To Belém & Back: Backroads Brazil with my Black Lab

Have you ever wondered how to travel with your favorite pet in a huge tropical country where footloose foreigners are suspect?

Author Ben Batchelder abandoned a cozy corporate career and, instead of returning to the U.S. like a normal re-pat, moved deep into the interior of Brazil.

Here, he drives his two-wheel drive station wagon into the Amazon, on the notoriously dangerous Belém-Brasília highway, and back along Brazil's endless Atlantic Coast, on roads few if any Brazilians brave. Hence the need for such a ferocious breed as Labrador: for protection.

Along the way, humorous encounters with countless locals help him to plumb Brazilian culture and history, in many aspects the flip-side of the American experience, and reveal how he fell in love with Brazil's beguiling warmth in the first place - along with black Labs.