March 7-29, 2026 Travel loses its charm when flights get delayed, connections are missed, the next flight out is 3 days away, and when there is uncertainty regarding the location of my one piece of luggage, my touring bike which will be my home over the next three weeks. But we adapt, we pivot, and we are ready for the next thing that is completely out of our control.

How did I spend my time in Houston? I rested, I cranked up the heat in my hotel room to acclimatize to what I thought the temperatures might be like in Brazil, I went for walks, I tried to imagine what my daily progress would be on tour, I made a list of every town on route, I Googled them and looked at what they had to offer on Google Maps, and recorded everything in my notebook. I had time.

Arriving in Rio de Janeiro, I collected my bike, brushed off the offers for a taxi and made my way to the curb. At the edge of the terminal I unpacked my bike box, made my quick assembly and got on the road. I was on tour. Rio was about 80^o and overcast with light rain but I was doing it! After a year in anticipation, I was a part of Rio de Janeiro’s traffic.

I came home from Taiwan at the end of March, 2025. I had made a 10 day, 500 mile loop from Taipei and attended the Taipei Bike Show to work in the Clever Standard booth with Tomo and Cola. When I got back to Carson City I opened Ride with GPS (RwGPS) on my phone and put the start arrow on the International Airport in Rio, GIG, and the end box on my old neighborhood in Brasília, SQS 302. Instantly it produced a 800+ mile route with about 50/50 paved and dirt offerings. With only a few tweaks I had a route that was about 920 miles, about 85% dirt, with a ridiculous number of feet of climbing. Ok, I was willing to give this a go. In many ways I had to trust the route and trust I could pivot when I came to an impasse. There isn’t much I could do from afar. There wasn’t a contiguous heatmap from Rio to Brasília (but there is now!). There is surprisingly little touring information for Brazil.

One route that did come to my attention was the Estrada Real, as well as the Estrada Diamante. These were the historical routes used to move the gold and diamonds from central Brazil to the ports south of Rio so the goods could be shipped back to Portugal. I liken them to the Pony Express and California Trail routes in that there is the automobile tour route and the strict historical route which in Brazil’s case has been reclaimed by the jungle if not maintained. I wasn’t interested in a paved route but I also wasn’t interested in hacking my way through the jungle. The Estradas intrigue me for a future adventure. My route did touch on the Estrada Real Velho between Lima Duarte and Conceição da Barra de Minas.

I am not going to try to give a day-by-day recap of the tour. That was 15 days between Rio and Brasília, then 3 days exploring Brasília on foot and by bike. I do have daily notes, checkmarks by each town I went through, a daily log on STRAVA, RwGPS, and my Garmin Connect accounts. Everything on those accounts is public, help yourself. Instead I was to give the highlights, the good and the bad, my anticipations, concerns, and surprises. After 940 miles and 15 days of uninterrupted touring I think I have something to share. There are also regular updates on Instagram. If you have any questions or are planning a tour in Brazil please reach out. If I don’t have the answer I have some great friends who just might.

The object of the tour was to see the countryside between Rio and Brasília. I lived as a pre-teen to teenager in Brazil, 1983-1986. I moved there from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with my folks for their jobs at the Escola Americana de Brasília (Go Bulls!). My sister was living in California going to the university in San Luis Obispo. As a family we had vacations in Rio. My main memories of Rio were on the beach at Copacabana, great meals, and an apartment we rented just blocks off the beach. But everything on this tour until I arrived in Brasília was new. This was not the Brazil I got to know living there in the 80’s. I spent four days touring Brasília before flying home. That will be part 2 of this story, Seeing Brasília Again for the First Time.

What is the riding like? In any new place I feel like my focus is on learning local traffic patterns. I noticed just how mentally taxing this was in Taiwan and it held for Brazil as well. The traffic in Rio was as busy as I have ever experienced. The range in size of vehicles is the greatest. Personal vehicles are small and economical. But the trucks and buses are the biggest! And the drivers can squeeze them into the smallest roads leaving no room for a bicycle. I did have some memory of riding my BMX bike around Brasília so I did look for curbs to hop, trails through grassy medians, and safe sidewalks. In general Brazilian drivers are not generous when giving you room on the road, but not once was a driver malicious or intentionally intimidating. I was glad to get out of the city and onto rural roads and eventually dirt.

The dirt roads were uniformly red clay with a mixture of sand and rock. There were even some of the nicest smoothest dirt roads I have ridden. And there were never the worst rocky or chunky bits of my travels. I was more than a bit worried about the rain and mud. I don’t remember sticky mud from my childhood but I was still worried. Yet it was never a problem. The rain was extreme. Some puddles were hub deep. The muddy roads were long. The red clay will coat and stain everything, but it won’t clog your frame, wheels, and drivetrain. Surprisingly there was always grip. I was never sliding around or going for a swim in a deep puddle.

There were cobbled streets typically as a transition into each town. Then there were cobbled pavers. And finally paved streets and highways. Highways may or may not have a shoulder to ride on. Luckily the shoulder-free highways were less busy. Paved streets employ the biggest speedbumps you have ever seen for traffic control.

Rural dirt roads are well used. Yet they can be incredibly steep. It was pretty much guaranteed that if I got off my bike to pee a motorcycle or car would pass. A thumbs up and an enthusiastic, “Opa!” were a universal greeting. The same went with the biggest agricultural haul trucks I have ever seen. The drivers were always good natured and would add a friendly, “beep, beep” as they passed. I even had a few short conversations with guys on horseback. They were stunned that I had ridden from the last town. What I couldn’t get across was the town before that, and the town before that.

The cattle guards were a big surprise! I am a fan of Northern Nevada’s cowboy heritage. Cattle guards, corrals, cattle chutes, and windmills are favorite icons. The first Brazilian cattle guard could have ended the trip. The slats ran parallel to the road way! The wet slippery steel could have easily trapped a wheel, folded a disc rotor, and sheared off a derailleur. All before sending me over the bars. The next one only had slats in a double track pattern leaving an open pit on the edges and up the middle. Sometimes the open pit was obscured by grass up the middle. How did the livestock respond? I watched a Brahman cow speed towards a cattle guard and launch herself over. Brazilian livestock seem way more athletic than our Northern Nevadan stock.

And then there were the separated bike paths or Ciclovias. For some reason both RwGPS and Google Maps avoided them but my Garmin computer always had them highlighted in blue. I super appreciate bike infrastructure.

Overall the gravel riding and small town riding were great. I think navigating the big cities requires more experience than just following a GPS track.

What were the accommodations like? The trip was planned as a hotel or credit card tour. I wasn’t planning on camping though I knew that the possibility was likely even if I thought I had planned perfectly to go from hotel to hotel. I carried minimal camping gear. My sleep kit was a hooped bivy sack, an inflatable mattress, and winter weight sleeping bag liner. Eating utensils, headlamp, poop kit, and small dip-n-sip water filter were the only other camping kit items I carried. A headlamp and eating utensils are great travel items in general.

At first I was relying on Booking.com to find and reserve a hotel. But for some reason the app does not work as flawlessly as it did in Taiwan. Eventually I was just showing up at the hotels and asking for 1 room, for 1 night, for 1 person. At the end of a long day, coming in out of the rain, I remember this inquiry requiring extraordinary concentration. Once I had my room (never a problem) I was quick to ask for a dinner recommendation and breakfast.

The rooms varied from a tiny room with TV, a fan, and bathroom down the hall, to a nice basic room, with fridge, AC, in a hotel/conference center with game rooms, small theater, and pool. I didn’t stay at any of the resort properties as I didn’t think I could really take advantage of what they had to offer. Next time!

Lodging was very affordable, $12-30, and that usually included breakfast which was always an awesome spread. Breakfast was a buffet of fresh bakery items, cakes, bread, rolls and my favorite pao do quejo. There were cold cuts and cheeses to make panini sandwiches. Minas Cheese is internationally renowned. There were fruit and fruit juices. Often there were eggs or other hot items. I always appreciated the fresh yogurt. I can’t count how many miles were pedaled on pao do quejo. And coffee – about 50% of the time just black, and 50% of the time with sugar. The locals tend to have small cups with more milk than coffee.

If a hotel didn’t have breakfast I would find the closest padaria (bakery) and have coffee, pão de queijo, pastel de carne, and get my drinks and snacks for the day. An added bonus was watching the neighborhood filter through, pop in for a coffee and pastry, pick up bread for home, or get some snacks for school or work. The local bread store was definitely the morning hub.

Accommodations were simple. I was so happy to shower, sleep out of the rain, and have space to pack/repack. There were nicer resorts around but I was not sticking around long enough to enjoy all they had to offer. Hotels, restaurants and bars universally offer free Wi-Fi. Traveling with a smart phone is remarkable for finding food and lodging especially in rural Brazil.

What was the food like on the trip? Bike touring is eating by bicycle. I covered the breakfast options above. My camping breakfast was some leftover pizza I had stashed away on the bike. Snacks on the bike famously became sleeves of sandwich cookies, not as good as Oreos, but I did look forward to my hourly snack breaks. Then mid-day I would look for a little cafe or bar or market or truck stop to have a Coke and pastel. Often I would see locals having a plate sized meal but I can never eat that much while riding and expect to continue.

But I really looked forward to dinner. Brazil is famous for its beef, pork, and chicken. Brazilian Bar-B-Que, churrasco, is brined cuts cooked over charcoal on large skewers. Beans, rice, greens, and cassava root round out the meal. Brazilian food is a favorite of mine and I was really looking forward to meals just like these. I had most of my favorites, there are a few I missed. All the more reason for a second tour. And beer! Brazilian beer is very good. Antarctica and Brahma are two popular national brands. There is a micro brew scene but I was happiest with Antarctica.

Language Brazilians speak Portuguese. Although they have English classes throughout their schooling everyone I talked to admitted it wasn’t much value. The #1 ad I saw was for English language tutoring. I did not speak any English until I saw my friends in Brasília. Luckily I had some background in Portuguese and fortified it with a solid streak on Duolingo. Newscasters typically speak clearly so watching the news is good practice. I was told that people from Rio don’t speak good Portuguese and tend to make up words. I have no experience with this and it may just reflect regional bias in groups of Brazilians. But I thought it was a funny criticism.

Navigation I built my route on RwGPS. I had my preferences set to dirt roads. I separated the route into 200 mile sections to upload to my Garmin 1040 Solar. Before leaving on the trip I uploaded the South American maps from Garmin. They had a surprising amount of information for the streets and businesses in the small towns. The elevation data was fair but sometimes absolutely incorrect. Once I was in a town I relied on Google Maps to navigate to hotels, restaurants or other businesses. I didn’t have a mount on the bike for my phone and I doubt my phone would be water proof enough to handle the rain. My phone was always in a Ziplock and in a side shorts pocket.

There were only a couple of instances of being led astray by the RwGPS route. There was one road reclaimed by the jungle according to local intel. There were two locked gates. There was one very steep hiking trail. And one city street that was built over. In that case Garmin kept me riding in a circle through a very steep neighborhood. There was a power line road that was flooded grass which resulted in a knee deep hike-a-bike. RwGPS will route you on less-busy neighborhood streets, sometimes sending you up very steep streets. If I was wise to this I would avoid the grades. At the same time RwGPS might keep you away from town centers but then you missed the resupply opportunities at restaurants and markets. Not too bad over 940 miles of navigation.

Riding in the rain Have a plan. I am not accustomed to riding in the rain. It is not a thing in Northern Nevada. While there are waterproof (or at least very water resistant) bikepacking and bike touring bags, most small bag builders build very high quality, durable, but not waterproof bags. My bags are custom bags from Nuke Sunrise Bike Bags, exceptionally high quality and custom to fit my bike and my needs. So the plan meant everything was in a Ziplock freezer bag. Every bike bag was lined with a hotel laundry bag (I always pick these up when I travel, a lifelong habit). Bags need to be new and heavy duty to assure water proofness. I save and reuse bags from all sorts of packaging in the reduce, re-use, and recycle ethos. The more critical an item was, the more layers of plastic separated it from the elements. My thought was electronics, my clean clothes for off the bike, and my sleep kit were the most critical components. I am happy to report my plan worked!

Most of the rainfall was light. I Googled “How much rain is 0.01” of rain?” Not much. But 0.25 – 0.5” per hour is. The heaviest of downpours forced me to stop. I was riding north, the storms were moving west to east, I could watch them approach, swallow me whole, then spit me out the other side. The big decision was when to pull out the REI rain jacket. Then, when to ride in the Frogg Toggs water proof shorts (I know, sounds crazy, water proof shorts, but they were perfect in the warm showers keeping my padded liner shorts from becoming a saturated sponge). The hardest days were when it rained all night and I woke up to rain. Embrace the suck. Nothing lasts forever. Once I was riding everything was great.

Why ride in sandals? I tour in sandals in hot weather. I tour in sandals if there are going to be lots of water crossings. Yes, my feet are vulnerable to rock/stick scratches, sunburn, and insects. But they are dry and comfortable. They would have been wrapped in perpetually grimy wet socks and shoes the entire trip if it weren’t for the sandals. This can be a tough choice but I recommend the consideration. My feet were a little soft from a winter in shoes so I do recommend a period of toughening-up.

Wild beasts Snakes were my biggest concern. Treating all snakes like they are deadly venomous is the golden rule. After a couple of days I was seeing snakes every day. The question in the back of my mind was how many snakes am I not seeing? There is the Bothrops jaracara, the Brazilian Pit Viper and B. pirajai Brazilian Lancehead, and Crotalus durissus the Brazilian rattlesnake. These were big concerns. And then there was the Brazilian Green Racer, a mildly venomous snake dangling from the trees. All snakes were treated with an abundance of caution and respect, I am a guest in their home.

Insect bites and stings were my second concern. Yellow Fever is endemic to Brazil so I had my vaccinations updated before travel. I brought DEET with me but only used it once. I had very few mosquito bites and the worst were biting flies, but not bad. I did see a fair number of bees, wasps, and ants. I did get stung by a wasp (I think by a tarantula hawk). My sandals were attacked by leaf cutter ants. All head and jaws, I am so glad they weren’t latching onto me. My hotel rooms were all insect free! All and all, no insect problems.

I was a bit concerned about aggressive dogs. In Taiwan all the dogs were calm in the heat of the day. Overall Brazilian dogs were friendly or at worst their bark was worse than their bite. A few yappy chasers, but never an attack. I don’t pet unfamiliar dog or cats in the tropics for fear of ringworm. I had it severely in Burma once and learned my lesson.

I had a close encounter with an armadillo. And beyond that the only other exotics were roadkill that were so far decomposed I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at.

The birds were like being in an exotic pet store. Bright green parakeet like birds replaced our roadside “little brown jobs”. I saw beautiful parrots flying through the towns. A favorite scene was watching a toucan fly across a valley. Its disproportional black body and brightly colored beak stretched out perfectly aero. I saw the big beautiful butterflies but few other insects.

A river runs through it The Amazon River basin is probably one of the most iconic features of Brazil. I was nowhere near it but I did ride over and along nearly 80 named rivers.  I was worried about the potential for washed out roads or bridges or mudslides. There was one partial washout and one missing bridge. That creek was mid-thigh deep so no problem in crossing without a bridge. The landscape is shaped by the rivers, so steep drops in and out of river bottoms, mud bogs, and “shud” (shit+mud) bogs where there were cattle. It was all part of the adventure.

What I rode, what I carried The custom Manzanita gravel touring bike with custom bags by Nuke Sunrise Bike Bags was my bike of choice for this all-road adventure. It rolls on 27.5 x 2.2 Continental Trinotal tubeless tires, a 1X11 drivetrain with a Micro-shift barend shifter and Tektro cable actuated (mechanical) disc brakes. I carried a set of clothes for wearing off the bike, shorts and a polo shirt (X2) by KUHL. I carried a spare long sleeve riding shirt by KUHL. My rain gear was a light weight jacket from the REI running line and a pair of rain shorts by Frogg Toggs. I carried a Patagonia baseball cap for bad hair days off the bike.

The bike was packed as follows: left fork bag, off the bike clothes. Right fork bag, rain gear. Left handle bar feed bag (Giant Silo), snacks! Right handle bar feed bag, electronics, battery, cables, charger, headlamp, earbuds, bike lights, SPOT Satellite Messenger. Handlebar bag, small Patagonia backpack, chain lube, sunscreen, insect repellent, note book, overflow items. Top tube bag, tools and toiletries. Frame bag, dip-n-sip water filter (never used), first aid kit (only used band-aids), small cable lock (used twice), overflow items. Down tube bag, mostly empty, carried extra food and cash at times. Seat bag, sleeping pad, sleeping bag liner, bivy sack, spare clothes. On my body I wore a small Patagonia fanny pack with passport, documents, and travel wallet with cash and cards. Pretty minimal, pretty simple.

What I wore riding A sun hoody and shorts by KUHL was my standard kit. Just one uniform for the trip. I wore padded liner cycling shorts by Bellwether, helmet by Kali, and gloves by Planet Bike. My sunscreen was Sun Bum.

If I were to do it again. I would plan a few multi day stays along the way. I would re-route the horrible all-night hike-a-bike.  But there are other parts of Brazil I would like to see before repeating this trip. But if anyone wanted to plan a trip to Brazil I would happily join in and share my experience. I would engage my Brazilian friends along the way. They were a huge help.

Stay tuned for Part Two: Seeing Brasília Again for the first Time.