I will be traveling in the last days of March, 2009 again to the Brazilian Highlands, until the end of april or the first half of May. My Ranger 4×4 pick-up is being prepared in Brasília in a shop specializing in preparing cars for off-road rallies (they will have a 2-car team in the Rally dos Sertões, probably the toughest one after the Dakar rally), so it should be in top shape to go to remote places where small farmers and cowboys still live in adobe houses covered with palm thatch, and that can be reached only by mountain dirt or gravel (or mud!) roads. No internet, no cell phone. When people want to talk to someone they get on their horse and go there. Good place to throw away the stress of the city… I plan also to photograph the preparation of the cars for the rally, and hopefully get a ride with one of the drivers… You know, when the car pulls 3 feet high, or takes a turn completely sideways on dirt roads. The 10-day rally across central Brazil will be at the end of June/early July, but the itinerary has not yet been revealed. A soon as it is published, I plan, if Photoshop leaves me any time after the April trip, to locate a good spot to photograph it.
I hope to have a batch from my previous trip in the region online before the trip, but I had problems with my computer and now with my monitor (after “calibrating” it with one of these spider gizmos the colors are completely off). March 18: got a new monitor, but still tweaking the calibration, as I have to adjust to LCD. Jacques