Is that you Ethan???
One thing Phillipp told me in passing is that he is in fact Brazilian and his friend that he went with is not, this is a lot of the same issues people have been running into. If you don't know the language and don't understand their "brazilian ways" of doing things, ie: NOT the american or european way, you WILL have a hard time, there is no doubt about that...
We just had 10 people come down on 2 trips and many of them have asked me how the hell would they have gotten around that big boulder in the road to Jeri without Alberto negotiating his way through it... Or getting charged the Gringo pricing... Cheap or not, you will get screwed if you are a Gringo without a Brazilian...