Day 78 - Fazenda Barbacena to Londrina

Great day - visit to Usina Vale do Ivai in the morning - sugar and alcohol production plant - always learn something new when I go there.
It’s one of the most self sufficient industries I know of:
- Sugar cane by itself is a renewable source of energy
- The fibers of the sugar cane are burnt to produce enough electricity for the entire plant + surplus to sell back to the grid
- The soot from the burnt fibers is spread on the soil as a fertilizer
- The unused/old yeast is used as an additive to livestock feed
- The “vinhaca” - a bi-product of the fermentation process is used as a fertilizer as well
- The yeast-cream is bought from breweries around the country to produce more dried yeast, which comes with 6 alcohol by the way, for “free”
- The residue from the sugar process is sent back into the alcohol plant to extract even more sugar
- The water used to wash and cool is always filtered and could be bottled for drinking
… and the list goes on…
In any case… after the visit we had lunch at the farm, had a nap and headed towards Londrina - only an hour and a half away.
There we met Otto and Guilherme who rode their motorcycles (BMS 1200GS and a BMW 800S) from Sao Paulo to meet with us.
Later on we went to another cousin’s house - Adriana Carioba - to have some beers then dinner.
Very pleasant dinner at a Japanese place in town.
All drunk from Saque now going to bed :)