Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildlife

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Sunday 11[SUP]th[/SUP] June, Brasilia – Sao Luis

Finally a sleep in. The view across the pool towards the lake was just gorgeous when we pulled back the curtain


That queue was unforgivable the day before. The view nearly made up for it. Not quite though. Breakfast was a humungous buffet served in same restaurant as dinner the night before. Some very odd options such as roast turkey on offer. Maybe it was a 'Valentine's' buffet...

Some more hotel pics







The Golden Tulip Hotel sits in the same compound further back up the drive

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

We’d originally booked a direct flight up to Sao Luis. The week before we left, after being prompted by our Pantanal tour company, we’d checked all of our internal flights. A couple changed by a few minutes, one the same time but a different flight number. One just no longer there. The direct flight had been cancelled and we’d been rebooked on another direct flight at 2am the following morning. Of course, we hadn’t been contacted about any of the changes. I rang and cancelled this stupid new booking and asked for a credit. Al found a connecting flight via Fortaleza and rang back later and had LATAM book us onto it. We’d get to Sao Luis to start our northern Brasil tour on the day we had paid to start it.

The tour was booked through Aventura Brasil https://www.aventuradobrasil.com/tr...anhenses-economy-package-5-days4-nights/53162
It was four nights, starting with a walking tour of the world heritage listed Sao Luis old town, a night either end in Sao Luis and two nights in the Lencois Maranheses in between. Amazingly our tour company agreed to change the city tour to the last day even thought it was a public holiday.

Brasilia International Airport -
Very nice and virtually deserted lounge accessed with Priority Pass. Might have even been able to use my Amex




Our A320 awaits




View back down over Brasilia

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Surprisingly the flight to Fortaleza left on time and arrived early!

Farmland on the way north to Fortaleza


The usual TAM snack...


That was actually bad as we then had to spend even longer in the super ordinary airport until our flight to Sao Luis


We could have tried to have a quick trip around the city but it just wasn’t worth battling through our language shortfall in the three and a bit hours that we had. Then of course our connection to Sao Luis left late and lost even more time on the way there.

Condor 767 on the tarmac


Fortaleza from above

 

[Boca68]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Loving the TR Pete.

Can't wait to hear what you think of Sao Luis and the Lencois. My favourite part of Brazil.

Don't worry too much about not getting in to Fortaleza, its dreadful, sorry to say. About as Brazilian as Miami is Latin. Just fake.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Close now Boca68

Unexpectedly we were met at the airport by our guide. We’d only expected a driver. Andres was a bit like Roberto in Brasilia in that he started with info the moment we got into the van. We were exhausted so sadly it was a bit of blah, blah blah, blah except for “Don’t walk up the hill away from hotel if you go out tonight” and “the old town has 3000 buildings registered in its World Heritage Listing”. The irony of the latter only became apparent four days later… Oh, and that we would be his first English speaking tour.

The centre of the old town is car free but luckily our hotel was only a block inside the walking town. Andres said his goodbyes with a final reminder he’d be picking us up just after 7 and not to walk up the hill from the hotel, only down. Eek!

Portas Da Amazonia Pousada Portas da Amazonia was/is quite amazing. Three, I think, maybe three and a half levels inside a number of old buildings that have been kind of restored. There’s rammed earth (that looks more like rammed stone) walls, courtyards, internal verandahs, uneven floors of beautiful wide boards and a rabbit warren of hallways and staircases.

Our room was of course on the top floor that you got to by going up two levels, down half a level, then up another level. It was worth the climb though because the room was HUGE. A giant four poster bed dominated the gigantic space




Best of all was the four shuttered windows that looked out across the town. Wow! Sadly we had just a night to enjoy it.

We had a quick walk around the town that was decorated for the coming Bumba-meu-boi celebrations


remembering not to go up the hill, only down. Sao Luis has one of the highest murder rates in Brasil! We ended up having dinner at the pizzeria in the same building as the hotel. Brasilians love everything Italian, and pizzerias, and freezing cold beer


Excellent pizza and risotto.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Monday 12[SUP]th[/SUP] June, Sao Luis – Barreirinhas – Lencois Maranhenses

Andres had said pick-up at 7 but breakfast only started at 7. Although there was a group of people already in the restaurant at 6:45, the gate was locked. When we asked the young guy who had checked us in the night before if we could eat he said no. When we pushed the point and said we were leaving at 7 he told us Andres usually turned up at closer to 7:30 but he begrudgingly let us in.

Breakfast was really good and the space amazing










We loved the structure of this hotel. In places it was like being inside a ruin.

Andres did turn up at 7:25. We scored a really comfy Mercedes van for the four hour ride to Barreirinhas. Andres gave us a running commentary for a large part of the trip. He was actually Argentinian, from near Mendoza, had married a Brasilian, settled in Sao Luis 20 years ago, had a daughter, had a marriage break up, was now tired of the corruption of Brasil and was ready to head back to Argentina. Saying that, gee he loved the North East of Brasil.



Corruption was such a common theme of so much conversation about Brasil. Corrupt governors in the pockets of developers, the oil industry, the mining industry, the auto industry.

We drove past a huge area of land not far out of Sao Luis that was going to be a huge oil refinery. I can’t remember the exact story but it was never going to be economically viable and the land, and the shell of a large hotel that was going to look over it (!!), now sits vacant.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

The geography changed dramatically and we drove through rolling sandy countryside. It reminded me of the northern NSW coastline but we were a LONG way inland. The whole northeast coast of Brasil is thousands of square kilometres of vegetated sand.

We stopped half way for a comfort stop


where their specialty was freshly squeezed local oranges and it was very good. We both loved the craft shop that had a line of objects made out of recycled tyres


Swan anyone?

I’ve checked the times on our photos and it was nearly four and a half hours to Barreirinhas. The seats were comfy and the countryside interesting so the time went pretty quickly.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

I love towns like Barreirinhas. We saw the same kinds of places in Peru past year. So much stuff going on. So much colour. So much energy.

We stayed at Home | Hotel Pousada do Buriti Way better than it looked online.


Large room with separate living area (a bit 80s).


Hammock out the front


Good aircon. Good wifi. Even a nice pool.


The aircon and pool were very much required. It was hot (35ish) and humid. We’re only 2 degrees south of the equator.

The hotel was a couple of blocks back from the river. We went for a quick wander down to the river


then met Andres back at the hotel to join our trip to the Lencois Maranhenses.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

You take a barge across another tributary of the river. It’s pushed by a boat that decided it didn’t want to go once we’d been pushed out into the river. Off we went downstream while the young guy tried to start the ‘push boat’. Someone swam out from shore and they eventually got it started and the barge, with four 4WDs on it was pushed back up to landing.


The ride along the sandy tracks, maybe an hour, was a hoot. It was like being on a bucking horse at times. You had no choice but to hang on, tight.

There’s a couple of places that you can be taken to. The usual destination, and most crowded is Lagoa Azul. Less crowded, and where we were taken is Lagoa Bonita.

You walk up a VERY steep 40m dune


rope supplied to help you pull yourself up.


When you get to the top you’re confronted, and that’s the right word, with the most incredible view of dunes as far as the eye can see, with pools/lakes of water in the depressions between them. There’s no way our pictures did it justice.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Andres takes three plus day walking tours through the dunes so the first thing he suggested was “let’s walk” so that’s what we did. We walked for maybe 30 minutes and then jumped into our first pool. Super fresh water. Cool but not cold. It was other-worldly.




Sufficiently pruned-up we walked more, swam and floated more


and then as the sun set approached headed back to the big dune we started at.


The sunset was a bit of an anti-climax as low cloud cut it short but it was still beautiful. Magical even.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

There were a number of huts around the car park that sold cold beer and tapioca pancakes. I’m sure they sold other stuff but that’s what we concentrated on.






The ride back to the barge was even more fun because it was in the dark. The white sandy track surrounded by the blackness of the scrub. It was fantastic. In hindsight the beer before we headed back wasn’t the wisest of decisions

The push boat was working fine when we got back to the river.

We had dinner with Andres down at a restaurant beside the river. We ordered the recommended fish and there was enough for a family of six


Of course it included the obligatory beans and rice. It was a brilliant afternoon!

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Tuesday 13[SUP]th[/SUP] June, Barreirinhas – Atins

We had a leisurely, and again very good breakfast


We left our big bags and just took our carry-on bags with us for our overnight trip to Atins. If we’d thought about it we should have left the big bags in Sao Luis considering it was shorts and t-shorts only for the four days we’d be away. I only take a carry-on to Melbourne for four nights!

Most of the people we’d come out from Sao Luis, including a group of six ladies who we eventually found out were from Sao Paulo, joined us on the boat to Atins






Some of the boats were just a tad small boat ours was perfect, especially if you were sat in the back (me) and had miles of legroom.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Pescadoro our skipper was an Atins local so new the short cuts and where the highlights were along the river – lots of birds,

bats (clinging to a tree)


a lotus flower (that was called something completely different)


a carnauba palm plantation for all you revheads


a rather large snake skin


And lots of acai palms (for all you hipsters). I know I took pictures. Maybe they're in the raw files we haven't looked at yet.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

The most amazing thing were the mangroves. There were two kinds but they were big. I mean 20, maybe 30m big! One kind throws out roots like ours do and the other ones just grew like trees. Red and Black maybe?







I love anything on water and this was a perfect couple of hours down to the ocean.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

We stopped at Barracão da Graça that was home to a bar, some small shops and a whole lot of hungry monkeys. Andres told us something we already knew not to do – feed them. They weren’t actually the nicest looking monkeys we’ve come across on our travels so not feeding them was easy.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

As we’d come down the river we’d seem a huge wind farm close to the ocean. We walked up the dunes behind the bar



and the turbines stretched along the coast into the distance. Andres explained that they were owned by an oil company, Petrobras I think. They had been trying to get permission to drill for oil inside the national park. When that was denied they decided they’d build a wind farm, along the border of the national park, and with it a road to support the wind farm.



Apparently ‘the road’ is a very Brasilian thing to do. Build it, then extend it without permission, and then start building something else that you don’t have permission to. By then there’s so much built no-one is game to tell them to stop. The planned and canned oil refinery we’d seen the day before is a rare exception. By the sounds of things Petrobras has a history of this. Some people think we have problems here in Oz but we just have no idea what political corruption really is. Throw some money at the governor and you can just about do anything.

We then went to Mandacura to go up the lighthouse and check out the incredible view of the local area.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

We stopped for lunch at Praia De Cabure, a couple of bars and some accommodation on the other side of the delta to Atins




that has seen better days


We went for a walk along the beach to have a look at the turbines.


I had a very unusual dry aged steak for lunch


It was surprisingly not dry although tender would also not be describing it correctly.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

After that it was across to Atins.

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl

Wow. What a beautiful little place



We stayed at Pousada Jurara Pousada Jurará Two separate places. One recently renovated and one less than a year old. We stayed in the new pousada of six rooms, with its own bar, a couple of hundred metres up the road. Another great little place.




This one even had a hammock in the room!!

 

[bPeteb]

Re: Race around Brasil - two mad weeks in search of good food, architecture and wildl



The owner, an Italian I think Andres said, is an environmentalist, also has a place back in Barreirinhas. We loved his message about the hot water system.




The two young women who ran the place were brilliant. I have to be more comfortable asking people for photos because I would have loved to have gotten a photo of us with them. Al was keen for caipirinhas, so after the obligatory afternoon coffee, and a quick cool-down beer, that’s what we had.