Written by and Photos by Doug Loynes. Posted in Rides
Deep in the heart of Brazilian, a thousand miles from the nearest beach, lies Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, a motorcyclist's paradise in the highlands with a supernatural character steeped in local legend. I picked up a Royal Enfield Himalayan in the city of Brasilia, 150 miles south of the park, and set off in search of the Chapada's secrets.
Stunning landscapes await any intrepid motorcyclist who ventures to Brazil's highland paradise.
It's fitting that any trip to the ethereal Chapada starts in Brasilia, a city so meticulously designed in the modernist tradition, with its clean lines and curved edges, that it could have crash-landed on the spaceport set of a sci-fi movie. Locals joke that Brasilia is so well planned that anywhere in the city is 20 minutes or less away and that was true of my taxi ride from the airport to Galpao 17, a popular bikers' haunt on the outskirts of the city where live music plays and drinks flow. Think Star Wars' Mos Eisley, but without the scum and villainy.
When I arrived at the bar, Flávio Bressan was just finishing attaching a set of heavy panniers to the flanks of an immaculate 2021 Royal Enfield Himalayan. Something of a local legend, Bressan is a motorcycling enthusiast and the founder of Projeto Estradas Amazônicas, an ambitious project which aims to map all the Amazon region's underexplored roads. After chatting about bikes and the best routes to and from the Chapada, Bressan handed me the Himalayan's keys and waved me onto the highway.
The Royal Enfield Himalayan made light work of the tricky terrain on some of Chapada's tougher trails.
Riding the BR-010, Brasilia's cityscape soon fell away, replaced by rolling meadows and pastureland as the highway penetrated further into the interior. A couple of hours later, I passed through the town of Alto ParaÃso de Goiás, the gateway to the Chapada, where the real fun began. Heading west out of town. I found myself cutting through the cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, on a dramatic highway that could easily pass for one of the more iconic stretches of Route 66 were it not for the hazard signs warning of roaming anteaters and prowling maned wolves. I opened the throttle on the empty straights, letting the Himalayan rip through the stunning scenery with a growl that would send even the most fearsome wolves scuttling for cover.
As the sun began its descent, I cast my eyes skyward. Locals claim that Chapada dos Veadeiros has a supernatural energy, owed to its geographical position on Paralelo 14. This latitude line is 14° south of the equator, upon which the former Inca kingdom of Machu Pichu can also be found. Alien enthusiasts insist that the Incas were an extra-terrestrial civilization who built a cosmic highway along Paralelo 14, which is why reports of UFO sightings in Chapada are unusually common. I scanned the sky for any sign of supernatural activity, but it must have been a quiet night for alien traffic.
The Rio Preto Falls from one of Chapada's most famous viewpoints.
By nightfall I'd reached my accommodations, an eco-camp on the edge of the isolated village of São Jorge, a popular jumping-off point for many of the region's natural attractions. Chapada is often referred to as the “Cradle of Water†on account of the network of rivers that descend in a succession of spectacular waterfalls throughout the national park, many of which can be reached by dirt tracks that branch off from the highways. Bressan warned me that while some of these tracks would be easy enough on the bike, others would represent a sterner test of my off-road capabilities. Buoyed by the confidence born of an easy day's riding, I slept certain that I could handle whatever the Chapada threw at me.
The next morning, as I hauled the Himalayan off the ground for what felt like the 100th time, I cursed myself for not properly heeding Bressan's warning. This trail, which had snaked for 15 miles through fields and forest, was a happy blend of packed dirt, loose gravel, treacherous potholes, and ruts carved out by 4x4s during the rainy reason. The latest obstacle, an impossibly steep incline dotted with rocky outcrops, was proving to be a bridge too far.
In Chapada, the real fun lies off the beaten track.
The sun grew more relentless as the midday heat crept up. Dripping with sweat, it was sheer stubbornness that stopped me from turning back. That, and a baseless optimism that my destination, the spectacular Cachoeira Macaquinhos (Little Monkey Waterfall) was just beyond this final ridge. With a flourish of effort, I took the Himalayan to the bottom of the incline, picked up some speed to gather a little momentum, and chopped the throttle on the climb just enough to plot a course for the bike around the larger boulders so that it could pull me to the top. My smug sense of achievement lasted a matter of seconds before I saw a sign that told me that the waterfall was still another 12 miles away.
The sight that awaited me when I finally reached Cachoeira Macaquinhos was more than worth the sweat spent getting there. A narrow path followed the River Marquinho as it cascaded through a series of cataracts, each more breathtaking than the last, with crystal blue pools a-plenty for a filthy, road-weary traveller like me to dip into.
One of the countless cascading waterfalls along the Cachoeira do Macaco trail.
For at least a couple of hours I enjoyed the run of the place all to myself before a gang of tourists were jettisoned from a 4×4 and the spectre of the difficult ride back to camp to loomed over me. I asked the car's driver how he'd found the journey getting here. “Tough,†he told me in Portuguese. “But it's a lot easier now they've finished the new road.â€
“The new road?†I asked.
The driver laughed as I told him about the route I'd taken to the waterfall.
“That trail has been closed for months!â€
Over the course of a week, the Himalayan and I tackled countless more trails of varying levels of technical difficulty in pursuit of more of the Chapada's hidden waterfalls. None were quite so bad as the notorious discontinued route to the River Marquinho, although at one point the Himalayan's front tire slipped into a narrow rut in the track at speed, catapulting me sideways and adding a flailing gringo to the list of unidentified flying objects that have been spotted in the region.
On my last day in Chapada, safely back on terra firma, I found myself heading north along a highway bisecting the picturesque “Zen Garden,†the exact point at which Paralelo 14 crosses and supposedly the location of a portal that marks the entrance to the Inca's secret road to Machu Pichu. Leaning into the highway's gentle, meandering curves, a smile escaped my face as I became entranced by the magnificence and mysticism that sums up Chapada dos Veadeiros. This natural wonderland, hidden away in the Brazilian highlands, boasts a blend of open, empty highways and tricky trails that seem tailor-made to give motorcyclists privileged access to its best-kept secrets. Aliens or not, there can be no doubt that riding through the Chapada is an out of this world experience.
Posing at the 14th parallel, where it's said there lies a secret portal to the Inca's hidden kingdoms.
Doug Loynes is a teacher and writer from Manchester, England. He owes his passion for motorcycling to the eight-year-old bully in Bali who goaded him into returning his “hairdresser's†rental scooter and exchanging it for a Kawasaki dirt bike. Since then, he's journeyed the world seeking stories at the intersection of adventure travel and culture which place the local at the heart of the feature. Doug now lives in Sao Paulo and likes to spend his weekends on two wheels in the Brazilian backcountry. Follow him on Instagram @Instdougramm.