The smell of freshly brewed strong coffee eventually lured us downstairs. Patty and Mac had already been up for a while sorting out the kids, Daniel and Karina. Erin their oldest daughter was already at school and getting ready for exam time.

Now, Mac’s an interesting character? Bearing in mind that Mac’s an Evangelical Christian Pastor who enthusiastically explains how he’d received his calling a few years back and has now made Brazil his permanent home and mission work his life. OK, first-off aren’t Pastors meant to be called Jonathan, Peter, Nathaniel or something similar. Pastor Mac?...that just sounds a bit too cool. But then again Mac’s no ordinary Pastor. He’s known to his friends as ‘Mac the Knife’, unfortunately that’s another story and one, that although has amazing potential, I’ve promised Mac not to tell ;-)).

Lisa had mentioned in passing her love of knives, with that Mac pops in an “Oh, I’ve got a few. Do you want to see them”? A few??? Macs got more knives that an army surplus store. Knives of every shape, size and description you can imagine. One of these besties was Macs favourites a Becker C/U-7, it was bloody huge, you know in a ‘crocodile Dundee way’…”Noooow thaaats a Kniiiife”. Mac also loves to sharpen his knives; every one was sharp enough to shave with. Our Leatherman’s were in for a treat.

Mac was now on a roll and before long we were being introduced to the other side of pastor Mac. Mac’s been an outdoor survival enthusiast for years. In truth he’s not so much an enthusiast but more an expert and a mind of information. Lisa was in her element. We ended up spending hours talking with Mac about how to survive almost any scenario.

I left Mac and Lisa deep in conversation and spent the afternoon with diary and photos on the laptop.

We’d planned to make a move today and get on the road, but after a morning ‘power breakfast’ with Mac and Patty and a long chat about sponsorship and how incredibly difficult it is to get, we’ve spent the entire day going through approxiamatley 3,500 photos and selecting images to email back to sponsors and potential sponsors. It really was a mammoth job and if we’re honest one we’d been putting off a little. By late afternoon and with countless new folders added to the ‘desktop’ we were finally done. The next job was to create thumbnails of all the images to email, allowing our sponsors and would be supporters to choose the ones that work best for them. With each ‘normal’ image taking up 1.5MB emailing these would have been impossible.

Mac and Lisa are still chatting away about averything from good South American Maps and the lack thereof to weapanary. “So what do you do for fun back home” I asked Mac a little casually (Macs famly are from Pennsalvannia, USA.). I was expecting you know, the normal…golf, movies, gardening. I should have known better. Mac also loves guns. This was just great, I was smiling from ear to ear and back again as Mac, with a glint in his eye, enthusiastically talks about getting 500 rounds of automatic ammunition, hiking up to the strip mine back home and lining up for afternoon target practise.

Now I know nothing about weapons, but since a kid I’d always fancied shooting a bow and arrow. Just one of those cool kid things, I’d never done. “Why didn’t you say earlier”, Mac spurted. Shocked by my lack of basic, ‘normal’ childhood experience. “You mean you’ve never shot one”? “Er, nope, never have” I explained. “Well I’ve got a professionally set up bow kit here, it’sa 58 lb Hoyt Take-down recurve. “it was a present from my brother”, Mac explained. If you want we can go into the back graden and shoot it tomorrow before you leave”. The offer was fantastic. I had no idea what a 58 lb Hoyt Take-down recurve’ was but it sounded impressive. I was still a little surprised about Mac’s bow, but c’mon, I should have seen that one coming. I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture of this bow kit. The large dark grey military metal hinged case opened up, like something from ‘Mission Impossible’. Inside and on one-side the bow in three separate pieces, ready to be quickly and expertly assembled and on the other side line up and packed into foam padding, 24 leathal looking arrows and at the bottom a collection of ‘Mad Max’ arrow heads. “Mac is there any kind of lethal weaponry you don’t have”? Mac’s grin said it all. Funny, jump on a motorbike and ride a few continets…you meet the most amazing people!

Umm, yeah…the afternoon was to get even more surreal, but what a bloody good one. I swear I’m not making this stuff up.
Lisa, Mac and I are talking weapons, Christian Idealogy, knives, missionary work and…stuff. Lisa wants to know how to throw a knife. Mac pipes up explaing that he’s not practised that discipline for a while, but he’s getting pretty handy with a…’Machete’. You’ve got to be kidding. “What…you been practising throwing a maschete”, I asked, just a little surprised. Mac explained that after a pretty exhaustive internet search on Maschete thrtowing and technique, he’d turned up nothing, absolutely nada, zero. Well if no-one else is doing it, he thought he’d give it a try. He’s getting pretty good at it to.

So yep, you guessed it we spent the afternnon learning how to throw a mashete, or as Mac calls it…”playing red-kneck lawn darts”.

By 8:30am we’re in Mac and Patty’s back garden shooting arrows from Mac high velocity bow. It was going to end in tears…mostly tears from Mac laughing hard enough to burst…at me. So there I am, all lined with the bow in my outstretched hand and arrow in my drawn right hand ready to let fly. The thick leather skin guard is straped around my left wrist and all in all I’m feeling pretty darn ‘robin hood’. With a simple release of the high tensile bow string, the arrows released and seconds later I’m rolling on the ground whincing from the agony my left arms in. The same thing happened on my second attempt to. By this time Mac's practically wetting himself. It tuns out that, based on Macs ‘so called’ expert opnion, that from all the motorcycling, I’ve gained over-developed muscles in my formearms and that as the bow string released the string whips past my inside forearm or as Mac calls them…my over-develped el-boobs??? After the second shot my inside forearm was bruised black. “It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anyone get hit that high up” Mac gasped in between laughing fits. That was helping, but neither had the leather skin guard. Mac insist that the leather protective skin guard was designed to protect humans of normal physiology. Lesson learnt…I’ll stick to maschete throwing.

It was time to leave and so with our knives sharpened, Mac’s bow stowed away and with my newly acquired 14 inch maschete tucked into a pannier (thanks Mac) we hugged our goodbyes. Patty and Mac had opened their doors to us as strangers and had become good friends. I’ll now we’ll stay in touch.

To Patty, Mac, Erin, Karina & Daniel a big thank you.

Our route out of Bela Horizonte was found easily enough. We left on the MG020 going towards Santa Luzia. We passed through what we think must be some of the poorest areas around Belo. The glaring stares we were receiving really hammering home to us how out of place we looked. Carrying on up to Jabocticatubas (what a great name!) we headed off the tar, which had been in fairly good condition and were soon blatting along the secondary roads before reaching the MG010. To be back on dirt again was great – there we were bouncing and shuddering across whatever lay in our path and loving it. We’d both missed this…hang on let me rephrase ‘cause that just sound overly romantic, we’ve missed most of it. The endless kilometrs of hard packed corrugations we still hate and the tracks here have planty of them.

The Parque Nacional Da Serra do Cipo was calling with its thick forsted areas, waterfalls and secret caves. We weren’t going to be sight seeing but the chance to ride through the area wasn’t to be missed…beautiful. The roads here seem to have been made for the off-raod motorcyclists – in fact many of these dirt and secondary roads seem to be. Challenging but not impassable, rewarding without being out right exhausting. All the cambers go the right way – the bends are just the right tightness for a good speed around them. The red dirt track led us all the way to Serro a small town just before Diamantina.

As we headed futher North the track became more testing, as if it has heard our earlier playful ramblings and thought “right I’ll test you further”. The small villages of Conceição do Mato Dentro, and Alvorada de Minas, came and went, with the short ‘spats’ of tar and cobblestones through their centres giving us momentary respite from the standing position which had become todays norm. The bright red dust which hung in the air was clinging to our sweat stained riding suits, creating darker red patches in all the wrong places. We were finding this harder than we should. Its been a while since we’ve done any real dirt road and the physical and mental effort was beginning to take it’s toll…we were tiring quickly. Standing on the pegs for most of the day was taking its toll and calves were beginning to cramp. Sitting wasn’t an option as we crested the countless steep uphill sections, each one made all the harder for it’s loose rock or thick red dust covering disguising the patchy solid rock outcrops that would catch the bottom of the bikes, burdened with all our kit.

The longer flat sections weren’t being kind, with the spine crushing corrugations stretching from left to right. We’d learnt from our African experience that corrugations give you only two choices; stay above 60mph or below 10mph, anything in between is just going to be nasty. We opted for the faster and were now skimming the top of the seemingly endless corrugation set (a quick warning; the speed makes the ride less jarring but take care, with your wheels only skimming the surface of the corrugation your steering become horribly light. Your concentration and interpretation of what lies ahead must be spot on) occasioanly having the handle bars spitefully snatched from our grasp as the front wheels get sucked into one of the 3-4 inch deep crevasses, created form wetter times and now dried out solid. This was making for tiring riding and the bikes were feeling heavier by the mile.

By the end of the day we were covered from head to foot. The days earlier sweat and dust stained stains had becomeone. We were covered – our lovely clean suits now just red dust!

The light was begining to fade – this route had taken us longer than we’d expected and so with dusk setting in our dark visors were flipped up. The dust laden air was already stinging our eyes. Watery pupils are hardto se through. In our ignorance this morning we’d not got our goggles out. We’d simply not realised how far the dirt went. On the upside…we were now ‘complete’…our faces were the same stained red as the rest of us.

When we arrived in Diamantina we must have looked like bloody aliens.

The bemused petrol station attendants at the BR station on the outskirts of town, had gone into a huddle and 2 minutes later confirmed that there was camping. The fact that 3 of them were now arguing as to which direction it was in wasn’t helping. But then again asking for directions to anything in Brazil is a lottery anyway. Ask anyone for anywhere and 9 times out of 10 you’ll get the same answer…”it’s not very far, you just go down here, straight on in this direction and then you get there…its close”! You could ask for directions to Mars and I’m willing to bet you’d get the same answer.

Well, anyway after riding for another 20 minutes we’d seen no sign of camping. So, heading back into the small centre of Diamantina we were directed to a cheap Pousada right in the main square of this old colonial town. ….the Lonely Planet book states that this town has changed little in over 200 years – well apart from the BR petrol station right in the main square – we’d have to agree. Horses and carts are still the main form of transport…however there is an abundance of small Hondas zipping in and out the huge cobble-stoned streets. We were knackered and needed to stop.
Parked up heavey limbs climbed of the bikes, the crowd of interested locals was already growing just as it had whilst travelling thorugh African villages. We had thought that with apparetnely so many motor cyclists riding through South America that we’d not be ‘that’ strange to see – but so far this doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe we just choose a different route to the ususal….?

The countryside we’d ridden through today was inspiring – huge rocky outcrops – bright red earth contrasting with the brilliant green trees - was just what we’d wanted to see of the ‘real’ Brasil. We’d covered over 400km mostly off road.
The Pousada was clean and full of friendly Brazilians, thankful for the entertainment (that was us!) – at only t $R30 (Reals) for the room it was the same cost as the camping we’d beenusng and this included breakfast.

With the bikes tucked up in an underground gargage we went in search of sustinance (ie chopp) after finding a small bar just over the road we relaxed and enjoyed talking aobut the ride. Hunger then got the better of us and just around the corner we found another bar/churrascaria (bbq’d meat) and ate the most huge piece of meat cooked to perfection with a type of Russian salad and chips cooked in coconut oil (apparentley very healthy and they taste so good) and chopp, all for $R22 (£5) for the both of us!

We managed to leave Diamantina at 8:30 – after many requests for photos using their mobile phone cameras! (these days most people seem to have mobile phones despite usually not having any other type of modern ameinites)

The road BR367 took us once again through many small villages and today we wanted to stay on the asphalt as much as possible as we needed to cover some miles. This road was great, once again, hardly any traffic and rolling corners through a slightly more barren countryside which remainded us a little of Tanzania. However, we didn’t seem to be getting much nearer to Aracuai as the road twised through the rolling hills, doubling back on itself many times.

After reaching Mina Novas the asphalt stopped and we turned once more onto the red dirt. Initially It does look like they are aiming to’improve’ this road and widen and asphalt it as work was going on in the first few miles….and the very kind workmen were making sure they were keeping the dust down by wetting the road – unfortunaltye this just makes it a mud bath in which I decided to place my bike after just httine the slime and loosing all all abilbiy to correct the direction of the bike – I slide slowly to the side and elegantly stepped off the bike as it decided to gracefully put itself down in the mud. My clean suit is now even dirtier….Simon says it looks like Ive had an ‘accident’ with my bodily functions!!
However, after this first mud bath the majority or the ‘road’ is very bad rock and dired mud rivlets.
We were very tired after yesterdays riding – we have become soft over the last 6 months!!! And this off road section seemed to go on forever. With many very steep uphill sections where the bikes jumped from rock to rivlet our triceps and back muscles ached. Sitting down was not an option as we needed all the control we could get.

Simon’s bike also decided to stop – the fuel tank electrical connection had broken. So with 20 mins in the baking sun we fixed it. So far the 650gs has been great on the whole trip – it accepts any type of ‘shit’ fuel and bounces across most terrains with no problem despite being fully laden with the only major problem being the broken rear shock in Uganda.

Just before Aracuai the tar started again but now the day had run on. Hitting the main road we decided to ‘put our foot down’ and reach Vitória da Conquista by dusk and look once again for a cheap pousada as camping around these areas doesn’t seem to be an option.

Luckily the road up was farily straight and would have been boring had it not been for the lorries entertaining us! We had to use all our concentration in order not to be another Brazilian road death statistic! These lorries are out to get you!

I think we must have seen two major accidents with many more just avoided at the last minute. These lorries are thrown around corners at break-neck speed and attack you on your side of the road as they slide sideways and miss you by inches! Inbetween this they swerve violently as they try to avoid the huge potholes in the road ……and usually you are just overtaking as they decided to do this. So you end up being squashed into the dirt on the other side of the road and once again on a fully laden bike at speed this time – this is not ‘nice’. The other problems are when the lorries on the other side deiced that you are ‘just a motorbike’ (motorbikes here are a lower priority than pedestrians and that’s saying something!) and they head straight towards you playing chicken on your side of the road and they are not going slowly either and, most of the time, right at the last moment they pull back in but sometimes they don’t’ and push you once again into the dirt on the side of the road. This happens with much swearing and gesticulations from us.
The car drivers are again something else – they must, must, absolutely must get by you! Despite the fact that you then have to overtake them as they struggle to get up the next hill they have this all consuming burning desire that there must be nothing in front of them!? To do this they follow you too closely – usually just a few inches from your back tyre – and this can cause a few missed heart beats as we swerve to avoid the huge potholes they also swever in the other direction and end up alongside you whilst the lorry inforont of you is slamming on his brakes in order to avoid also hitting the potholes at breakneck speed and the other lorry that is on a head-on collision course with them.

We arrived in Aracuai at dusk and with the help of a small Honda shop found a Pousada at $R30.

On the road and the weather was heating up, it ws only 9:00am.

That was a tiring day, well metally anyway. No clever words, we just spent the day playing ‘leap frog lorry’ and ‘dodge the potholes’, it was like being back in Mozambique. We lost count of the number of times we fell into one of these sodding crater sized holes and felt the bike thump hard, when all the suspension had been used up and the bike bottomed out. The trucks behind were gettingto close for comfort and the trucks in front were making it impossible to pick a route round the holes. In some sections the road had given up all hope of being…a road and the dirt and rock took over. There were holes that a lunar landing vehicle could have touched down.

By the end of the day we were happy to be off the bikes.

By late afternoon we were reaching the outskirts of Jequei and for once decided not to push our luck and go further. The Pousada on the corner looked reasonable and at $R 30 (£7.50) for a double room with breakfast seemed a bargain. Based on the scraping sound of metal on metal yesterday coming from my rear brakes, I knew they needed changing.

By 6pm we’d unloaded the bikes made a few friends and I’d managed to blagg a ride into town in search of new pads. The problem was that as soon as you mention that the pads are for a BMW the bike guys just shake their heads and don’t bother to investigate further. Eventually the ain Honda dealership thought they’d found a solution. A set of Honds Moto-cross pads thet if filed down might fit. Yeah, OK I thought, not pretty but it could work. That idea lasted about 2 seconds once they’d givenme the cost of a singular pad (yep here they sell the pads as single items), wait for it…$R187.00 per pad, that’s almost £50 for a pad. That just wasn’t going to happen. With a bit of hunting we found a pair of ‘Fisher’ non-genuine ones for $R16 a set. For $R16 I was willing to risk the ‘filling’ idea not working. Guess what…it didn’t.