The car was fixed (again), the mechanic was really good so we’re very happy to have access to someone reliable nearby. He had replaced the clutch cylinder barrel and the alternator brushes for R$340 which we thought was very reasonable. We left Caxias about 2pm following Candido in his little Fiat to the land. It was about an hour and a half with the last hour on very rough dirt road. Unfortunately my phone went flat so I couldn’t take any pictures of our arrival. Candido had to stop before the last 20 minutes as it’s not possible to traverse without a raised 4×4 with large wheels and low-range gears due to extremely uneven and steep places in the road. The Niva was really coming into its own on this terrain and we finally started to feel like we had got the right car! it pulled the 1 ton trailer up really steep rocky and gravelly road without even complaining, and it didn’t heat up at all, it seems like it loves this terrain and hates highways 🙂
We were not able to get onto our part of Candido’s land that we want to build and grow on as there’s a river that has a steep drop of about a meter that we can’t drive over. A bridge has been started by someone at some point, so we’ll finish it off soon and then do a bit of machete work to get the car and trailer the rest of the way. For now we’ve stopped and set up our tents just prior to the river.