Passo Fundo

The day crosses almost the entire width of Rio Grande do Sul, leaving the open country of the Missões and heading east toward the Serra Gaúcha. It is a long road day, but the landscape changes steadily along the way: broad agricultural country gives way to the higher plateau, then to the increasingly folded terrain and vineyards of northeastern Rio Grande do Sul.

Across the Plateau

An 08:00 departure from São Miguel das Missões puts the route onto the long eastward run. The first hours cross the open Missões plateau, a landscape of cattle country, grain fields and broad rolling horizons. There is little reason to stop early; the road is the day's main event.

Fuel comes in Ijuí, before the route continues east toward Passo Fundo.

Lunch: Passo Fundo

By late morning, the route reaches Passo Fundo, one of the principal cities of the northern Rio Grande do Sul plateau.

The city grew from an eighteenth-century route through the interior, when the ford over the Passo Fundo River became part of the network connecting the southern cattle country with markets farther north. Cattle, erva-mate and eventually wheat helped turn the settlement into an important regional center.

Passo Fundo also has an unusually strong literary identity. The city is known as the National Capital of Literature, a title associated with the long-running Jornada Nacional de Literatura, one of Brazil's major literary gatherings.

Lunch here breaks up the long morning before the road turns toward the Serra Gaúcha.