Sao Luis and the Lencois Maranhenses National Park, Brazil

On Friday 13th July I was up ridiculously early to fly from Salvador to Sao Luis, way up in the north east of the country. During my flight I caught a tantalising glimpse of the Lencois Maranhenses National Park, the main reason I was travelling to this part of Brazil.  

 

I was staying at the Hotel Pousada Colonial, which had a great location in the historic centre of  Sao Luis. The area was full of little paved streets and beautifully tiled colonial buildings. The staff here didn't speak any English whatsoever, and my Portuguese is limited to a handful of words, but we managed to communicate via the wonders of Google Translate...

Once I had settled into my room, I decided to go exploring and headed to the main square (always a good place to start!). As it happened, I had arrived on a festival day. Now I never quite managed to get to the bottom of what it was all about, but it was definitely something to do with celebrating cows!

The streets were full of colourful bunting, and lined with people selling (ridiculously cheap) beers out of cooler boxes, as well as loads of street food.

One of the streets was lined with the most beautiful and elaborate cow 'costumes' which must have involved a huge amount of work to create. It seemed to be some sort of competition. Every now and then people would come and fetch a costume and dance around in a marquee to music.

I did take a couple of short videos, but they seem to be a bit hit and miss on the Blogger platform... Some of you will probably just see a blank space below, but hopefully some people can view them.

The next day I also spent wandering Sao Luis. The bunting was still up from the previous day's festivities, but the city centre was an awful lot quieter! 

I hunted out a tourism company that spoke a bit of English, and managed to book an overnight tour to the Lencois Maranhenses National Park, leaving the next day. 

 

 

On Sunday I woke up nice and early, ready for my 7am pick-up. I was super excited as I had come across pictures of the Lencois Maranhenses National Park when I first started researching where to go in Brazil, and I was determined to see it, even though it was so out of the way.

 

First up, it was an approximately 3 and a half hour drive to a tiny town called Barreirinhas, which pretty much exists just to service the National Park. After checking into my hotel and grabbing a quick bite for lunch, I headed off on my tour. You access the park by a 2-hour or so, super bumpy jeep ride, mostly on sand roads. However, first we had to use a barge to get the jeeps across to the other side of the river.

We arrived at the National Park proper, and had bit of a climb up a big sand dune, with the helpful assistance of a fixed rope. Once at the top it was an absolute sight to behold. The Lencois Maranhenses is an area of over 1500 square kilometres of sand dunes. During the wet season (between January and June) freshwater lagoons are created between the dunes. 

We had a couple of hours where we were free to explore (or just chill out and swim in the super-warm freshwater lagoon). I didn't stray too far from the beaten track, as it would be very very easy to get lost. You didn't have to walk far before you hit untouched sand with no footprints. 

After enjoying the sunset we made our way back down the hill and back to the jeeps. I'm glad I remembered the number of my one, since there were about 30 there, and they all looked similar!

The next morning I was up nice and early again, ready for the second and final day of the tour. First up was a motorboat ride down the Rio Preguica.   

Our first stop was a little settlement on the river. There were people selling food and trinkets, plus also monkeys to keep us entertained!

I went off for another explore on the dunes, but couldn't go too far as we didn't have a lot of time at this stop. My guide didn't speak any English at all, so at each stop we'd go through a process of holding up fingers until I was confident I knew what time I had to be back at the boat!

The next stop was the small village of Mandacaru where there was a lighthouse you could walk up for good views of the surrounding area.

The final stop was Cabure Beach. During the two-day tour I had been taken under the wing of a family who were celebrating the 18th birthday of their son. They were a real hoot, even if the boy was the only one who could speak a little bit of English. The father was a navy man, and in that very Brazilian way, spent the whole tour in his speedos! They also really liked to drink... The previous day they had drunk beers during the whole jeep-ride to the dunes from the cooler-box they had brought with them.

At the beach they invited me to join them for lunch (and, of course, the obligatory beer!)

After lunch it was time to check out the beach

The boat then took us back along the river to Barreirinhas where I had time to collect my stuff and have a quick shower before the bus trip back to Sao Luis. I arrived back at around 9pm and spent the night at the same hotel as before. The next morning I headed out on my next adventure: The Amazon!