On the road to Porto Seguro: 16 May

For the last 14 hours I'd been bumping my way north. I travelled over 1000km on a godforsaken "road" from Rio to Porto Seguro. I'd heard someone say that this was a highway, but to me this dishevelled route was a pathetic excuse for a mule track. We were dodging sand filled pot holes that looked more like meteorite craters. Periodically, we were flying over the curb to avoid head on collisions. And my body aching from the perpetual shaking and juddering as we bounced along.

The contrast to the super-smart-smooth-highways-to-nowhere found across China was striking. I suppose Brazil's budget is constrained by a range of social programmes meaning there is little room for massive capital investments. Indeed, Lula was elected by the poor precisely because he pledged to reinforce social spending. But it is easy to see how the sugar cane, mangoes, pine trees, and other crops me would face higher costs and delays in getting to market. Was poor infrastructure the break on growth in Brazil?