Today, we had a long 500+km ride on the Interoceanic Highway (Br-345). An interesting and long ride seeing the same scenes we have been seeing ... farms, burnings, cattle ... with a big difference. We pretty much were following the Madeira River all along and crossed it a few times.
The Madeira River is 1,450km long, a major tributary to the Amazon River, and a major waterway in Brasil. Because this is the dry season, we also saw vast areas that are flooded once the rains begin.
As we moved East, we began to see more vegetation, more trees, more tropical settings, more jungle.
As we were approaching Porto Velho, a heavy downpour materialized from nowhere and it stopped just as fast as it started 15 minutes later, and the road was dry 15 minutes after that! Wow. Today, temperatures got to 100 degrees and humid. Hot!!
Once in town, we headed to a coffee shop for cappuccino and pastries. We are spending 2 nights here to change our tires to knobbies for dirt riding as we head into what people call the "other side" of the road ... the rough part ... do a little laundry and walk around.
Brasil always makes me smile because of how well integrated all their people are ... playing and working together, having fun, families, children ... all different shades of brown, black, white.
So far we have visited the capital of the State of Acre (Rio Branco) and the capital of the State of Rondonia (Porto Velho) in Brasil. Similar cities with 500K people but Porto Velho is less developed and the wilder of the two. I guess we are deeper in the Amazon now.
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