly nine hundred kilometres was in pretty good condition, but the rest in the middle was still in pieces and there was no certainty if it was ever going to be changed. The National Institute of Amazon Studies stopped the process fearing uncontrolled deforestation, something that happened in the past. I had no idea if it was possible to hitch through that road. I decided to find out.

I went to the ferry terminal in the eastern part of the city and started to ask drivers waiting for the embarkment. One of the cars I approached was all covered in stickers saying something like: vote for me and showing the face of a candidate for the local elections. I looked closer and noticed that the candidate was actually a woman sitting behind the wheel next to another lady. When I explained them who I was and what I was doing they agreed to take me once I get to the other side. When cars started to embark I walked on with other people thinking that it was a foot passenger ferry as well.
'Hey where is your car?' one guy asked me.
'Em, am, I don't know.' I answered.
'He's with us!' the candidate saved me. Phew I went through somehow.

After short but intense shower the boat left the northern bank where the river was black and soon entered the tributary with coffee and milk like water. The meeting of Rio Negro and Solimões. Most of the time we were accompanied by Amazonian dolphins swimming around. The setting sun was reflecting in the Amazon and dolphins were cutting the red surface of the water with their pink fins. Magic moment.

The first few miles of the road were terrible, but with the roadworks on it would change soon. On the way to Careiro I found out that my driver was a prefect of the municipality and it was almost the end of the campaign. She was hoping for re-election in October vote. When we arrived she invited me to her committee and home of her coworker. There were flags and fliers everywhere, all red ones with a white star and two letters: PT. She was from Partido dos Trabalhadores - Brazilian Workers Party.

In the office there was an atmosphere of hard work and engagement. One person was cooking, other printing something, constant dispute and movement. Young volunteers were painting flags as most of the materials for the campaign were prepared at the spot. Wilson who's house was changed into the committee was very curious about my travels and the country I came from. He was pretty much taking care of me while others were working. We had very interesting conversation in a mix of English, Spanish and Portuguese. At some point he even compared the former president of Brazil Lula da Silva to Lech Wałęsa, former Polish president. I wasn't sure if it was a good comparison as they were from the opposite sides of the political scene. But I agreed that they both radically changed their countries.

'Do you have a hammock?' Wilson asked me.
'Yeah I have.'
'You can sleep here, there's no need to pay for a hotel. Many volunteers stay here overnight as well.'
So I was sorted for the night and later met some of the volunteers who were really enthusiastic about PT, its socialist ideas and all the changes it triggered in Brazil. Jack, who was working in Manaus, was spending all his free time in Careiro helping in the committee. We all went to bed very late that night chatting before for hours and hours about Poland and Europe, Brazil and South America and pictures of my snowy home town were the hit of the night.

In the morning I went to see the town which was home to circa thirty thousand people. It looked... well, very Amazonian. Wooden stilt houses, açai palm trees in many backyards and puddles on every street. When I asked about hitchhiking farther south I had contradictory answers. Obviously no one in the committee had ever done this. As a goodbye and good luck gift I received the red PT T-shirt.

After a quick lunch in a local market I started to walk over the bridge and before I got till the end a pickup packed with people stopped for me. Only ten miles, but every lift was precious in that area. Then one of the volunteers took me farther ten miles up the road on his motorbike. The condition of the tarmac was all the time pretty good. The sound of the forest was sometimes amazing. One creature was reminding a chain saw and I was wondering how it looked like. Did I really want to find out? Not too sure.

The next car arrived in half an hour and nearly ran me over while slowing down. Very old man started to explain something but I didn't understand a word. As long as he was going south I was happy. He was driving from one side of the road to the other and it made sense sometimes as there were more and more pot holes, but only sometimes. He was really focused with his nose nearly touching the windscreen. It took me a while to realise he was basically blind. Empty road, forty kilometres per hour, I should survive I hoped.

After an hour of such drive we suddenly heard a terrible noise and the engine stopped. My driver was trying to start it for a while, but soon the smoke from the gear box appeared. We went outside, walked around and noticed another problem, a flat tyre. Shit no spare wheel. The guy sit for a moment saying nothing, then tried with the engine again and it worked. We were driving with the flat tyre for about half an hour until he parked the car in a lay-by in front of somebody's house. Enough.

The next lift, an hour later was with a military truck. Two soldiers were bringing materials to a village called Tupana. The army was building a new bridge there. It wasn't finished yet so all the vehicles were still transported to the other side by a little ferry. The village had a few houses, a school and a place that was a pub, shop and restaurant at the same time, with pool tables on wooden floor. The bar was visited constantly by chickens, cats, dogs and even pigs and one friendly parrot.

When I explained my situation the owner offered me the floor for the night. I had a dinner made of bread and Nutella and went to sleep early between the pool tables. I didn't want to miss all the morning traffic. Just after the sunrise I packed my stuff, drank a free coffee which was a common thing in Brazil and got myself ready for a lift. The day before I made almost seventy kilometres and I started late, not too bad.

After the morning traffic I was hoping for the midday traffic and later for the afternoon traffic. None of that existed. The word traffic was a pure exaggeration. During the whole day there were maybe four or five cars that took the ferry to the other side. In both directions. All of them absolutely full. A few more cars arrived in the village and went back. That was all.

Meanwhile I was walking around, chatting with the owner, reading, watching TV that was on all the time or just sitting and simply staring at the river. In the evening the owner asked me if I wanted to eat dinner. I preferred to get one and leave my supplies for later. I ordered the classical meal made of meat, rice, pasta and beans. When I asked how much it was he just said: 'Nada.' I was sleeping there for free, drinking his coffee for free all day and at the end he didn't want money for the food. Good man.

The next morning I didn't bother to get up early, there was no point. Around midday two lads showed up who wanted to get to Careiro. One of them, mid age with tired eyes started to buy everyone beers, but no one really wanted to talk to him. I didn't understand much, smiling most of the time, so he began to bring me beer by beer. Hours were passing and I started to get really tipsy. Suddenly a truck arrived with many people packed on its open back. I ran quickly to the driver.
'A lift to Igapó Açu?'
'Yeah hop on!'
'Just grab my bag!.
With all the beers in my head I was jumping from happiness.

After the first few miles of relatively good road it started to be so bumpy that half an hour later my arms and legs were all sore. The tarmac looked like spilled black puzzles sometimes disappearing completely. Wooden bridges with broken beams were so creaky that I was holding my breath every time we passed one. The truck was usually going to Igapó Açu on Fridays and that was the only public transport for people living there, together with a Saturday boat going further up the river that some passengers wanted to catch. On the truck, between people there were plenty of suitcases, backpacks, tanks with fuel and even one wooden boat.

'Excuse me, where could I stay for the night?' I asked one of the locals when we arrived.
'You see that green building on the other side of the river? That's a hotel. But you can sleep for free in that blue house over there.'
'Cool, how can I get there?'
'Talk to that man' he showed the a guy packing some stuff to a little boat. The river wasn't very wide and it was meandering slowly between the forest. In the blue house I set up my hammock and started to admire the roof made of a different kind of palm tree that the roofs I saw before. The place was an octagonal structure with almost no walls and it was a kind of community centre. The TV that was there was covered with a thick layer of dust. It must had been broken as everyone was watching the TV in the hotel's restaurant, which was a similar structure but much bigger.

Fried piranha

When I woke up the next day other people sleeping next to me were gone. The boat arrived probably very early. The village was built on both sides of the river and there was no bridge. Many little boats were moving around and a bigger ferry made of steel was waiting for vehicles. Around midday a guy who was earlier putting turtle eggs into the sand in a fenced protected area come to me with a plate.
'You must be hungry.' On the plate there was a bit of cassava flour called farinha and a fish with big teeth.
'Piranha?' I asked with disbelief.
'Yes, just piranha.' For them it was just piranha, for me it was holy shit piranha! Delicious stuff by the way.

Most of the day I was lying in my hammock and learning Portuguese from a book I had in my phone. I was jumping out only when I heard the engine of the ferry starting. It meant some vehicle arrived. That day three cars passed, all of them full. In the evening I went to wash my clothes in the river. When I was squatting above the water on a little platform something touched my hand suddenly. Shivers went down my spine but there was nothing to be afraid of. It was a pink Amazonian dolphin curiously checking out what I was doing. Soon all the kids were swimming with two of them.

On Sunday I was either reading, trying to find bell fruits that grew near the restaurant or just lying in my hammock wandering where the hell I was. In the afternoon I decided to swim with the dolphins, but because they didn't know me they didn't come very close. The engine of the ferry started only once, to bring a motorbike.

On Monday, around noon, a Dutch Jeep arrived with plenty of room. When I asked them for a lift I heard: 'We enjoy travelling alone, sorry.' Bollocks. I was going to lay down again when I spotted a white four wheel drive in a distance. It looked like they had space. I went to pack my mess quickly and soon the captain of the ferry started to whistle waving with his hand. I had a lift.

Two friends, both from Porto Velho and working in Manaus, decided to finally check out how this road looked like. And it didn't look well. Black puzzle again, stretches of quite good asphalt or dirt with sticky puddles. And wooden bridges so bad that we had to destroy a part behind us in order to fix another part in front of us. Something like that for a few hundred kilometres. Forgotten highway.

Around midnight we stopped to eat something.
'We have to make a fire, big fire,' one of the guys started to bring some wood from the roadside. 'We have to scare off the animals!'
In a minute we had nice flames on which we cooked mackerel with olives and farinha. The driver went for a nap inside the car, his friend brought a blanket and put it on the road, so I picked my matt and laid down as well. But I couldn't sleep. I was lying on the remnants of asphalt surrounded by the largest forest on earth. Thousands of square miles of impassable jungle. That little piece of tarmac, together with the car reflecting the flames was the only thing connecting me to the world I knew, the world I came from. I imagined how it looked from above. Little bright spot surrounded by eternal darkness, a lonely star in the outskirts of the universe.

We continued soon after and the road was more or less like that for hours. Around noon we passed the first fazendas and BR-319 started to get better. When we arrived in Realidade, a town with many sawmills it was early afternoon. From there our speed was increasing and at the end we drove on a dual carriageway. In the centre of Porto Velho, standing between tall buildings I said goodbye to the lads, put my backpack on, all covered with red dust, switched on my phone and started to look for a wifi. Back to the civilisation.

___
* Fazenda - Portuguese version of the Spanish word hacienda, meaning a large farm.
** Solidarność (in Polish meaning solidarity) - was a trade union in Poland under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa. It was the first trade union in a country under the Soviet influence independent from the Communist Party.