After a short while on the road we were desperately thirsty and Simon’s throttle was sticking…again. He needed to work on it and try this time to get it sorted. The small roadside café on the right would serve as lunchtime pit-stop and garage in one.

The small and local bar/café treated us, as usual, like the visiting aliens, until two other Brazilian bikers stopped. This took the limelight off us and was a welcome relief. After taking apart the throttle for about the 4th time Simon got to chatting to the other bikers in his Portu-Spanglish and they advised us that the main road – BR 222 – was in a teriible state and had holes big enough to swallow minivans and so gave a better route across to Urajaba via Itapipoca. This road was great and smooth with hardly any traffic but took us quite a way out of our way. And so, once again, we arrived at our destination, Ubajara, in the dark!

Now here we knew that there was no camping and so found Pousada Nebina which had rooms for 60 Reals – more expensive than we’d like to pay but they were good and clean and so very close to the National Park – only a 5 min walk.

We’d left the small hard packed track only metres earlier and already we were immersed in a shady, dark green gloom. Dapled light broke through occasioaly and was eaten by the foliage immediately. This was the Brazil we’d come to see. Narled and curled bark protected oddly shaped trees like layered armour. Impossibly large palms leaves lay lazily across what we best guessed was our route through. This was fantastic. 3 hours on and not a human sound could be heard, just the bussing, squaking timeless sounds of the jungle inhabitants.

Orange bellied monkeys chased one another just out of camera range, whilst unseen birds made oddly electronic calls to each other in the sun touched canopies high above our heads. The long twisted vines (or ‘dangly bits’ as Lisa called them) that hung from the branches just made the scene.
6 Hours on and we’d waked to the cave mouth tested the locked gate and walked the steep jungle covered hillside back to Neblina. What a wonderful day.

This evening we found out it was indeed Monday……we’d lost a day somewhere along the road…oopps…sorry guide books!!

After our walk down yesterday we decided to do the sensible thing and take the freakily step cable car down to the entrance of the caves. And so after the short 5 minute walk from Pousada Neblina we’d paid our 2 Reals each for entry and were grasping our scrappy tickets for the cable car. “How often do you reckon they service this cable car”, I asked Lisa. “Do you think they service it”, she replied with a wry grin. “I hope so; it’s a bloody long way down”.

The fact that the cable operator was now in the car with us made me feel better. Well, I thought if we’re going to die in a horrific cable car accident at least we’re taking one of them with us.

At the bizzarely dark entrance to the caves the cable guy mumbled something in Portugeuse and left. We’ve visited a few caves in Europe and this experience was nothing like them and if we’re honest this was better. The caves weren’t lit. There was no one else here. “OK, do you think we should go in”? Lisa asked. “Well, we here and we can’t just stand here all day”. Luckily I’d found my mini Mag light in my pocket and by some miracle it had charged batteries in. With our heads tucked down we made our way into the eary dank gloom. Some 30 mintes later and we were deep inside the caves and wondering if either of us had been paying enough attention to remember which of the labrynth of oddly shaped tunnels took us out. It was spooky. Absolute pitch black. You could feel the appresive walls and the weight of the rock above us. Huge caverns opened up and then disappeared immediately as the torch beam was wielded elsewhere.

Small voices echoed through the honeycombed chambers and off to our left a small dimlight could be made out. Other visitors had come down and a few lights had been flicked on.

Our dark alone and exciting time in the caves had come to an end. Mind you the fact that there was only two other people in here made the underground journey memorable. The caves we’ve visited before in Europe have been beautiful, but when you’re trundling behind a queue of 30 other people all ‘oowing and ahhin’ it kind of looses it magic and becomes just another disney ride. This had been real. The thousands of bats fighting for space in the upper chambers confirmed the fact. With the tripod and a slow shutter speed I’d managed to capture just a small part of the feeling.

Back at the cave mouth we winced and strong light stung our eyes and pupils slowly adjusted. That was cool!

The afternoon was spent checking over kit and writing up diary. I also managed to start on the web gallery.

We weren’t going to take any chances with the distance and time today and so even though we’d planed to go no further than a 100 or so km’s we hauled ourselves out of bed, resisted smashing the mobile phone, which had woken us and loaded the bikes after downing a few cups of black morning wakeup juice.

Brazillian miles (km) are funny things and just seem to be longer than everyone elses. The days seems to take 3-4 hours more than they should and the short day and early arrival we’d palnned turns out to be a long day with a desperate rush to find camping or accommodation before the daylight says adios and we’re left scrabbling around like amateurs in the dark.

The ‘222’ was long and straight out of Ubajara and should have provided very few highlights, ah but this is Brazil and there’s a surprise around every corner. OK, the fact that we’re on a straight road with no corners, admittedly made that analogy pretty crappy, but that didn’t stop us being surprised when on a perfectly straight road we’re faced with a huge overturned fuel tanker, recently flipped and now spewing its contents all over the road. We haven’t a clue how it had happened but we’ve learnt in Brazil that almost anything is possible.

The large black vultures sqwabling over the spilled and rotting vegetation on the side of the road gave us reason to stop take a few photos and down some water. The heat over the last 2 weeks has been steadily creeping up. At a guess I’d say today was easing its way towards the 40’s and humid. We need to drink more water.

We were looking for signs for National Park, ‘Nacional Parque Sete Cidades’ (the seven cities). The first sign proudly advertised the park at 20km and the second sign promised it was now only 24km to go? The turning finally pitched up 46km later and we turned off the tar onto the sandy track down to the main gate.

With rock hard tyres (road ready) the sandy track snatched at our front wheels. The track was simple enough but was taking more concentration than it should.

We’d found another rarity…camping. With the tent thrown up and our bags thrown inside, we tided up our bike boots in the black dustbin liners we’d been carrying since evicting the ants nest from my right boot in Priaia das Galinhas - and made our way to the small outside bar area. We needed more water.

It was mere minutes when the 3 large iguanas that had been creeping around in the trees, had spotted the ‘newbies’ and decided to come say hi. The camera was snapping away for the next 30 minutes. The appearance of a young and very brazen Makak monkey simply extended the photo shoot for another 30 minutes until the camera ‘beeped’…card full!

This little guy was wild but obviously accustomed to being the star of the hour. He was all over Lisa, fascinated by her head and glasses. The photo I snapped of him close up was on just one of the encounters when he simply had to hold and crawl all over the fuji ‘FinePix’.

OK, so far nothing adranelin pumping about the day? We spent the evening putting together our long (long, long) awaited gallery on the laptop having a bite to eat, meat soup and chips and getting to know a little more about our surroundings.

‘Bedy byes’ time. The walk back to the tent through the leaves and shortburnt grass was 100m. With our head torches on we made our way out of the light of the bar and into a different world, one where we are the visitors and possibly the appetizer. The ground was alive. Millions of large black ants trod the same worn and weary path to and fro and the dry leaves seemed to shimmer with movement. We nervously took exaggerated high steps across the scrub. The black night seemed to shroud in from behind us and the ground we trod shimmered and vibrated angrily. I stopped to watch the black-brown vole ease his fat body down the impossibly small hole. Hang on a minute, voles don’t have 6 legs…’Oh, SHIT’, I recoiled immediately. “Lisa come here quick”. It’s a ‘fcuking tarantula. Our bravery lasted about 20 seconds and with a cursery viewing done and more slithering from the dark ground around us we headed for the tent and sanctuary.

After more than a little excited conversation about the sighting of our new hairy neighbour we turned off the lights and tried to get comfy in the sticky air.

‘Scratch, crawl, creep, scratch…scurry’? “Lisa, is that noise you”? “Uh, what noise…I was almost asleep”! ‘Scratch, crawl, creep, scratch…scurry’. That noise. The bright nearly full moon was silhouting the shapes that were crawling over the canvas of the tent. The ‘Scratch, crawl, creep, scratch…scurry’ was coming from the large dark shape that was now in the middle of the tent. The shape was actually inside the outer membrane and was crawling cm’s from our heads on the outer of the inner liner. “What is it”? Lisa asked a little nervously. Some time expletives are complety appropriate…’Fcuk ME’!!!! The large crab like pincers and the curled angry tail left no mistake. A scorpion as big as the palm of my hand was making its way above our heads and looking for a way in. Yeah, yeah, now the adrenalin was pumping. We urgently flashed our eyes around the tent. Had we done up all the zips securely? They looked good. 20 minuteslater and the scorpion had gone. We nervously laid back and hoped to see the morning very very soon.

We’re going to have to be very careful when packing away the tent.

Micheal (from germany) and his parents had arrived yesterday and were in the process of hiring a guide and were to save the day. It was agreed we’d (sort of) join their group and simply follow their car.

What a bizarre but wonderful place. The landscape is like nothing else we’ve seen. Formed over millions of years, the whole area was once under water, as the water receeded the landscape was the baked by the Sun forming the strange octagonal shapes we see today. Well, that’s one philosophy anyway, the other is that the whole place was once a extre terestial stronghold on earth…Mmmm? Either way pretty amazing and to be allowed to zot around the park on the bike was great. Have a look at the pictures to get a better idea. They’ll do the place more justice than my dodgy descriptives.

It must have been 40° today. On the bike the hot air was buring exposed skin like riding through a giant oven.

By mid afternoon we made our way back to the camp site in the hope of packing up ready to leave tomorrow and get a fews hours worth of web gallery and dairy done. The first 30 minutes back didn’tgo to plan? The cheeky little Makak monkey from yesterday decided to take a real liking for Lisa and was all over her. If she moved away he would take a literal flying leap. There was no escape.

Our scorpion friend didn’t make a return trip and to be honest we’re kinda’ glad.