Pantanal Pipeline: Adventure Across Bolivia and Brazil

By Alex Ramsay

It seems like yesterday that I took a leap of faith and made the trip to Brazil to work as an environmental consultant on the San Miguel, Bolivia to Cuiabá, Brazil Pipeline project. The project was being criticized in the USA by major NGOs for cutting through the near primary and very remote Chiquitano Forest of Eastern Bolivia. The turnkey contractor, Enron Engineering & Construction Company, had been pressured by its financiers into hiring environmental personnel to assure the implementation, by its subcontractors, of the environmental and social management plan for the project. This was a worthy challenge and suitable adventure, so I jumped at the chance to head south to work on my first major international project. Thus, this semi-fictional account draws on my experience in South America working as the turnkey contractor’s environmental manager, on this very high-profile pipeline construction project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359561254

Alex Ramsay

Alex Ramsay is a professional photographer and former Baroque crewmember and cook. Once he overcame ‘his strange reluctance or shyness in the matter of duffs’, his presence aboard was remembered by Tilman as ‘a quite fortuitous prize’.

Book preview

This is a fictionalized account of the Cuiabá Pipeline project based on my actual, on the ground experience working there. As such the photos were taken on site in both Bolivia and Brazil. However, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual corporations, persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Finally, this project could not have been undertaken without the support of my wife and family, some members of whom were lucky enough to get a taste of Brazil in the process.

Alex Ramsayy, Burlington, Ontario, Canada

© S. A. RAMSAY & ASSOCIATES INC 2019

Chapter 1 Off to Brazil

Standing in Terminal 1, I wondered if I had done the right thing. Would the e ticket arrive from Enteron Engineering, as promised? Would this Brazilian airline, Varig, with its unfamiliar gold star and bold blue line actually have enough horsepower and fuel to fly south over the Atlantic and Caribbean for 10 hours, all the way to Sao Paulo? All packed and ready for a one-year adventure in South America the excitement was tempered with the knowledge that I was about to leave behind the predictability of working in Canada for perhaps a more quixotic style of doing business. I got on my cell phone to Houston:

Jim Mallard please. This is Mr. Mallard’s assistant Juanita; can I help you? Yes, Al Boggs here in Toronto wondering if HR e ticketed Varig for my flight to Sao Paulo?  Let me check and I’ll get back to you. Twenty minutes later it was confirmed that nothing had been sent but that this would be remedied, pronto. Juanita here – OK the ticket has been e mailed to Varig in Toronto International Airport, so you can pick it up at their ticket counter and still make your flight on time. You will transfer in Sao Paulo through to Cuiabá and meet Tom Warburton, the project director. He will meet you for the connection to Cuiabá at Guarulhos airport, since he is flying through to Cuiabá from Houston, with a couple of other engineers, on the same flight.

All was in order once my two bags were checked in and I was greeted by the dark haired Brazilian flight attendant who glanced at my passport and tore off the boarding pass stub with: Bom dia, bem-vindo as Varig, have a good flight!. A Temporario V visa had been acquired at the Brazilian Consulate on Bloor Street in Toronto the week before. It was good for five years, but only allowed a stay of six months, in any given year, so this did put the need to spend time in Bolivia, the original designated destination for this assignment, on my itinerary. Packing for the tropics included a water treatment kit with an iodine filter system to keep cholera and other waterborne diseases in check. Fortunately this would prove to be an unnecessary expenditure since bottled water was available everywhere I would be traveling.

When I lined up this assignment I had been looking at a prospective role in China with Enteron which had been advertised on Monster.com but when I e mailed Enteron in Houston they advised that China was out, but that they coincidentally had a role in Bolivia, for which I would be well suited. A trip to Houston and meetings with the Environmental and Quality Management team resulted in a contract as project environmental manager. Armed with a new ThinkPad and Olympus digital camera and keen to mobilize to warmer climes, I was ready for my first adventure in the tropics. In reality, the role in Bolivia was broadened to Brazil since the designated American, destined to go to Cuiabá, opted out at the last minute. This turned out to be fortunate in that Brazil is not far off North American standards, whereas there are parts of Bolivia, which are a throwback to the Wild West of the 19th Century. Great place to visit, but not a location you would want to take up residency, unless you were good with a pistol and knife. The Canadian travel advisory warned that travel between the border towns of Caceres, Brazil and San Matias, Bolivia was risky in that banditos involved in car, truck and motorcycle theft were at large. Cocaine was the currency for which the vehicles were swapped across the very porous border. This due to general lawlessness found on the Bolivian side of the border and driven by the demand for drugs in the major cities of Brazil, like Rio and Sao Paulo, to the east. The Federales on the Brazilian side were armed and dangerous so the advice was to avoid getting caught in the cross fire between the smugglers and the local constabulary. Certainly something to mull over on route to the wild west of South America.

On board the Varig big blue bird, with the giant gold star on its tail, I had the feeling that the flight was like any other and settled in with a small bottle of white wine and subsequently drifted off as the jet crossed the black waters of the Atlantic below.  I did so confident that my blood had been suitably prepared for this trip with a prior two-week dose of Lariam, a drug prescribed out of caution by the tropical diseases doctor in Toronto. During his assessment he tried his best to zero in on my destination, but somehow hit the Amazon basin, which includes the massive drainage catchment just north of Cuiabá. Here Anopheles darlingi mosquitoes happily spread malaria, whereas the Paraguay River through Caceres flows south and provides habitat for mosquitoes which, during the rainy season, transmit Dengue fever, but thankfully not malaria[1]. A subtle difference, due to the presence of only Aedes aegypti mosquitos, but one that cost me a couple of hundred bucks to fill the prescription and a temporary discomfort as manifested by sore kidneys. This drug is a blood schizontocide and tantamount to taking a pesticide, since the plasmodium of the mosquito dies upon contact with it in the human bloodstream. Lariam is also known to drive a certain percentage of users batty so the absence of malaria in Estado do Mato Grosso and Bolivia thankfully negated the need for its use.  In the Amazon watershed to the north, much better to take a preventative drug than coming down with malaria, but the expression pick your poison comes to mind. The only prevention for Dengue is DEET and good luck, so I was determined to stay covered with Deep Woods OFF while in the jungle. What was mandatory, was the Yellow Fever shot, which was good for 10 years and allowed me to transit through Bolivia, which has Yellow Fever, and then back into Brazil. Without this shot no entry to Brazil was possible. The tropical medicine specialist, who sounded like Peter Laurie in the movie Casablanca, enquired whether I required a preliminary Hepatitis B shot. Do you like the ‘ladeez’? If you do, you need a series of Hep B shots  My response, showing him my wedding ring was emphatic – I’m a dancer not a lover! This refrain would be repeated frequently over the next two years in South America since it is the best defense in the ‘Garden of Eden’ where the local beauties are aiming for a one-way ticket out of a hungry paradise, to the land of milk and honey – Canada or the USA.

Smooth sailing and ten uneventful hours later I was in the Estados Unidos do Brasil where the humidity hit me like a wet blanket. Airport air conditioning was apparently on the economy setting at Guarulhos airport and the dingy décor reminded me of how clean and modern Toronto’s Pearson Airport was.  I was in the third world for the first time, where resources were spread thin to feed a growing population of 170 + million. Food over paint, was the message given by the grungy appearance of this aging airport. I was grateful, however, to have passed through Customs with no more than a curt proxima! and a quick stamp in my Canadian passport. A couple of American colleagues were at the Cuiabá gate – Tom Warburton and Dave Hubert – both having just arrived from Houston. Tom was your typical American crew cut, ex-Marine (wannabee) ass-kicker and like me was impatient to get going, but when the departure time came and went and I complained that after a long flight from Toronto I was anxious to get going, he set me straight: manana, manana – you’re in South America, everything moves slowly here. Both he and Dave, an accountant also out of the Enteron Houston office, seemed used to this slow route, so I quickly adapted to this pragmatic acceptance of the philosophy of: why do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Both of these gents were in their forties and were living in Brazil with their wives. Having been in Cuiabá for more than a year and having apparently tasted the fruits of Brazil and liked the sweetness of the apple of temptation, along with the grunge, they were apparently enjoying the exotic sensory overload. This made perfect sense since Enteron headquarters in Houston, although modern and fast paced, came with full taxes and no expense account. At the time Americans who stayed out of the USA for more than 330 days of the year enjoyed a tax holiday on their first $75,000, so this was an incentive for American expats to remain abroad. The silver lining was that they got to take in the sites of one of the world’s most breathtakingly beautiful countries. Luxury condos and excellent food in the heart of beef country were also perks which I would come to appreciate. La Dolce Vita, Brazilian style had an allure that had grown on many expats assigned to Enteron Brazil. I would soon find out why.

The project involved construction of a natural gas pipeline from a take-off of the Bolivia to Brazil gas pipeline near Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, across vast, wild, sandy plains, through the hilly Chiquitano forest, then across the Pantanal wetlands. Once in Brazil, across the drug and truck smuggling border near San Matias through rich farmland, producing everything from bananas, to soybeans, to teak trees, up to the Paraguay River near Caceres, where the landscape changed radically with the Arara mountain range near Caceres, known to the project expats as the Ridges. These rocky ridges are dissected by verdant river valleys, with sprawling fazendas. Thousands of white zebu cattle comb the hills for Brachiaria, a tall, course grass, that can withstand the four month dry season and extensive grazing. Then north to the combined cycle power plant in Cuiabá where the natural gas was to be delivered to displace the much more expensive diesel fuel being trucked all the way from Sao Paulo. Despite the rough terrain this was the heart of beef ranch country, where the fazendas in Brazil had been carved out of the forest, through slashing and burning.

C:\Users\Alex\Documents\Pantanal Pipeline\brazilpipelines.jpg

Cuiabá Pipeline Shown in Red Branching to the NE from the Bolivia to Brazil Pipeline

Finally the gate to Cuiabá opened and the TAM flight, via a 5 hour milk run, with stops in Londrina and Campo Grande, across the great verdant expanse that is Brazil, finally came to an end. This took half as long again, as the trip south from Toronto. Taking off from Sao Paulo, one of the world’s largest conurbations, I was amazed at how far the rows of twenty-story apartment towers extended westward. After ten minutes we were still flying over endless towers lined up like concrete trees in a nasty urban jungle. I was glad to be flying away from this sprawling city with its notorious slums known as favelas, where street kids were hunted by the police like so much vermin. Also, the thought of being kidnapped or robbed was motivation enough to head far west, in a hurry, into the country, where hopefully a sparser population meant less craziness and where the banditos were hopefully kinder and gentler than their notorious cousins in the big city.

---

[1] At the time Zika virus was unknown.

Chapter 2 Cuiabá – Gateway to the Pantanal

The heat in Sao Paulo had been something like a wet blanket but it was nothing compared to walking across the tarmac at Aeroporto Internacional de Cuiabá - Marechal Rondon, located in Vargea Grande, across the Cuiabá River, to the south of the bigger State capital of Cuiabá. Since the chill of fall was in the air in Canada, this was not all bad. Experiencing the spring twice in the same year seemed like a good deal. It would soon be the rainy season in the dead centre of South America, and being the southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed. The baked lateritic red clay of the vacant lots along the route through Vargea Grande looked dusty and parched after months of dry season drought, typical of Mato Grosso winters. The small crude red brick houses, with steel roofs, looked none too prosperous and Doug pointed out the local whore house on route, with just a little too much loving insight. Wending our way through the narrow streets we finally reached the El Dorado Hotel in downtown Cuiabá, a reasonably modern, 10 story building, where I was to stay until things were sorted. I was deposited at the check in with my two bags in hand excited to be in such a modern hotel where I was hoping to make up for a serious sleep deficit. The tall, moreno clerk at the reception welcomed me in broken English and explained that I wasn’t the only American there since Brazilians were Americans too, i.e.: The United States of South America - Estados Unidos do Sul America ruled! I tried to explain that as a Canadian I didn’t really claim to be an American but his assertion wasn’t to be denied, so American he was. Like many countries of the world there is a love-hate relationship with the USA, in that everyone seems to hate the ugly American with their brassy, obtuse, take no prisoners approach, but on the other hand they envy their wealth, Hollywood glamour and the John Wayne, shoot from the hip attitude, that comes from a tradition of  military muscle and the imperialist tendencies to back it up with action. This seems to garner both hate and respect. I could buy into the Texan brand of imperialism to fit in, but as a Canadian I doubted that I would ever be able to say, I love the smell of napalm in the morning, since I was closer to a liberal, Austen City limits kind of Texan, than an aspiring J R Ewing style redneck from Houston. The hotel room was a pleasant surprise and looked out over an inviting swimming pool with bar and adjacent aviary, which was home to a number of orange billed Toucans. Not bad for a small city developed during the gold boom of the 1800s and now a cow town the center for beef production and tourism in Mato Grosso state.

Later that evening the white Enteron Land Cruiser swung by the hotel with Dave at the wheel and we weaved through the narrow streets near the hotel and relatively light traffic in downtown Cuiabá, arriving in a few minutes at a local outdoor restaurant surrounded with palm trees, which rustled in the gentle tropical breeze. A dinner gathering had been arranged by Tom with the venue an open-air churrascaria, not far from the hotel. The smoke from the BBQ pit wafted through the air and the waiters served up cold Skol beer to the growing assembly of Enteron personnel.  This provided a good opportunity to meet the Enteron Power Plant based expats, as well as the local Brasileiros assigned to oversee the completion of a combined cycle electrical power plant being built by Siemens. The Land Cruisers were parked along the street with a couple of reals – 1 dollar, given to the freelance street parking attendants who made sure no one jacked the SUVs, which were a valuable commodity, running around $75K.

The fine smell of BBQ beef whetted my appetite and the Skol beer served gelada (ice cold) quenched the thirst of the weary travelers, including myself and the Texans and other power plant expats who had joined in for the good food and sultry ambiance, which comes with a humid 25 C and light breeze. I thought at the time that if all the food was this good in Brazil I had landed in the right country after all, but man I would have to work hard physically if I was to stay at my fighting weight of 250 lbs, so I looked forward to hitting the hotel pool to swim lengths to burn off the excess. This type of outdoor BBQ is serviced by passadores (meat waiters) who distribute the beef and chicken hearts on long skewers. The meat is cooked directly over the charcoal embers on long spits and is brought directly to the table. The passadores slice off slabs of as much succulent meat as you want, so it was the ultimate feast for a red blooded carnivore like myself. Most notable, besides the filet mignon, was the picanha (top sirloin cap) which was served medium rare, straight from the charcoal pit. Preparation prior to being skewered, includes a coarse salt rub to keep the juices in during BBQing.  Salad and manioc root were also served as side dishes to round out the main staple – carne muito deliciosa, including BBQd chicken hearts. This was a much appreciated introduction to the Enteron team and to the lifestyle that I would come to appreciate in this meat lovers’ paradise. Kudos to Tom for bringing the work force together in great fashion! This dude had some leadership potential after all.

Conversation turned to the favourite topic - holiday travel to the attractions which make Brazil famous. The local hot spot is Chapada dos Guimaraes since it is only a one-hour drive from Cuiabá. But if you ever get a chance to fly up north to Salvador de Bahia the music is the best in Brazil and its Carnival rivals New Orleans Mardi Gras, suggested Dave. Apparently, there were many distractions to the heavy, six-day work week that kept the expats entertained, so it sounded like the one-year contract I had signed might, with the manana, manana, attitude and many tourist attractions, hopefully be extended and with a little bit of luck, would allow me to take in some of the sights. One caution was noted however, in that Dave remarked: I’m glad I brought my German shepherd, Duke, from Houston, since a robber jumped the broken glass topped wall in the back yard a month back and was chased off by my dog. No harm done but some haven’t been so lucky and have gotten the shit beaten out of them by robbers and lost their valuables to boot. I made a mental note to avoid being robbed, kidnapped or murdered since this would definitely put a damper on this assignment. Better to look dangerous and at 6 foot four, with my wallet stashed in a Roots wallet hip holster I would look armed and dangerous, even if it was just an illusion. My contract included a clause forbidding the carrying of guns and other weaponry, so diplomacy would have to substitute for bravery, which was probably a good thing when a guest in this, for the most part, friendly country. There were very likely softer targets for the local robbers to take on, so fingers crossed I figured I would survive without loss of life or limb.

Back at the hotel on the 10th Floor and ready for the first day in the Enteron Power Plant office I was ready for the pipeline construction project with its extensive travel across the varied physiography of Brazil and Bolivia, characterized by everything from mountains to jungle valleys and the extensive Pantanal wetlands. The Skol and fine food  sat well and sleep enveloped me with dreams of the tropics, top of mind. The bright September sunshine woke me up and I was glad that it was still the winter dry season since it was not yet that humid and the view across Cuiabá extended clear across the city, all the way to the rolling fazendas in the countryside to the north. I looked down on the pool and Toucan aviary next to it and made a mental note to exercise after work to burn off some carbs. Cuiabá appeared to be a tourist friendly location which was a jumping off point to the Pantanal, one of the world’s most famous wetlands and wildlife reserves. From my research I knew I was going to have the opportunity to come in contact with everything from jaguar to anaconda, hopefully at a safe distance.  Downstairs, next to the pool, the breakfast buffet was set out on a long table with fresh squeezed orange juice, olives, cheese, crème caramel, yoghurt and bacon and eggs, ordered a la carte from the kitchen. Very healthy so far and no grumbling from my stomach so no need yet for Imodium. Everything so far was shaping up well.

Picked up by Dave in the Land Cruiser and on my way to the Power Plant office to meet the pipeline team, who were supported by the Houston Enteron crew, I was in high spirits since this commute seemed none too complicated. Dave advised: It won’t be too long before you head out to Caceres with a truck of your own to meet the Pipeline Chief Inspector, Larry Lemarde, a good ole boy from Louisiana. Larry is overseeing the contractor as Chief Inspector, with the help of a city boy from New York, Ivan Basquiat, and a crazy mother fucker, Turbo Ted Conklin, from down under. TontoPipe Constructadors Limited is doing a standard Brazilian job - moving too slow to complete the pipeline installation in our lifetimes. Rumour is that they are a little too comfortable in Caceres and have their eyes on other cross border activity like fucking every senorita between here and Santa Cruz", Dave advised.

Dave and Tom were mostly focused on the power plant completion, being carried out by Siemens, so the pipeline field work was seen as a low priority, more of a necessary evil and a pain in the ass, since the project was to be financed by OPIC – the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, an arm of the US government. This meant that it was subject to review by American politicians who were getting raked over the coals by the NGOs like Friends of the Earth and Amazon Watch in the USA for supporting a project which traversed so called Primary tropical forest in Bolivia, as well as the Pantanal wetlands. In the office Tom explained that Senior Management in Houston, who had bigger fish to fry, were getting flack from the politicians in Washington over the pipeline, so it was time to knock the contractor into line so that environmental and community relations issues were addressed. These motherfuckers aren’t following the contract and are more interested in stretching the contract out to make twice the money, cost plus, without doing the job to the specifications. Work has to proceed through the rainy season for us to meet the critical path linked to Power Plant completion, so your job is to keep on top of TontoPipe to make sure they tow the line. We will have daily meetings, six days a week, from the Power Plant office by conference call and you will spend your time in both Caceres and Cuiabá, so get ready to travel, said Tom. Along with the Americans there was a young Bolivian, Alberto Blanco who had worked on the Bolivia to Sao Paulo Pipeline from Santa Cruz, Bolivia. He was keen young, good looking engineer who looked like a local Brasileiro and had some experience working for KBR on the GASBOL mainline project, the year before. He was to stay on top of all costs, as claims adjuster and spoke good English, Spanish and some Portuguese. Good to meet you Al, I hope we can keep TontoPipe and BoaConstructor, the pipeline contractor in Bolivia, from fucking us over. I will be tracking their costs and change orders since they are working too slow and putting in for extras to make up for the lack of progress. Glad to help out if I can but I will be managing environmental protection in the field, for the most part, and I’ll no doubt have my hands full. I’m told that the locals don’t have a clue about environmental protection, so they will no doubt have to improve their performance for me to report back to Tom that construction is in compliance with the environmental management plan. The US government lending agency, OPIC, has assigned environmental inspectors to the projects and are likely to have lots of ammunition to send back to Washington. If we don’t straighten this shit out pronto someone is going to get reamed and sent home, so I don’t want it to be me, I said.

No problemo, Al, but let’s hook up at Getulio’s later after work since this is the best restaurant and bar in Cuiabá and has some beautiful Brazilian senoritas who really like to dress to the nines when they go out on the town, said Alberto. This Bolivian dude, who could pass for a Brazilian, with his swarthy skin and small stature, sounded like he could get me up to speed on both the project and local culture, so I gladly agreed. This watering hole was apparently something to look forward to and with a roll of cash provided by Dave for the week, 700 reias, for expenses, it sounded like the place to get high end food with good music and plenty of eye candy for desert. It was just down the street as well from my hotel so later that day Alberto, and another engineer, Larry Henkel, met up for some great food, including beef from the churrascaria, all served up in a very comfortable dining area on the ground floor café looking out on the main drag. Later, in the disco upstairs, the Brazilian music was pumping, and the beer was cold enough to almost make up for the lack of air conditioning. Sure enough the ladies were dressed in their best tight spandex showing off their main asset – bunda, which they were shaking in sexy rhythm to the sultry disco beat. Seemed like a good place to hang out, which would prove to be the case on and off for longer than I could have imagined from my start there in September 1999.

Arrangements were made for a Sunday excursion to hike up Morro de Santo Antonio, 35 kilometers south of Cuiabá. This is the local mountain which provides a good ascent to a vantage point 500 m above the agricultural plain surrounding the city. Sunday was the designated day off, so Alberto had borrowed a Toyota Hilux for the weekend. Since I would soon be heading out along the pipeline route across Brazil, southwest to Caceres, t this was a good time to check out the lay of the land and to see how the roads, out in the sticks, compared to the well- maintained roads in the city. Best to get to know the country pronto and to get a bit of a work out for the tasks ahead.

There was a dirt road that ended at the base of the hill and a well-worn hiking path wound through the very dry trees and foliage that had just come through the dry season. It gets so dry for the winter period, May through September, that the leaves drop off the trees during the tropical winter period, but not completely, as they do up north in Canada. The trip up the hill only took an hour. Weaving along the rocky path with local shrubs and grasses being the only cover on top of the hill, provided a decent workout. Great view from the top with a 360-degree vista of the great expanse of Mato Grosso and a good look at the city of Cuiabá and the towers which no doubt included the Eldorado hotel.

Good workout, but let’s head back to the city since I want to check out the hotel pool and bar. The descent was swift and ended with not too much huffing and puffing since we were both in good enough shape for this minor workout. Alberto indicated that this was a good destination but: Chapada dos Guimareas is the primo weekend destination for Cuiabános. It’s only an hour’s drive but it’s best to stay there over Saturday night and take in the hills and famous creeks which flow down the Chapada (sandstone ridges). The ridges rise up 800 m above the Mato Grosso plain with the Cidado de Pedre, or city of rocks, a major ecotourism destination within Chapada dos Guimaraes National Park. The wind over the last 400 million years has carved out pillars of sandstone which look like Roman columns, but in a natural rural environment.

Sounds like next weekend’s outing for sure if I can get my hand on a truck, I replied. It was about time I got out to explore the vast landscape of Mato Grosso, so I was looking forward to going to work on Monday to embrace the freedom that comes with a 4 X 4 and to exercise my very limited knowledge of Portuguese, which included the mandatory gas station instruction completa con diesel por favor – fill it up with diesel please. Muito importante to make sure that diesel was kept topped up in the Toyota since getting stuck out on MT-70 would leave me open to carjacking for sure. I wasn’t concerned yet about learning Portuguese but wanted to do better than sign language, so I had acquired a Travel Wise phrasebook which provided both European and Brazilian Portuguese expressions, which appeared to be quite different. I was familiar with the concept since Canadian English and that of the Texans I was dealing with was similar, but took some interpretation. Schooling in Parisian French had provided me with a closer comparison since Quebecois French is a little more relaxed than its European progenitor. With this in mind I was going to use any verbiage that got me from point A to Point B.

With a friendly smile and wad of cash on hand I was sure my use of the local language – Portuguese in Brazil and Spanish in Bolivia, or Portinol, somewhere in between, was going to be interpreted kindly.

After the one hour drive back to the hotel it was time to check out the aviary, pool and bar at the back of the hotel. Beautiful orange billed Toucans gave the hotel a certain exotic, tropical feel which was in keeping with Cuiabá’s location as a jumping off point for tourists to the Pantanal, one of the world’s largest and most bio-diverse wetlands. The heart of the Pantanal is only a couple of hour’s drive to the southwest of Cuiabá and so not only was the city a convenient distance to the Chapada but also a shooting distance to the Pantanal and also to Caceres. This town is at the crossroads being on the Paraguay River and also on the main highway to not only the Amazon watershed and rainforest, but also to the dodgy Bolivian border where cross border smuggling was apparently alive and well.

It was a pleasure to sit by the pool with a cold one embracing the notion that this was spring, while at home, up north in Canada, summer was coming to an end. Cold, wet, windy weather would soon be descending with short, gloomy days up north while here, 15 ° south of the equator, it would be getting warmer and wetter as the days went by, with little change in the daylight; twelve hours of daylight, more or less, throughout the year. This seemed a worthy alternative to freezing in the Great White North, especially with a roll of bills in my pocket and access to some pretty wild country, by all accounts. I was really looking forward to doing some off roading in the Hilux. Alberto explained that the main danger, besides getting robbed, was driving on the two-lane black top. MT-70 from here to Caceres is a risky road since the truckers are carrying full loads of hardwood like Brazilian cherry and teak out of the Amazon, south to Sao Paulo. It has huge potholes and the truckers, rather than staying in their lane, may switch lanes to dodge the potholes. They don’t stop for anyone, so you have to stay on your toes so that you avoid being forced off the highway. Also, coming up to Caceres you climb up the Arara Mountain ridges and when wet, they get greasy, due to all the oil dropped by the truck traffic, so driving that route is a challenge. I wondered to myself how many people would bite the dust on the project since heavy equipment and poor driving conditions equals death for pipeliners and locals alike. Time would tell, but no doubt there would be grave lessons learned about driving in the wild west of Brazil. I just hoped I would be up to the task at hand, since I didn’t want to go home in a box.

The nine o’clock weekly meeting kicked off with Tom giving the boys in Houston an update on the progress being made, both on the power plant next door to the office, which was on the outskirts of Cuiabá and to the cross-country pipeline which would deliver natural gas, extending 630 km from the existing Bolivia to Brazil gas pipeline to the plant. This was the end point for natural gas via the 18 pipeline from Bolivia and a relatively modern and comfortable office in that it had A/C and reliable internet access. More importantly, it had a kick-ass canteen with churrascaria as good as the restaurants in town, and all free to project employees. Tom was in a foul mood since there were very few  Enteron personnel on the pipeline job to oversee TontoPipe who was fucking the dog" hoping to do the contract without paying attention to HSE concerns, or the schedule. D & M, the environmental monitors brought in by Enteron to keep tabs on the pipeline contractors, in both countries, were filing exhaustive weekly reports with details of environmental and social non compliances which were being passed to Houston and to the OPIC consultant’s, Colorado Environmental, who were on the scene with their satellite phones, so that they could report back to Denver, even from the isolation of the camps in the far flung jungle camps.

It was apparent from Tom that it was time to take the bull by the horns and to head to the field: Al, I want you to travel to Caceres next week to check out the contractor’s initial right of way clearing and grading work between the border and Caceres. Larry Lemarde will be there and will give you the heads up on current progress. You’ll get your Toyota Hilux today – it’s equipped with a winch in front, so that when you get stuck you can pull yourself out of the mud, by hooking onto trees or other vehicles along the way.

Things were heating up and having been in the office for more than a week I was keen to get to the field to check out the action. This sounded like the adventure I had signed up for, so I wanted to get rolling into the distant, unknown road westward and to put the Hilux and winch to the test.

Chapter 3 Onward to Caceres

High time to learn to drive a 3 litre diesel, five speed stick shift, which was a change of pace from my automatic Jeep Grand Cherokee, back home, with its overpowered 5.2 litre, V8 engine. And time to do some off-roading through Brazil and to go where no man should go in a 4 X 4 armed with a powerful winch. Once oriented to the Hilux, after a commute to the hotel and back, I was game to head to Caceres along the notoriously potholed Highway 70, a two lane black top maintained by the army. Saturday morning it was time to get rolling, so off I sped across Cuiabá through Vargea Grande, passing over the Cuiabá River with its muddy flow and fishermen out on rock flats and out on the river in small runabouts. The land was still dry and I had heard that the airport in Cuiabá had been closed due to smoke from the ranchers burning the Brachiaria grass in the pastures, but I had no idea to what extent the burning took place. It would soon be clear. Rolling down the highway the traffic seemed fine and the trucks were not too plentiful and the road not so bad – potholes, yes, but easily avoided for sure, during daylight. Pasture with individual ipê trees with either bright purple or yellow flowers stood out in the fields that flanked the highway for the first hour and then the hills of the Arara mountain range appeared. The incline grew steep and the trucks started stacking up with black smoke spewing from their diesels, as they strained, winding up and over the ridges. To add to the strange atmosphere in the forested hills, smoke billowed out from a thousand points, even up to the hilltops, where the fazenderos had started the burning. The pastures apparently extended from hilltops, right down to the jungle along the creeks and it was clear the law against burning pastures hadn’t caught on with the locals. There was a good reason for this, as I would later discover. Brachiaria at the end of the dry season is tall and tough as wire, so very difficult to cut with a mower. Burning it was bad for the environment, both for the soil, since it burns up the precious organic matter in the topsoil and for the air, since it makes breathing a challenge and compromises visibility for aircraft. Hence the need to occasionally close Cuiabá airport, due to restricted visibility on very smoky days.

Wending my way through the hills seemed not so different from driving through the back roads of Quebec in the Laurentians between Brownsburg and St. Jovite, as I had done as a novice 16-year-old driver in the family’s boat-like Ford station wagon. The main difference being the greasy deposits on the road where oil from the trucks made it slick. It was a good idea to slow down on the corners and I made a mental note to avoid travelling during torrential rain. Fortunately the rainy season was still down the road a bit so this was the right time to get to know the lay of the land. Soon the last ridge had been climbed and descended with the road flattening out into a straight away for the next hour or so. I zipped past the sign for Caceres and in the distance, I could see the city with its little red brick homes on the outskirts and the two-story houses and hotels in the distance downtown. No time to lose in getting to work. As anticipated, just outside of town was the Caceres Camp of TontoPipe comprised of offices and parking out front and the large machinery, mechanic’s shop and pipe storage yard in the back. I pulled into the parking lot and was soon at the reception where a black haired beauty, Celina, greeted me: Bom dia, tudo bem? Si tudo bem senora. Enteron – Larry Lemarde por favor. Sem problema – a direita. To the right was the Enteron offices embedded in the TontoPipe assembly of buildings and sure enough there sat the Louisiana red neck, Larry Lemarde, who was the acting Chief Inspector. Larry was a small, very wiry, fifty-year-old former welder who had been around the block and was enjoying the novelty of Brazil with its many accessible senoritas. With a good old boy southern drawl Larry met me at the door – Welcome to Caceres – come on in and grab a spot in the office. Tomorrow we’ll head out to Spread 1 and I’ll show you the countryside near the Bolivian border, west of here. Sure thing – I’ll set up in the office with internet access and touch base with the D & M environmental inspectors downtown. I want to see how things are going and what problems need addressing in the field, so that I’ll be ready