Detour #195: Hire car heroics in the jungle, Brazil
Photo Ben Coombs
Ben Coombs heads to the jungles of Brazil for an impromptu road trip. Does he rent a rugged 4x4? Of course not.
Imagine you and a friend have a week booked off work. Your time off begins in less than two days, but you haven’t made any plans yet. What do you do?
Simple. If you’re anything like us, you go to the pub, have a beer, and make a plan. And when that plan involves a last-minute flight to Brazil, a cheap Fiat Uno hire car and a jungle road trip, you know you’ve struck gold before you even set off.
Naturally of course, there are drawbacks to this spontaneous approach – for example, the sum total of my pre-trip research into Brazil was limited to watching a Fast & Furious film set in Rio, which happened to be available on the flight over. But spontaneity can bring its rewards, too. Shortly after leaving the airport, we found ourselves at our traveller’s hostel, gazing out over the bright lights of Rio de Janeiro as the city’s fit young things partied all around.
My friend and I chinked our glasses together, and smiled. Less than 48 hours earlier we’d been in a Dartmoor pub, at a loss as to what to do. Now, we’d just gate-crashed a birthday party in Brazil, and a road trip awaited.
Just occasionally, life is awesome. This was one of those moments.
We spent a couple of days in Rio, soaking up the incredible joie de vivre of this city as we checked out the sights – the dominating statue of Cristo Redentor which towers overhead, the endless sands of Copacabana Beach and, of course, that cable car to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain where Roger Moore has a scuffle with Jaws, in Moonraker. But all along, the open road was calling, and so soon, we collected our Fiat Uno and set forth on our Brazilian fly-drive.
Our time in Rio had primed us for what to expect when driving in Brazil, with the nation’s hard-partying energy translating into a culture of hard driving. A kind of controlled anarchy quickly enveloped us, as we adjusted to a very Latin American take on the rules of the road, in which the frantic cut-and-thrust of ill-judged overtaking manoeuvres was the norm, and speed was king.
In other words, the perfect environment for a 1.3 litre, 67 horsepower Fiat Uno, whose design dates back to the early ‘80s.
The first stop on our Brazilian jaunt was the colonial-era town of Paratay, a four-hour drive down the coast. And a very pleasant drive it was. Once the churn of the Rio traffic had been left behind, we found ourselves on a winding road which hugged the coast and offered up captivating views of sea and sand through the forests of Brazil’s ‘Costa Verde’.
Paratay offered the perfect antidote to Rio’s hustle – a laid-back-to-horizontal colonial town, nestled between mountain and beach, and the chance to escape the heat of the un-air conditioned Fiat and seek out some shade amid the cobbled streets and whitewashed facades. It’s a tourist town, yes. But then, we were unashamedly tourists, and between the photogenic views, relaxed restaurants and beachfront hostels, it offered everything we needed. Except for epic driving roads, that is. And when you have a mighty Fiat Uno at your disposal, life is naturally all about the driving roads. The following day, we headed to the uplands to find some.
The mountains to the north of Rio rise in an unlikely melee of jungled serrations, offering up a pleasantly twisty, three-dimensional driving experience which made us most thankful we weren’t riding a bus. Here, the steep climbs meant our little Fiat’s lack of power came to the fore, as did its lack of grip and some of its more curious handling traits. However, taking on the gradients in such an underdog gave the drive a marvellously irreverent feel, as well as giving us more time to enjoy the scenery in this almost shockingly verdant part of the world.
Our destination for this part of the drive was the town of Petropolis, which sits at 800 metres above sea level and, despite its moniker, has nothing whatsoever to do with the production of petrol. Instead, it made its name in the 1800s, as a mountain retreat where Brazil’s Imperial Court went to escape the summer heat. Today, it serves the same purpose for visitors from lower elevations, and offers a fine selection of well preserved mansions, churches and museums to entertain the weekend influx from Rio.
And speaking of Rio, our whistle-stop tour of Rio de Janiero State was drawing to an end, with the flight back to the UK looming large, and the airport an hour and a half away, as the Fiat Uno drives. So, we climbed back into the plasticky cabin for one last time, slammed shut the tinny doors and rolled down out of the mountains, sweeping left and right as we prepared to say goodbye to the hire car which we’d became rather fond of over the course of our 400 miles together. Because after all, who knew the highlight of a trip to Brazil could actually be a shoddy little silver Fiat?
We certainly didn’t when we dreamed up the idea only a week before, as we sheltered from the bleak Dartmoor weather in the White Thorn Inn.
Words & Photography Ben Coombs Twitter | Instagram
ROADBOOK
CLASS: jungle fever
NAME: The Costa VerdE
ROUTE: rio de janeiro to rio de janeiro
COUNTRY: brazil
DISTANCE: 400 miles
Home to the legendary Bathurst 1000 race, the Mount Panorama circuit in New South Wales is actually a public road.