Tremembé lies in the flat green floor of the Paraíba valley, at just under six hundred metres, between two larger cities, Taubaté and Pindamonhangaba. It is not a place most riders choose to see for its own sake, but it is the foot of the mountain, and in a ride like this one, that makes it important. Behind the town the Serra da Mantiqueira rises like a wall, and a few kilometres beyond, the road begins its climb toward Campos do Jordão, which at around sixteen hundred metres is the highest city in Brazil.
The town takes its name from the Tremembé people, who lived in this stretch of the valley long before the Portuguese reached it. The valley was later coffee country, and then a corridor for rail and road between São Paulo and Rio, which is why the old Via Dutra runs so near. Tremembé today has a population of about thirty thousand, a lively old centre with a square and a church, and the slightly confusing reputation of having a well-known prison on its outskirts. Visitors mostly see only the commercial strip along the highway and the cafes on the way out.
Come here to prepare. Fuel is easy, plentiful and a good deal cheaper than anything you will find up the mountain, and the lunch counters serve the standard Brazilian plate of rice, beans and grilled meat at a price that has not caught up with the resort towns above. The valley is also hot and humid, so it is a good place to sort out gear: you will leave in a T-shirt and arrive in the cloud with a jacket on. Mornings are the best time, before the heat builds and before the weekend traffic from São Paulo takes over the climb.
The climb itself, up the state road SP-123, is a proper motorcycle road. It turns tight, bends back on itself, passes through pines and araucarias as the air cools, and can be foggy at the top whatever the sky looks like in the valley. Watch for wet patches, lorries labouring on the bends, and sudden banks of mist. If the weather is bad in Tremembé, it is worse above, so make the decision here, not halfway up.