Day 34 - The Long Road East to Campo Largo

Trucks, trucks and more trucks to pass, and to avoid.

We were heading due east towards Rio de Janeiro, with our stopover being at a town called Campo Largo (a large field it means). Over 620 km of good road and driving that required the most care and judgement, was required. The Brazilian roads are in far better state than the Argentinian ones, with few potholes or gravel sections. The challenge is that this is the main road west and south to the productive areas of Brazil for agriculture and the area looked much like country NSW with the rolling hills and green in every direction. There were also huge factories for grain processing and others for poultry management. 

We road sections with stops for coffee and lunch. Lunch today was "included" that is paid for by Compass as part of our deal, but I was not aware of that and chose a light sandwich at our stop, which I am actually glad I did as I wanted to keep the quantity of food manageable. There is plenty of food available in Argentina and Brazil, but overall it is pretty average - never cordon bleu!

We rode sections of 140km and one of 212 km, but these are manageable given the higher quality of the road. In some sections there were passing lanes and even double carriageway for sections, but in those areas where this did not apply, it was slow with hundreds of trucks. The challenge is to pass them safely, especially where there are two, three or more in a row. This requires a long straight road or a risky manoeuvre that may require a quick pull-in between vehicles - easier on a bike, but still more risky riding, especially if you are tired. I was glad of all the stops for coffee and fuel, as this gave us good time to recover our attention. 

At two sections, there were road workers cutting grass or repairing the broken fencing barriers, and the queues were about five kilometres long - we overtook, undertook and lane split to get to the front of the queues regularly, although I have no idea how Willy managed this in the van, but he was rarely more than ten minutes behind us.  

Tomorrow we reach the coast.