I’m constantly amazed to hear and watch Colin and Danny, our driver and guide for this trip, babble away in Portuguese.

When we met them late last year in Argentina, neither of them knew any Portuguese, and Danny had only had some lessons in Spanish. But now! Wow!

I am so impressed because theirs isn’t your simple order-a-meal or find-the-hotel touristic gumpf. Theirs is a proper manage-in-Portuguese and read-the-newspaper language—all in a total of about four months of travelling in Brazil.

We get to Peru soon and they’ll have to switch to their Spanish—another new talent. I asked Danny which was better—his Portuguese or his Spanish. He says he has more Spanish vocabulary and better Portuguese pronunciation.

It reminds me of advice given by Lu, the guide on our 24-week, London to Sydney overland. Her view was that you spend a lot of time sitting in a truck—looking out the…