Travelling the Transamazonica Trail
- 14 Apr 08, 03:36 PM
Posted from: Apui
For me this is where the journey really began. The moment Raquel and I sat in the back of a pickup truck with our cowboy hats on and started travelling east on the Transamazonica Highway on our way to the gold mine. The precise moment in fact was when the smooth tarmac section of the highway, which cuts through Apui, gave way to the dirt road with a sudden thud of the back wheels.
That first bump would be the first of many in the 80km we covered. Notorious for bringing destruction to pristine forest it was hard not to appreciate the scenery that included cleared pasture-land. The green was like no other and the deep red of the road only helped to accentuate this. We crossed several interestingly constructed bridges. For some reason, whoever builds them prefers to have only one side of the bridge moderately secure and the other side must be precariously secure. This calls for ninja driving and luckily we were in safe hands.
Sol and the team travel the Tranamazonian highway
Halfway the inevitable happened - a puncture. We all clambered out onto the road and stood around like lemons observing intensely while a young gentleman lost about a litre of sweat doing all the hard work. Vultures overhead, I thought, "This is too clich茅d and perfect to be true, I must be in a film."
The Transamazonica transports, transforms, transplants and transmits, is transitory and transparent and needs to transcend!
Initiated in 1970 with the aim of opening up the Amazon for development and population, the Transamazonica is an unfinished 5000 km roadway, with only 175 km of tarmac.
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