For a month, last autumn, Freddie Flintoff and I pedalled along what is perhaps the most controversial road in the world. The Trans-Amazonian Highway was built by the Brazilian military dictatorship in the early 1970s, to open up the southern Amazon basin for colonization and economic exploitation. In a grandiose economic experiment, the proposal was to re-settle 100,000 families from agriculturally poorer parts of Brazil in the region: ‘land without men for men without land’ was the dream.
It never happened. Promises the government made were broken from the start. No more than 10,000 people were re-located and they were quickly left to fend for themselves. In fact, the road was never even finished. It was never paved and it simply stops in the middle of the jungle, at a small town called Labrea beside the Purus River.
Freddie and I were an unlikely duo, thrown together for an epic journey by the strange demands of TV. Freddie, a self-confessed environmental sceptic when we started, doesn’t really like cycling but he’s got a big heart and he can do a mean Elvis impersonation. I’m an old-fashioned tree-hugger and having ridden a bicycle round the world, the commissioners knew at least one of us could fix a puncture.
The Highway starts in the east of Brazil and runs due west, across the federal states of Maranhao and Para to near Santarem, before veering south. We started cycling in the town of Itaituba, on the banks of the beautiful, clear-watered Tapajoz River. The plan was to cycle 1,200km, to the end of the road. Along the way, we’d meet gold miners, cattle ranchers, legal and illegal loggers, sawmill owners, rodeo bull riders, tourism operators, shopkeepers and school kids, in an attempt to understand what impact the road has had on the rainforest.
The bikes were perfect, though there were a few complaints from Freddie about the lack of suspension. We took spare tubes, tyres and spokes plus a handful of tools. In a month, we had no major breakdowns. There were punctures, a shredded tyre, broken water bottles and a few minor adjustments but considering the condition of the road, and the daily hammering the bikes took, they stood up astonishingly well.
The cycling was hard from the start. Five hundred metres out of Itaituba, the tarmac turns to dirt and every time we passed a vehicle, we were consumed in a cloud of dust and had to ride blind for several, unnerving seconds. In places, the road was maintained and well graded but for long stretches, it was no more than a medieval cart track, cut to pieces by the wheels of the logging lorries and cattle trucks.
There are few communities along the Trans-Amazonian Highway: most nights we either hung our hammocks up in the jungle or camped at one of the dilapidated, old roadhouses. We washed in the creeks and rivers. At least we did until someone told us that anacondas inhabit the creeks at dusk. Then we stayed dirty. One morning, as we were packing up camp in the village of Sucunduri, Freddie disturbed a tarantula in the top of a rucksack. After that, we zipped all our bags up at night.
Every four of five days, an electric storm burst over us, bringing welcome respite from the blanket of heat and the humidity. We could see, hear and smell these storms coming hours before they arrived. The wind quickened, the temperature dropped and with a detonation of thunder, the clouds burst open. The rain tamped down the dust on the Highway, but it also turned the dirt to a gummy mud that clung to our tyres, which made pedalling even more arduous.
Approaching the town of Apui, our halfway point, the hills flattened and the jungle edged further and further away from the road. Clouds of smoke blackened the sky in all directions, where de-forested scrub was being burnt off to sow grass seed on marginal land. Legally, landowners in the Brazilian Amazon are required to retain forest on 80% of their property. Few do, though. Agriculture requires wholesale forest clearance and ranching is currently the greatest single cause of deforestation in the Amazon. The Sky Rainforest Rescue project, run by WWF in the western state of Acre, promotes agricultural initiatives that leave the trees standing. Such initiatives are vital now.
‘What would you rather have, beef or trees?’ Freddie asked me as we approached Fazenda Macil, a vast cattle ranch near Apui managed by Jose Lucio. For me the answer is trees, but we stayed with Jose Lucio for two nights and it was hard not to admire his independent, pioneering spirit. It did feel a bit like sleeping with the enemy, though.
Elsewhere, we found small signs that the global importance of the Amazon rainforest is being recognized locally. We spent a day with Paulo, who moved here when the Highway was first built. He has given up ranching and instead signed up to a government plan for sustainable forestry management. Under the scheme, Paulo is allowed to selectively fell 10% of the trees on his land: thus, he extracts the more valuable timber trees while the great biological intricacy of the rainforest remains substantially intact.
Getting my hair cut in the town of Humaita, Cosmo the barber told us that, ‘Brazilians do not know Brazil properly. We need better teaching at school, to tell the children why it is important to preserve the forest, and what might happen in the future if things carry on like this.’
The final 200km of our journey to Labrea were the worst. The midday heat became unbearable, the humidity intensified and the road deteriorated to a cratered quagmire.
Reaching the Purus River was a great relief, and in the relief I was able to reflect on what a tough but magical journey it had been: the warmth of these frontier people, the generosity we experienced every day, the stature and beauty of the trees, the butterflies on the Highway, the stars, swimming in the rivers and the electric storms had been a pleasure to behold. I had also come to understand that this vast region, the Amazon, is even more unique and important than I’d previously appreciated – and that the threats to the rainforest are manifest now.
The two-part series, Flintoff’s Road To Nowhere is on Sky 1 HD on 4th and 11th April at 9pm.
For more information about Sky Rainforest Rescue, go to www.sky.com/rainforestrescue
To view the full range of 2014 Genesis bikes (including special offers!) please click here: Genesis Bikes