6th day: Lajeado Grande - Farroupilha (Dec 23, 2006)

Good asphalt after two days of bad gravel roads! Heavy traffic in the opposite direction, cars and SUVs full of vacationers hading to the coast. I head west to Caxias do Sul, the second largest city of Rio Grande do Sul. I buy some peaches at a fruit vendor's booth. Then I arrive minutes after a traffic accident, involving only one car (VW Fox) with three people inside which had overturned and hit a wall. The car was completely crumpled, but the passanger had no serious lesions. The driver told me her husband had heavily pushed the steering wheel with the intent to commit suicide. I stay with them and try to calm then until the ambulance arrives (half an hour in the outskirts of a large city !). In Caxias I eat a salad and then stay about 3 hours in a cybercafé. Finally I take the highway (with a broad emergency lane - no danger for cyclists) to Farroupilha, where I stay in a very simple but clean hotel in the center, a wooden building that seemed to have survived virtually unchanged in the last 70 years.