Road to Aracuai

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We drove to Aracuai, a very arid rural town with about 30,000 people, where CPCD has an education and water purification project (remember the water theme - it will arise again - we might take for granted that we have water...let alone that we can actually drink our water), about 500 KM from another slightly larger much less arid and pleasant town, Curvelo (70,000 people), which is where CPCD has another office/project (the parents of our project host Flavia have a home there. You already viewed a partial outcome of the trip to Aracuai (Stan was quite ill for about 24 hours, no hospital though, more like violent food/water poisoning we think, but we're not doctors). Here's a few pics on the road to Aracuai (pronounced in English as Ahr-a-su-I).

What's Didier doing in the middle of the road? Of course he's taking a picture, don't we all do this in the middle of a highway? Not many cars, mostly trucks - don't be alarmed, he's taking a pic of a boa vista. Maybe he'll post this pic for you?

Speaking of dangerous roads, we needed to stop then drive around this overturned semi-tractor trailer rig that was loaded top heavy with charcoal made from the local eucalyptus tree farms (anyone for an investment opportunity? Millions of hectares are planted here). This happens more often than not - we saw an overturned car a few days ago. Thankfully, the driver was fine and standing behind the rig out of the pic.

We needed to slow again to avoid the horse drawn carts, and of course stare at the fire burning on the left side of the road. There's little garbage collection in the rural areas so we understand that most people burn the waste, and the grass, and the trees...but it does tend to prevent massive forest fires as ground fuel is consumed in small burns.

Then the road turned to dirt - over 100 KM of narrow dirt, gravel, holes and choking dust.

Did we mention dust? This is the view from the car after that blue truck passed us at 60KM per hour...

We made it - this is the welcoming sign outside of the town Aracuai - notice the lack of any green grass or even green weeds. The area is very dry in winter. Most plants are desert like w/spines, waxy leaves, or cacti. More to come....

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