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| On the way to work each day... |
Most main roads around Sorocaba are in good condition with motorway like freeways running criss cross across the city with good quality roads splitting off. It seems the smaller the road the worse its likely to be ( not surprisingly) but we were surprised to see that some of the populare roads in and out of the large industrial area were we are working are in a poor state in places. This looks like its mainly due to the eroding nature of the massive downpours that they get around here.
The taxi ride to and from work each day has had a few 'interesting' moments but Chris is still climbing in the front so it cant be all that bad. Driving in Brazil I imagine can be quite scary if you don't adopt the same 'attitude' as your follow road users. Distances between vehicles is down to the bare minimum a lot of the time, overtaking seems to be done as close as possible, and changing lanes looks to be done without much of a signal.
Mix into this small cc motorcycles and scooters with scantily dressed madmen (and woman) clinging to them;nipping in, out and around everything they can while trying to screw as much out of the engine as possible.
In Brazil they drive on the right hand side. A flashing left signal means that the car ahead is warning you not to pass, for some strange reason. If the car ahead of you wants to show you that it is safe to pass it will flash the right signal. The right signal is the same signal to indicate that you're going to stop on the side of the road, so it means you're going to slow down. But the left signal is the same signal to indicate you're going to pass the car ahead, meaning you're going to speed up. Confused? I am and i'm sat in the back !