South America 2012: Road Out Of Rio

Thursday February 9th 2012

Flying into Rio has an exotic ring but we had some trepidation about the next stage of the journey, which involved hiring a car from Avis and driving down to Paraty, armed with minimal directions and the knowledge that road signs in Brazil are scarce.

The first problem was to locate the Avis desk, which was situated in the International terminal, some considerable distance from Domestic where we arrived. The Avis desk was a far cry from Heathrow, with one guy manning the fort. I had presumed that I could discuss insurance, GPS and route options at the desk but that was unfortunately wishful thinking. So about one hour later we sorted out a contract and were presented with a fairly beaten-up Chevrolet Corsa, no GPS and only a Google map and directions to guide us to Paraty.

Now I had read that road signage in Brazil was bad, but that turned out to be a gross understatement. We soon found out why the vague google directions told you to turn "slightly" left at "the junction" as there are almost no advance direction signs and you have to make snap decisions at each exit.

This is interesting enough by itself, but combined with the erratic driving culture of the Brazilians, makes for a somewhat challenging experience. Junctions are essentially a free-for-all with cars overtaking on the inside and outside and joining traffic assuming that they have right of way. When you consider that this is all done at high speed you may have some idea of the insanity. Brazilians are by no means the worst drivers I have encountered but without doubt the most dangerous. According to one of the guides we had in Argentina it’s a macho thing and unless you drive like a maniac you are considered to be gay.

To our great relief we only went off the right highway twice but miraculous navigation and sheer luck got us quickly back on track both times.

The first part of the drive was the main highway to Sao Paulo which carries heavy lorry traffic. Clearly there are no gay lorry drivers as they all travel at a pretty consistent 120 kph. We actually did overtake a couple but that was only when they were crawling up very steep inclines that took us into some very green and hilly country.

Coming off the highway and finding the correct road to Paraty was achieved with assistance of a garrulous (in Portugese) policeman in Pirai and the drive through the countryside down was very pleasant with little traffic.