Moving along up the coast of Brazil we stay in Pousadas near the beach and meet up with and are hosted by "WOW man" Dido, the president of a local M/C group around Teixeira de Frietas. We treat he and his wife to local pizza before leaving the next morning. Rui at Ilheus is our next host with his 18 year old son as our translator! Belinda tries a Grande Caipirinha and finds it hard to lift her head off the pillow the next morning!! Further up the coast we are hosted by Herberte and his wife Nastia in Maceio who passes us on to Gildo who forwards us on to Milton Omena a veteran compulsive bike traveller, living on a beachside estate just north of Maceio.

Omena as he is known is a very gracious host and shows us most of the touristy spots and his beautiful beachfront home. Having an extra SPOT GPS tracker, we offer to buy it and are now tracking as we go, so some of you will be receiving emails as to whether we are OK or not. The SPOT service offers evacuation in case of emergencies, but strongly warn that it is not for roadside assistance.
In Recife we meet up with Tacio, another veteren m/c traveller who has a huge club house with over night accommodation amongst his grand collection of vintage motorcycles as well as a few new ones. Natal finds 3 bikers fighting over us, so we spend a lovely evening with them all and lovely "Little Duck" takes us on a grand tour of the beaches the next day!

All of these contacts were made thanks to the creation of a facebook chat group created by a wonderful, caring gentleman called Ruiter Franco, whom we never met! He called the group "Support of Belinda and Patrick bikers through Brazil" and bikers would add their friends to the group and they would invite us to stay in their home, send us their address, which we would put in our GPS and we would advise them approx when we would arrive! It was always a magical connection and they never wanted us to leave after a day or two! Amazing Brazillian hospitality and friends for life!
North of Natal is a kite and windsurf beach named San Miguel do Gostoso where we met up with our Canadian connection Karl in Nelson BC who hosts us for a few days before we head north and east past Fortaleza to another famous kite and windsurf beach named Jericoacoara. Access is only by 4WD as the town is in a national park nestled between the waves and huge sand dunes, we park the bike in a secure carpark and catch a ride in a safari looking taxi for a wild 28 km trip in deep sand.
We are now seeing temps of 38C after noon, so a cool early start makes the days ride comfortable provided we find accommodation early enough. Winds are strongly from the east and off the water as they usually are, giving us a nice cool tail wind push.
It was mid afternoon when we arrived in Sao Luis and after locating the general location of tomorrow's ferry, we head past the historical centre toward the busier beach area hoping to find a cheap pousada amongst all the highrises. While caught at the lights an older gentleman on a new Triumph Tiger pulls up beside and in very broken english asks where we are from. Australia??!! Pull over to the side. Alexander not only finds us a nice cheap hotel but offers to pick us up in his car with his wife for an evening tour to the historical centre and around the town! Well that followed by a house warming dinner party at their sons new house with many friends and relations.

It was a night of charades because of our non existent Portuguese, but we still had lots of laughs and finally retired to the hotel at midnight completely exhausted. Awesome Brazillian hospitality once again!
A month to the day of our Rio arrival, 6000kms and 6000 lombardos later we arrive in Belem, the large city on the mouth of the Amazon river we are greeted by our new hosts, family of Jose de Alencar. Unfortunately Jose was away but his lovely wife Araceli and gorgeous nephew Mattheus (we call Matty) keep us company for the next few days and help sort out the Manaus ferry boat. Matty deserves special mention for his tireless efforts entertaining us with a museum day and a botanic gardens trip with fellow biker Vinnie and untold trips back and forth to the ferry office and dock. His english was superb, we really enjoyed our time with him and Belinda had a little cry on our departure. A real shame to have missed Jose!!

Our friends Chris and Erin Ratay had a hard time in Belem because they had no support as we did, spoke no Portuguese and had to work real hard not to get totally ripped off, hence missed the ferry and had to wait a while to catch the next good ferry.
GPS coords ferry dock and terminal:
S 01 26' 38.2" W 048 29' 38.9"
Ferry agents tend to hang around the passenger terminal and the one we chose did negotiate the posted prices because of low season but did misinform us a bit. He said the bike had to be there at 8:30am so we travelled through the hell rush hour to be told the bike can't be loaded earlier than 11:00. We hung around all day waiting for boarding at 5:00pm. The agent also informed us that we had to bring our own water and that there were no fridges available on board, so we brought a 20 litre water container and styrofoam esky loaded with ice only to see a fridge in our cabin and a passenger accessible multi facetted water filter on deck! No towel is provided but bottom sheet, pillow and pillow case are. The best ferry available at the time to Manaus was the "Amazon Star" leaving each Wed and Friday for the 1650km trip and takes 5 days going and 3 returning to Belem.

Our air conditioned cabin with ensuite (needs better ventilation) overlooking the water was 900 Reals ($450 Aus) and the bike costing 500 Reals ($225Aus)
The AMAZON trip was AMAZING with no rough water, no mosquitoes and daily stops in small towns.

A good book is a must and the scenery was so serene! Meals were good and very filling with lots of rice, pasta, beans plus a variety of meat, fish and chicken at 10 reals ($4.50Aus) each. We brought our own fruit, snacks and yoghurt, but snacks and booze can be bought at the kiosk at reasonable prices (beers $1.80Aus)

Despite leaving Belem 5 hours late due to a huge last minute shipment of tomatoes, we arrive at 6:00pm at Manaus, only half an hour late. With the tomatoes blocking the bikes exit, the captain agrees to us stay another night in our cabin.

We plan another early departure in order to miss the notorious Manaus traffic and are so happy in the morning to see that the crew had offloaded the bike during the night as the boat was now 2 meters below the dock and we had no way to get the bike off. Upon exiting the harbour, security demanded a US$20 tax. We were issued a receipt so felt the request was legitimate.
The Footprint Travel guide stated that there are good pousadas 100kms north of Manaus in Presidento Figueiredo, but since it is early, we hit the tourist info office for maps and distant accommodation info. They have neither and say that the nearest pousada north is another 400kms on the other side of the Native Reserve land. Even though the book informs us that over 200 army workers were killed by poison darts while building road through in the 1970s and we are concerned that there may be lingering resentment, we decide to push on! There is no fuel for this 120kms so we fill up. We have no incidents en route and our only inconvenience was dodging potholes while in the reserve. Roads are good and fuel although sparse is normally 100kms apart with new stations being built as we passed and we cross the Equator!

Luckily we stopped at a modern Hotel-Restaurant in Rorainopolis as there wasn't any the next day til nearly Boa Vista 300kms north. Boa was a fairly large, hot town with a hotel problem. It was the 9th one that had only one room left and we were a little stressed riding around slow moving traffic at 40C! Desperation was not strong enough to try some of the seedy and dirty looking Love Motels throughout the town. Anywhere near the equator we found temps between 35C-38C and find it reasonably comfortable while on the move, but we do begin to sweat when idling through traffic searching for accommodation. Well ventilated airflow clothing is essential while riding in the tropics.
Only another 285 kms to the Venezuelan border and as we have been forewarned to get through before noon we set off early, yet again!! We have never done 400-500km/day on a regular basis, but distances are great in Brazil, beaches are awesome and the people are the friendliest we have EVER encountered!! You rock Brazil, we will recommend you to the world!