Leaving Brazil

At dawn, I opened my eyes and the blue sky was right there. We are in a fantastic road. The sun was shinning severe over the chain moutains which surrounded a small village named Anastacio e Aquidauana. The next stopped was in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso's Capital. The temperature was around 35ºC and the lack of wind became that worst. We got more one village called Miranda which looked like Pantanal with its flooded landscapes and a specific local handicraft like straw baskets, stuffed piranhas fish and alligator leather... afterthought this is not so cool. The road is very cool, without hole and very well signed. We're travelling by Andorinhas company in a conventional bus with air conditioning and reclining chair that we bought for the tickets R$179 (Sao Paulo to Puerto Soares). Here there's no mountains, only straight roads and occasionally we could see different kinds of animals during the path like "Siriema", a kind of ostrich but quite small, a group of herons and gooses with red necks. The landscape near Corumbá was getting mountainous with huge and plane rocks surfaces on its tops and at 3p.m. we got in Corumba, our first and last destiny on brazilian lands. In the bus station we went at Indiana Tour to collect our train tickets to Santa Cruz de La Sierra where we met Daniel who owed me R$40 by the tickets bought in advance. As expected, he didn't give me back the money because his boss was travelling to Swiss. Now, tell me. What do I had with that? Alright then. Let's talk about Corumba... Corumba is a friendly town, very looked like a country village. There are rare buildings, signs written in Spanish and Portuguese and a mix of races as indian, black and white people. We arrived at the bolivian border and while we're awaiting our time in line, we met Marcelo, a funny guy from Curitiba very seemed like Summer, a little bit distract kkkk. We'd all take our DNIs to finally get into Bolivia. So, the federal agent gave us formularies to fill in. While I was reading the previous warnings from the formulary: "Careful to not fill wrong!" I heard Summer speaking behind me, - fuck, I did wrong! kkkkk the guys start laughing too and the police office room got a mess! Afterwards, as we were with heavy bags, we started to look for a cab when the guys from Curitiba give us a ride . They were in a small van travelling since Curitiba until there and they would go until Machu Picchu as the final distiny. On the other side of the border, the name of the town changed to Puerto Quijarro. And then we stayed, right in front at the Puerto Quijarro railway for leaving our stuff and give a break. First of all we would need to change money in a good place and we choose the other side of the street, where many women under sunshades exchange money. First, we change only U$40 by bolivians with taxes of 6,90 per bolivian (we had consulted the taxes for Puerto Quijarro and we could get up to bol./7,20 per dollar, but it was alright. We looked for several hotels in a town but anyone had good prices considering quality, then we decided to came back to the railway to take a shower. We were travelling for about one day and a half with bags and no shower. We paid bol./5,00 each one for a cold shower and it worthed every single cent considering that unbearable hot weather. We met Loida and Maria Kenia, two bolivian children very likable who introduced me some words in spanish when Summer was taking shower. "Lunar" (mole) and "pitillero" (like a homeless dog. Actually, pitillero is related as people that use ilegal substances and live in the street. Rs). After the shower, Summer and I went to an unsophisticated restaurant for having lunch. We ate fried meat recovered with a twist egg, rice, beans, cooked potatoes and vegetables with "tubaína", a kind of soda and we only paid for this bol./15,00 at all. We leave the restaurant for drinking some beers while await by the train. It was a calm afternoom, hot but interesting because we sat in front at the street just to watch people hanging around. We got at the train station at six, in this month, here in Puerto Quijarro it's two hours earlier than Sao Paulo and we boarded at seven o'clock on the "Death Train", towards Santa Cruz de La Sierra. Before the train leave, my first impressions about the train was great, quiet, spacious and cosy. Another beautiful evening was coming, an amazing sunset wishing us a good trip and we couldn't ask for anything else. Suddenly, the train started moving (if I can say "moving" instead of "shaking" and all those cosy things disapeared as magic. They put to play a terrible DVD of Tcham and the worst brazilian musics like Calypso and so on (an important detail: all played in loud volume!!!). When you thing that a thing can't be worse, be careful, it can change quickly. Well, I mean the train started shaking, shaking and shaking a little bit more when we realized that wouldn't be possible to sleep in a place like that. Later, we could only pray for not throwing up or even die. And there's more! There was on-boarding service! In the middle of such situation, could anyone tell me how would it be possible? Imagine you that we barely could get in the same place, what would we say about the food? Anyway, the food arrived! Food? Which food? It was a hard meat steak that I even broke my little plastic fork trying to split its. Rice, salad and water. Yes, water falling over people, meats flying, forks been thrown by the child, I remember one meal falling down on the floor and people passing to go to the restroom... Don't forget to mix all this things with the loud "Axe" music, shaking and a dangerous path.

It was all horrible but at least we laughted all the time.

The dinner was over, but the DVD wasn't. They decided of this time to play an bolivian movie of a nun which, dispite of funny, the movie stopped all the time.

One thing is nice, when you are extremely tired, nothing can damage your rest.

¡El gran día!

Mis amigos y yo, en verdad, no bien amigos pero sí, exploradores como yo que buscan nuevos desafíos para recorrer. Logramos un coche amplio, decíamos que era, como un autocar de empresas, aquéllos con ventilación y equipados con televisión. Bueno, salimos temprano de Santiago y nos ponemos en la ruta, por cerca de ocho horas más o menos y llegamos en la ciudadecita, o una villa de pescadores que era conocida como "Villarica". Allá, la primera cosa que nos detenía la visión era la alta cumbre nevada de la montaña que le ponían el nombre de "El cráter de la muerte" pues, hasta aquel momento, ningún hombre jamás se puso a escalarla por completo. Entonces sería nuestra primera tentativa. Pusimos a subir la montaña, que en verdad era conocida como uno de los volcanes más activos de América del Sur. Ramón, el más lento de todos casi tendría que ser rescatado de cinco en cinco minutos. Julio era el más listo. Conducía los otros con facilidad y les enseñaba acerca del medio ambiente. Fuimos sorprendidos por una grand nevasca en la mitad del recorrido. Tuvimos que construir pequeñas casas, o "huecos" para protegernos del frío congelante que nos asolaba. Ramón, como era siempre el último, desapareció en medio a la nieve y más tarde, lo encontramos siendo comido por un oso, ¡qué mala suerte hã Ramón! Cuando se había pasado todo, contamos nuevamente las personas del grupo y nos dimos cuenta que Julio también tuviera desaparecido, pero a él, no lo encontramos todavia. Entonces sólo quedamos Pedro y yo. Y Pedro casi nunca hablaba. Qué fome. En poco tiempo nos encontrábamos a pocos minutos del cráter. Estábamos casi muertos de hambre y entonces resolvímos parar un rato. Sacamos de las mochilas pan, queso y un cafecito muy rico que doña Kikuti nos había preparado. Depois de comer, miré para el lado y percibí que Pedro, por quedarse tanto tiempo callado, tenía su boca pegada y así, más uno que se fue. Murió de hambre. Me fui dejando a Pedro y partiendo sólo, ya estaba casi en la cumbre. Cuando llegué, miré un poco más para allá y vi una cosa rara, me acerqué y para mi sorpresa era Julio, lo encontré vestido con una ropita blanca y peluda... ...una ropita de oso.