21st Feb – Man down! I repeat, we have a man down!

MEDIC!! We need a medic over here!

Today I got maliciously attacked by a wild Brazilian animal. This wild animal came right up out of no where and attacked me, in doing so killing itself.

I got stung by a bee in the palm of my hand! 🙁 It is a mighty inconvenience for a short while.

On to something less dramatic, today was full of interesting stories. Starting off with Penny Vs Stanley, James Vs Scott, Vauxhall Vs Buick, Australians Vs British, 1923 vs 1937, 4cylinders vs 8 cyclinders. To explain more thoroughly: We pulled out the hotel at the same time as Scott and Paddy in Stanely the buick and came to the first set of red lights on a long empty stretch of road. What else was there to do other than drag race? It would have been remiss of us both to NOT drag race even. Both of us smoking up the rear’s as we slammed through and into second gear, third gear, then blasting past the next intersection at quarter mile in under 10 seconds. lol just kidding, no burnouts. Vauxhall Vs Buick was fairly evenly matched until the speed limit of 80 where we backed off. Nothing outrageous to report, just some good ol’ fashion skylarking.

Timed section number 1. was amazing. 60 odd k’s on smooth, wet, hard packed clay gravel roads, with 2 inches of mud on top. The difference between the level of traction the front wheels had compared to the back wheels was staggering. Not a single car overtook us in the 34 minutes it took, as we were going like stink! It was the best day’s driving thus far! I live for those kind of roads. Still first in class and pending results tonight, probably tied equal first overall based on points.

WE SAW A TOUCAN. A wild one! I thought that was pretty cool. Animal count is now at:

-3 toucans, a boat load of caiman (crocs), a few capybara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara, Lizards (one alive, one squashed). And a bee (first alive, then dead)

We drove out of the rural farming area of Brazil and entered an area called the Pantanal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantanal) which is the worlds largest tropical wetland. Pretty cool, check out wiki. Very very thick vegetation and pretty flat, but the tree’s and shrubberies etc are not very tall, just thick and low.

We even had enough spare time on our way to the hotel Stanley and Penny went on a bit of a date and deviated into the Pantanal for about 35k’s of dirt to see some more awesome animals and wetlands. Totally worth it.

In trusty goPro fashion, battery ran out half way through second timed section. Classic goPro’s….

Edit: I forgot the crux of todays adventure! Most days, the good sirs of Chris Evans and Mark Seymour get blasted by our exhaust note as we hurtle past their Model A at a swift rate of knots. This is always good banter topics ad spurs some great Aus v Brits humor. This quickly escalades to name calling and cursing, then goes straight to uproarious laughter and me saying “TALLY HO PIP PIP GOV’NA” and They will reply, “C YA LATER MAYYYYTTTEE. DINGO STOLE ME BABEHH.” anyywaaayyy, the story must go on. We pulled over for some lunch or an oil change or something because we had a heap of time. Fast forward down the road and these blokes are on the side of the road all hot and sweaty in a spot of bother. Swearing and saying stuff in their British tongue which makes no sense. We catch a few words of ‘hole in radiator’ and end up helping them push some plastic metal around the crack and give them some water to re-fill. Now they are forever in a debt to a Vauxhall driver. At dinner we swapped crude remarks about each others cricket teams and the world is back to normal =D

James