Uruara, the city without forest where beef is king

And suddenly, the dreaded shock… We had only left the town of Altamira, the starting point of our trip, for barely an hour. Time to browse what? At best 80 or 90 kilometers? Admittedly, the potholes were linked, the markings on the ground were becoming more and more random, here and there workers dressed in crayfish overalls and wearing straw hats, standing on Japanese diggers, tried to patch up this who can be. But from there to imagine that this road, the so proud “Transamazonian”, would cease to be asphalted after a few tens of kilometres…

After a small river with brown waters, we are brutally propelled on these dirt tracks that we will not leave (or almost) until the end of the trip, four weeks later. In an instant, the body of the 4 x 4 – a white Chevrolet S10 pickup – is covered in brown dust. The shock absorbers cash, the back a little less… We will have to get used to it. “No more comfort, guys! The adventure begins! »roared, not without pleasure, our driver, Gabriel, gentle colossus of 120 kilos, and expert in tropical ass-jobbers.

This transition from bitumen to earth is not anecdotal. It marks a symbolic border, the entry into another world. Beyond the town of Medicilandia, so named in homage to General Medici, the founding father of this road, there are only fields as far as the eye can see. This is the Amazon without forest, the jungle-desert, the tropical void. Here and there, farmers have let a large walnut tree or a palm tree grow, just to offer a tad bit of shade to the lord of these gloomy immensities: the all-powerful ox, white dress and dark eyes.

His figure is omnipresent in the city of Uruara, “flower basket” in the Tupi language and the second stage of our journey. It is exhibited in front of butchers, but also supermarkets, sometimes even garages, thrift stores, hotels. Without forgetting, and this is more logical, the churrascarias, these grill restaurants, serving unlimited red meat for 30 reais (about 5.40 euros). A telling figure: the city has 45,000 inhabitants for 350,000 cattle, or nearly eight per person. Five times more than the Manche department, the French record for the category.

“Here, it’s better than Sao Paulo”

Uruara is one of the strongholds of Brazilian agribusiness. Along the Transamazonian, which here acts as a central avenue, the visitor finds everything: restaurants, a sushi bar, chocolatiers, vendors of Mr. Shake sorbets, and even an O Boticario cosmetics store. Dallas, Paris, Topazzo hotels offer Netflix to their guests. The alleys, admittedly dusty, are sometimes lined with grass and small canals. In the middle of the Amazon, we get 4G as in the middle of Sao Paulo.

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