Adventuring

I am going on an adventure!


Tomorrow morning, I am leaving on a four or five day adventure to the interiorzão of the States of Paraiba and Rio Grande do Norte to visit four projects that we supported in the last few years. It's an epic journey involving a couple of thousand kilometres [that's a lot for Brazilian roads!] and hotels that cost less than CAN$10 a night! I'll start off in Bayeux, a suburb of João Pessoa, then head waaaaay into the sertão - back, hinter or drylands - to the community of Curralinhos near the city of Sousa. From there, I'll head north to Triungo Potiguar, found only on the most detailed of maps, and then further north to Mossoró. After Mossoró, I'll head back to Recife via Natal.

The cool thing is that there are some pretty neat rest stops that I can make on the way. Near João Pessoa is the eastern-most point in the Americas, where the sun rises first. Although I won't be there for sunrise [that would be cool], it would still be fun to stop and wave to Africa!

Sousa, on the other hand, is home to one of the most important palaeontological sites in the world - the Valley of the Dinosaurs - the pièce de resistance of which are the metres and metres of petrified dinosaur footprints. Overall, the region contains the immortalised footprints of over fifty different types of dinosaurs. I have cleverly scheduled a break right around the time when we should be near the site....

And lastly, but definitely not leastly, near the town of Apodi, on the way to Mossoró, is the archaeological site of Lajedo de Soledade which is home to cave paintings estimated to be between three and ten thousand years old. I'm rather pleased that I will be able to stop both here and in Sousa. Since these places are so distant and isolated, it is hard to think that I would have made the trip just to spend an hour or two at the sites. However, if I happen to be in the neighbourhood in any case, it just makes sense!

Initially, the trip was going to be even more adventurous, as I was going to do it by bus. However, after intense research into the bus schedules and routes, we discovered that this would, perhaps, be a bit too adventurous as some of the time would have been spent on the back of flatbed trucks and the like! I've travelled on the back of flatbed trucks before, but thought that this maybe wasn't the moment to do it! So ... car it is, plus the added opportunity to tack on the side visits.

Até logo!