Lara Buechmann and Hannes Gohli - November 1st

Lara and I have just been assigned the task of reporting for you  parents and friends how our trip is unfolding. We will be trying to explain to you how we feel during this first day of November - what we have been up to and who we have met.

We hope you enjoy our stories and photos of this wonderfully, sunny day.

We woke up to a full red sun giving us two sitting at the front of the bus quite the sight to wake up to. It was a welcoming sight, as the night before had been a pretty rough one. A mixture of excitement and bumpy roads had kept us from a good night sleep.

Still, the anticipation of meeting new people and seeing new places has wiped the sleep from our eyes only one hour after waking up.

We just stopped in Aracatuba to pick up the next bunch of exchange-students, which has more than doubled our number from 13 that set off from Belo Horizonte yesterday afternoon, to 28 today.

Well, so far. We just stopped under a bridge to pick two more exchange students. As Hannes already wrote, the sight we can enjoy here in the front of the bus is awesome. We are driving through a very plain part of the country and to each side of us we can see the horizon – many kilometers away from us. There are many fields, forests, cows, horses – and the road, which clearly had seen better days.

Alright, so we just had our first proper stop of the day, where we picked up another couple of exchange students. Our group is growing in nationalities from Colombia to Thailand. There must be about 20 different nationalities all in all. Germany has the most representatives with 18 people. On the stop we got to know each other more. There are a lot of interesting characters and cultures in the group. Oh My god, two parrots just flew across the road in front of our bus.

It is almost impossible to describe this feeling – you are just sitting in the bus, trying to concentrate on your journal when two birds are passing and you recognize them, take a second view – and see: they are not only birds – they are wild parrots! THAT IS AWESOME!!!

So far we set our watches one hour back, it is now 5:30 pm. Six other exchange students joined the group and we have had lunch. McDonalds -  Jerry and another few guys walked through the Drive Through. There we met the other bus, which started in Cascavel yesterday. Now our group is completed and we are going straight to Pantanal.

Inside of the bus it is very hot, but if you leave it you will die of sweat. I really do not want to know how many degrees there are outside of our “house”.

We just had our last stop before our , by now with pleasure and longing, awaited stop at the hotel for a couple of nights. I just spoke with Jerry, our American chaperone, who informed me of the reason why we had a pretty major stop some time during the morning. Apparently we had an oil leak, which they kept pretty quite. However, our driver ingeniously solved the problem by stuffing a stick in the hole and fixing it with poxy. I furthermore discovered that we were once quite lost in one of the cities we picked some exchange students up in. So there have been some complications during the trip, that thankfully we resolved. Let us hope this trip continues to be under the lucky star it has been so far.

We are now on our last stretch of road surrounded by swamps and small trees. The countryside has very much changed over the course of our trip. Excited to see what is round the next bend.

                                                                                                        

The sun has already set and the full moon has risen, everything else around is dark. The time is 7:50 pm and a few minutes ago we killed a little alligator on the road. There are around 20 to 30 km left until we have to change the bus to drive the last 40km of dirt road to our hotel.

We have now finally arrived after 27 hours of intense, sweaty and yet exciting travel on the road from Belo Horizonte to Pantanal. The hotel is small, but quite wonderful. It has a swimming pool and is surrounded by two perfectly round lakes. We can not see much of them right now, as it is dark, but I am sure we will enjoy and appreciate the beauty and tranquility these waters have to offer.