The ultimate Brazilian family vacation – Part III
The next destination on our Brazilian family vacation (I call it that because we met mostly Brazilians along the way, all on vacation with their families, all visiting most of the same places as us), came highly recommended by many Brazilians we met along the way – it was a national park called Lençios Marenhenses, in the town of Barrerinhas. But, taking public transportation as we were (the one difference from your average Brazilian family, who was traveling by car), it was nearly impossible to get there in one day. Knowing that, we made no rush to get the early bus out, allowing us to enjoy the great free breakfast (eggs!) offered by our luxury hotel before heading out of town, making sure to get our money’s worth. We took the minibus to the main bus station (while, in the middle of the route we got rushed out of one minibus and shuffled around the corner to another, much more crowded minibus…whatever) and hopped onto the bus to our first stop – Tûtoia.
We were surprised to actually make the next connection out of Tûtoia, so we sat at a cafe and had a severely oversweetened juice, talking to some local while singing along with our new favorite band – Banda Magnifico, who is a very poppy forró group, waiting for our truck to come. (By the way, most of the juice, and coffee for that matter, are severely oversweetened in Brazil.) The truck came and we piled on – it was another 4×4 pickup with benches in it, and it took us for a great ride through the backroads. Well, these weren’t even roads – just tracks in sand that made their way through small little communities. The ride was a good 2 hours and I loved every minute of it.
Our driver dropped us off at a pousada (the pousada?) in the town of Paulinho Neves, a very small place. We sat down and had a few beers and soon realized that the town was out of power. Well, the town on this side of the river was out of power. The other side had power. It went out that morning and there was no telling when it would come back. Power outages really started to become a fairly normal thing, though, recently, as we made our way further north. We were hardly phased by it – we actually loved it. We sat out on the street, drinking our (somehow cold) beer by candlelight and ate a great meal by gas lantern – they were obviously prepared for power outages…everyone had gas lanterns going.
Here we met the first foreign tourists we had met in a while, here on our Brazilian family vacation (save for in Jericoacoara, which is a huge backpacker spot) – three Australian backpackers. They were part of a sort-of guided tour through Brazil. And this is when we learned about Elma. Elma was in their tour group as well – a 70-year old American woman from Portland who, the night before, had apparently been chasing the cooks at the very restaurant we were at because she smelled pot and wanted to smoke with them. She likes drinking hard liquor and had spilled a bottle on the bus, offering the rest to the other passengers since she had lost the cap. Her latest incident involved making the Korean girl on their tour very uncomfortable when she showed up at their door in the middle of the night, dressed in her full-body mosquito net suit – with nothing on underneath! We wanted to meet this lady.
Not yet. We were off at 5am the next morning and headed to bed. After a horrible sleep under a hot mosquito net filled with holes and mosquitos audibly flying around my head, we packed in the dark and jumped back on a 4×4 pickup for the rest of the ride to Barrerinhas. This ride was awesome, again, following more sandtracks. The scenery changed every 15 minutes, from savannah to backcountry to more dunes. My favorite image was this small herd of cows coming over the dunes just at sunrise – I love those cows. Who ever imagined cows on sand dunes? There were bouts of sleepiness and a bit of a sore ass during the ride where I really wondered if and how the other passengers did this every day (and felt bad for them if they did), but the scenery outweighed this incredibly.
We got into town at a bright and early 7am, where we met two guys offering to help us with accomodation and a tour for the park. Well, the louder more obnoxious guy deemed himself worthless after taking us to a pousada that was fully booked and twice the cost he quoted us, so we were very glad to go with the more softspoken one. He took us to 2 different pousadas, negotiated prices for us, gave us all the information we wanted about the town, and set up a tour for us leaving at 9:30, giving us just enough time to shower and eat breakfast. He was just really great, and I thank him for that immensely.
We were picked up in another 4×4 truck and joined by some more Brazilians and two French guys. Over more rough sand terrain – I was getting really used to this, and really loved it, but I knew it was all coming to end. We made it to the park and were welcomed by a big sand dune. We climbed up the sand dune, and, well, there were more sand dunes. Endless sand dunes. Apparently this park was covered in sand dunes and was the comparable to the size of São Paulo! Check out the photos, because these were really awesome sand dunes, extending forever. Late in the rainy season they fill with lakes, but they were mostly dry this time of year (relatively early in the rainy season). There was one lake that we made our way to, like an oasis in the middle of the desert, where we spent a while swimming before heading back.
The town of Barrerinhas really had very little to offer. We planned on heading up the river the next day to a small coastal community called Caburé, but it was raining, so we decided to skip it and head to our final destination before heading up to the Amazon – São Luis. As we got on the bus, I heard someone sing out – Who’s from Chicago? Elma. She had lived there for 37 years, “right near Wrigley field”. And that was all of Elma I got…in São Luis, we all parted ways, Vanessa and I making our way to a hostel, getting caught in a pretty awesome short but forceful downpour on the way.
São Luis is a fairly big city, so we set out for a proper Friday night party. The first place we were recommended to go to turned out to be the mellow little cafe we had a coffee in earlier that day. Well, it wasn’t so mellow anymore – the place was packed, a right proper meat market for the most part, with some of the most forward (desperate?) men I had seen since Tegucigalpa. We didn’t make it to the bar without a grope, grab, kiss on the cheek…there was even some dude sucking my finger as I walked by – I did not look back to check him out.
We eventually made a spot for ourselves to dance – a fairly decent doofdoof it was, to use our London-speak. We met some people and moved on…for more dancing the clube de gay was recommended, but we passed it up for the no-cover reggae bar. After that, onto the street where a little samba parade was passing by, led by some huge sort of doll. Finally, to end the night, one last club. It seemed like a fairly normal club, they were playing good club music, but the bartender was serving up drinks in his tighty-whiteys. Clube de gay? One can’t be too sure…
We spent a day walking around the museums in São Luis and getting lost trying to find another neighborhood, but were really eager to get up to the Amazon. So, after a few days of wandering around, we booked our ticket and headed up to Belém at the mouth of the mighty river.
Tags: Brazil, Tag Index
Tania
February 11th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Wow. Sounds like you guys are haveing a great time! I’ll keep checking in on you!