We left Canoa Quebrada at 8am to head south and inland towards the town of Sousa. We stopped on the way to shop for food since we will be camping the next two days and therefore prepare our own food. I was teamed up with Stuart to prepare the next day’s breakfast and lunch. Our budget was 45 Real (26 USD) to feed ten people. This turned out to be a challenging task since due to the strength of the Real most food products are actually more expensive than back home. In addition we currently don’t carry any bulk food (cornflakes, pasta…) in the truck since we don’t do much camping during this part of the journey from Manaus to Salvador. Therefore, we actually had to purchase everything we need. Our choice were cornflakes, milk and bananas for breakfast and a pasta, vegetables and cheese for lunch. We ended up with 46 Real, only one Real over budget, after we had to give back some vegetables at the checkout counter.

We arrived in the area of Sousa around 4pm where we drove straight away to the “Vale dos Dinossauros” (link only available in Portuguese) which is basically a park where you can see the footprints of various species of dinosaurs. In this park one of the world’s longest dinosaur tracks can be seen which has a length of 55 meters and is an impressive 120 million years old. To get an impression about the size of the dinosaurs some of us stepped into their footprints and tried to walk in them using large steps.

The guy with the long white beard, who guided us around the park, was only speaking Portuguese but luckily our co-driver / mechanic girl Anki speaks pretty good Portuguese so she translated his speech to us. The guide also seems to have his live dedicated to the prehistory of this area since in the little museum of the park we were able to spot several books and videos published by him.

For the night we had originally planned to bushcamp but since it had become quite late and the guide offered us to camp on the grounds of the park, we happily accepted his offer. As this was our first camping night of this journey, Anki and Ross gave us a speech about the truck, e.g. where the cooking equipment is stored and how the tents are set up. As of this journey I have decided to bring my own tent to have a tiny bit more privacy during the next 12 months. It was therefore also my very first night in my own tent and I was quite quick to figure out how it is set up.

Tonight’s cooking group prepared Spaghetti Bolognese with salad for us which were very tasty. Only the water took ages to boil. Stuart and I also used the time to prepare the pasta salad which we will serve for lunch tomorrow.