Bloody Nora, I realised, I'm free. I'm on my way.

A flurry of farewells before I zipped back to the hotel. I was leaving a bag's worth of stuff there -- that second pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, a Brazil guidebook, a wholly unnecessary fourth pair of pants, you know the kind of thing -- and got very generous assurances from the hotel that it would all be waiting for me on my return, whenever that might be. It was pushing 4 in the afternoon by the time everything was strapped down and I could leave Curitiba. Properly.

The guys at Cabral Honda had warned against the more direct XXXX to Porto Alegre. It was a less scenic, two-lane traffic jam most of the way. Most of the lorries in Brazil would be on that road and doubtless aiming straight for me. Avoiding it meant reluctantly by-passing the photo-opportunity that is the small town of Residencia F*ck. Next time.

Instead, to Florianopolis once more. That meant I started on familiar territory (although I still managed to lose my way out of Curitiba). The afternoon sun was away to my right, bright in a cloudless sky. I sped alongside the suburban traffic towards the Interstate.

At one traffic light I pulled up alongside a smart family car. From the passenger seat, a young boy stared. I understood his awe. What a hero this biker must be! I smiled my most manly, benign smile. His father wound down the window.

- Yes, I said, I was heading for Tierra del Fuego and Yes, one day the young boy could do the same. Why not? Follow your dream! Inwardly I felt a fraud. The bike was sparklingly clean and the plates showed I was a 'local', so who was I to be talking of such things? But then again here I was, a foreigner, thousands of miles from home. I really was On An Adventure.

I waved as the lights changed and accelerated away, a Knight of Old making that young boy's day, if not his whole childhood! And when he sets off On An Adventure of his own, he'll remember the Englishman on a flame red motorbike who inspired him once, so long ago... these are the things that daydreams are made off; it took me a while to realise they were my daydreams, not his. Needless to say that young boy had forgotten about me by the time he switched on the TV at home that night. And that was the last time a young boy openly displayed much more than mild interest in my passage around South America.

The speedo tripped round xxxx kilometres an hour out of Curitiba, requiring a stop on the edge of a stretch of dual carriageway at the foot of a long, straight hill. There wasn't much traffic, but what there was thundered past at high speed, anxious to make up for the agonisingly slow uphill sections ahead. I pulled off the tarmac and prepared to take a photo of the speedo.

50 yards ahead and walking towards me was an old man, oblivious to the lorries and the speed and the noise. We smiled a greeting and introduced ourselves.

Walter Kristall was 76, a German immigrant most keen to impress on me that his family had arrived 'before the war, before the war' - refugees from Hitler, in other words. *Good* Germans rather than the bad sort who fled in such numbers after 1945.

Walter spoke and spoke. That was his farm, he said, gesturing to the west, and over there was a cousin. The local brewery is over there. Very good beer. I have family in the next town. My mother died aged 95. Yes, lots of people live a long life round here. I've been to Iguacu, oh yes. And Curitiba, once.

Here we were chatting away on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in southern Brazil, for half-an-hour, Walter and me. What twists and turns had brought us to this point at this time? What of his life? I was fascinated. Wasn't this exactly the kind of moment I was looking for? But the sun was setting and I still had a long way to go. Walter showed no sign of getting bored with his life story so in the end I had to switch the bike back on and make my excuses. He waved me off and I regretted almost straightaway not staying to talk longer. Already this journey of 10,000 miles was becoming a race rather than a stroll.

Luckily, the wind was much lighter than on my previous trip. I made good time but it was still dark by the time I reached the coast and hit the outskirts of Florianopolis. Lighting was poor and there were lots of cars about, but it didn't feel too dangerous despite all the injunctions to avoid using the roads at night.

I negotiated a bed in the Motel Fiesta on the southern outskirts and settled down to a night of soft satin sheets and lurve songs wafting uncontrollably through hidden speakers.

My first day *on the road*. I was actually doing it -- at last. I slept brilliantly.