Yesterday night I chose a different place to stay for the night. I did not want to call too much attention by staying in the same place. About half an hour after I parked a car stopped behind mine, flash lights towards me and a men talking towards me. I opened the door, got out of the car and introduced myself. The police did not. The police officer asked to have a look into the car and obviously I agreed. A second police car came and I handed my identification card to another officer. He had a quick look and chat with the others and then came back to me and actually offered help. I replied that this was not necessary and thanked for the offer. It looked to me like they were searching for someone in particular and realized quickly that It wasn’t me.

In the morning I drove to the Volkswagen dealer, parked in front of the entrance to use the internet and continue working on the site. When the sun reached midday the car did not have shade anymore and it became extremely hot, with no breeze at all and I walked towards the center. Boa Vista is a small city but being the capital of Roraima it had all state institutions located in the center, the white house of the president, the parliament and all secretaries and departments. I came about three different groups who were protesting in front of the parliament, school teachers, indigenous tribes and public service employees.

Early afternoon I went back to the Volkswagen dealer and continued working. I did not expect that all the work related to the site would be so time consuming; improving the quality of the pictures, writing the diary, creating the maps and finally uploading the pictures to Picasa and the complete post onto the site. I had a lot of days to catch up with. The travel agent had some problems with the credit card and I had to use my old office a lot in order to resolve the flight for my baby Matilda and Morena Unfortunately this happened at the end of the day; luckily the travel agent could hold the ticket and the price up to the next day 11:30 and I was confident that the problem was a minor problem and that my staff could resolve tomorrow morning. There was definitely no problem with the limit; it must have been something internal or even with the machine at the travel agent.

During the whole day and actually the whole trip so far I had plenty of time to think, maybe too much. I still had a lot of concerns about my last businesses in Natal, the continuation of this project and others, my personal health and my baby Matilda. She will be four years in December and more and more I got the feeling that I had to be closer to her to do everything possible for her education, her well-being, her happiness, her future. That feeling included her brother and sister and obviously her mother.

With all the problems of the project so far, especially insurance of the car and the unexpected and rising costs, I started to seriously rethink the initial idea and route of the project and started looking for alternatives. Venezuela had serious problems and decisive elections ahead with the chance of public upraise. At some stage I was considering to include Central America up to Mexico as the trip would just be another 5000 km from the border Colombia / Panama, so more or less what I had driven already. The news about the drug war in Mexico was not exciting. El Salvador would hit the record of 991 killings in a month and take the lead in front of Guatemala. I am a very optimistic and positive thinking person and did not get worried about this too much. I was worried about my daughter and her family. Am I doing the right thing or am I abandoning her? Good night!