The Brazil 101: Roadwork for the Next Forever

FLORIANOPOLIS, BRAZIL -- The fine country of Brazil is apparently slamming down a superhighway, engorging any remaining two-lane road into four and any four-laner into something more. It's a superb idea considering Brazil, with it's eighth-largest economy, has been self-sufficient in it's fuel production made mostly from alcohol for some time now. Except that the project is only halfway there. Once done, the BR 101 is much like the US 101: It hugs the coast and it's a main artery connecting oodles of ports. Serious. Oodles. But it's a main artery plauged with the plaque of roadwork and trucking traffic everywhere. More shades of trip, less of a vacation and I do love a challenge. So the pace of remaining journey (seen here in whole) has bogged down though perhaps deservedly. We are, after all, your type of tourists that other countries loathe. We buy simple groceries in supermarkets and purify water from clear streams. We ride around on the most economical motorcycles possible. We camp in fields without the farmers knowing. And when one headlamp's batteries will die, we'll prop the other just precisely so both can read from the same bulb. Congested traffic and perpetual roadwork be damned. Day by day we're striking through portions of the remaining road. We cut today short to relax and sink into some turquoise ocean. . . . It's also extraordinarily curious seeing Christmas decorations hanging in a feverish heat.