08-Nov-2003 -- Guilherme Augusto Vargas Cesar, the confluence hunter who had joined me in the quests to both 23S 45W and 23S 46W points, was not in his best shape...

Since my wife once more refused to make history with me, Guilherme was replaced by Luciano Amaury dos Santos.

We left Sao Jose dos Campos early in the morning, following the Carvalho Pinto highway to Santo Antonio do Pinhal. From there, we went to Pouso Alegre, passing by Paraisopolis, Conceicao dos Ouros and Cachoeira de Minas on the BR 459 road. In Pouso Alegre, we left the BR 459 and took the MG 179 up to the entrance to Espirito Santo do Dourado, the small town near this confluence point.

In the NNW sector of this town, there is the exit to an unpaved road. After crossing a bridge over a small creek, we took the left and always followed the widest road, turning left on the first main bifurcation and right on the second. The point is right in the middle of a potatoes plantation field, about 1.5 km ahead of this last bifurcation.

When we arrived, the workers did not show too much surprise with our presence. This is probably because we were not really the first unusual people to walk there carrying on a GPS receiver. We later found out that The "Tribo do Pedal Selvagem" (something like "The Wild Pedalling Tribe") had already been there ... by bike! Their saga is described in the homepage http://www.tribodopedalselvagem.com.br/desafios/czt2003/. It seems to me that they were too busy enjoying the pleasure of pedalling some 100 km a day, and did not want to bother themselves with the task of taking pictures and uploading the report to the Degree Confluence Project.

When we were in the middle of the plantation field, we lost the satellite sign. That surprised us a lot because there were neither big trees nor rocks around. We then noticed a dark cloud above us. Next, we got rain.

Back in the car, we realized that the film did not move from picture number one, even though we had taken some half a dozen shots. We fixed the film, wait for the rain to stop and went back to the plantation field. After taking the required pictures, we went back to Sao Jose stopping by Santo Antonio do Pinhal, a nice mountain resort.