Our Overlanding Rig

Carioca

Our home on wheels is a custom-made, self-contained, off-grid, 4-season ready habitat box mounted on a modified off-road, 4-wheel-drive Kenworth K370 truck chassis.

It is named after the Tupi-Guaraní term “Carioca”. Tupi-Guaraní, one of the main indigenous groups that lived on the coast and the plateau of pre-Columbian Brazil.

The origin of the term is controversial, but it may have come from the Tupi-Guaraní portmanteau term “Kari’ oka” obtained by merging “kara’iwa” (white man) and “oka” (house). The term was presumably used to denote the location of the houses of European settlers in the area around Rio de Janeiro.

Another possibility is that the term derived from another portmanteau: “kariîó oka”, obtained by merging “kariîó” (Carijó) and “oka” (house). Carijó was a Guaraní native tribe of Rio de Janeiro that lived between the neighborhoods of Glória and Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro.

Finally, a last alternative is that the term may have derived from the Tupi-Guaraní name “akari”, denoting a species of catfish known to inhabit the area, and “oka”.

In recent times, the term has been used to refer to anything related to the city of Rio de Janeiro or to the ones born in the city.

We were both born in Rio de Janeiro and are therefore Cariocas.

The wavy pattern on the habitat box skirt represents the Portuguese stonework of Copacabana Beach sidewalk in our home city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The design on the truck cab doors shows a parrot standing on the sidewalk between the beaches of Copacabana and Leme.

The parrot is “Jose Carioca” or “Joe Carioca” as he is known from the Disney films “Saludos Amigos” from 1942 and “The Three Caballeros” from 1944. He is the Brazilian friend of Donald Duck and was created by Brazilian cartoonist Jose Carlos de Brito when Walt Disney visited Brazil in 1941.

We have world maps on each side of the habitat box.

On the driver’s side, we have a world map by Tobias Young using a Grieger Triptychial projection.

This projection provides a unique view of our world land masses as a large archipelago.

It is amazing to realize the almost continuous land connecting South America, Central and North America, Europe and Asia, South Africa, India and Australia.

On the passenger’s side, we have an artistic interpretation by Massimo Pietrobon of what the earth may have looked like 300 million years ago during the late Paleozoic era when all land masses were joined together forming the Pangea supercontinent.

Around 200 million years ago in the early Mesozoic era, Pangea started to break apart, forming the continents we know today.

Curupira

Our motorcycle is named after the mythological creature “Curupira” or kuru’pir in Tupi-Guaraní, which means “covered in blisters.”

Curupira is an entity that protects the forests and animals. He has bright red or orange hair, which can also ignite and turn into fire, and his feet are turned backwards. He lives in the forest and uses his backward feet to create footprints on the forest floor that confuse hunters, woodcutters or anyone who damages the habitat.

Curupira rides a peccary and preys on poachers and hunters that take more than they need from the forest, and those who hunt animals that were taking care of their offspring.

We do also have Tupi-Guaraní names for our mountain bikes, board and kayak. The mountain bikes are named “Curumin” (boy) and “Cunhatã” (girl).

Our board is named “Pororoka” (a tidal bore with waves up to 13 feet high that travel as much as 500 miles inland upstream on the Amazon and adjacent rivers).

Our kayak is named “Yara”, another portmanteau of the Tupi-Guaraní terms y (“water”) anda îara (“lady”).

And finally, our raft is named “Ypupîara”, another Tupi-Guaraní mythological water man-creature that serves as inspiration for many terror movies about water creatures of the Amazon.

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