Peru-Brazil 2013 – Day 36 – Another long travel day

We dutifully woke up early, and drove at a steady pace through beautiful country, including an area devoted to the growing of sugar cane and its conversion to ethanol fuel. Incidentally, our Silver Bullet runs on either gasoline or ethanol, and we have been using the latter because it is cheaper.

We also drove through hills and hills covered by very orderly coffee plantations. They grow the coffee in tight rows, with the plants being trimmed to be no taller than a man, and to judge for the planted area the output of coffee must be enormous.

But even though we drove at a steady pace it took us until after nightfall to go the 700 km to Belo Horizonte, which we reached at peak traffic hour. It is Brazil third largest city, so you can well imagine the traffic that Annie had to contend with. Once in downtown I took the wheel, and with the help of a couple good Samaritans, and a ton of good luck, managed to navigate to the rather obscure location of our hostel. It is a brand new hostel, opened in 2012, at the place of a mansion high in the hills. We have a small apartment with bathroom, and had a nice dinner of spaghetti and tomato sauce that Annie had been craving.