I'm back from a week in the Lençóis Maranhenses national pak. It was simply stunning. My first access to it was from the town of Barreirinhas, where I paid for a tour. I was pretty disappointed though, as they didn't let you stay in the dunes for long, you were in too big a group, and some of the tourists were just annoying. Most of them were from southern Brazil, and two middle-aged guys said after a while: "well, when you've seen on lake, you've seen them all really", and went off to wait for us while drinking beers. I then [View Full Entry]

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As previously mentioned, I am now in São Luis, State of Maranhão. The city, founded by the French in the early 17th Century in honour of medieval king Saint Louis, was taken over a few years later by the Portuguese. It now has a run-down colonial look which is quite pleasant, when combined with the laid-back atmosphere of the historical center which can be admired with a reggae background (São Luis is now the Brazilian capital of reggae music). A couple of days ago, I went to a beach north of São Luis with Nana, an Argentinian primary school teacher I [View Full Entry]

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Up North, up North, up North! That is what I have been up to lately. I left Lençóis for Salvador, and from there took a bus to Natal, higher up on the coast. Upon arrival, I took a bus to Praia da Pipa, which had the reputation for being a chilled out discrete little resort almost 3 hours out of town. I was a little disappointed unfortunately. It had been overbuilt during the last decade, and now seemed geared to cater for mass tourism. Not really what I was looking for. Still, nice beaches, and I manage to swim quite cloe [View Full Entry]

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I have now moved on! Time was ticking on, and I felt like I wanted to know more more of Brazil before I returned to Europe. I left Lençóis with regret, however, and will keep a wonderful memory of it and its people in my mind. I took a 7 hour bus ride to Salvador, and left almost straight away for Natal, much further up North, on a 21 hour bus ride, and from there another 3 hours to Praia da Pipa. I will talk about it in my next entry. This one, as the photos testify, is dedicated to my [View Full Entry]

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Lucky you! You'll get treated with a second blog entry today! Simply because I also wanted to put up pictures of the walk I did today. Yesterday, naturally, I was exhausted and did nothing as I had been checking in guests in the middle of the night. Today, however, I decided I would finally manage to reach the Sossego waterfall. I had already tried to reach it before, but by following the riverbed straight from the Ribeirão do Meio (the place with the natural tobogan), which made it extremely long. In addition, I didn't know the way, and when I tried [View Full Entry]

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The day before yesterday, that is straight after our return from the failed attempt to reach the Michilla waterfall, the same group and guides went off to explore the Lapão cave. By then I had got to know much better the other members of the group, who were truly interesting and entertaining caracters: Filipe, from Portugal, had grown up in Namibia and had also studied in Germany; Ines, his Slovenian girlfriend; and Camila, their Norwegian travelling companion. They were all working in an orphanage in a small town near Rio de Janeiro, facing much tougher working conditions than I have over [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday, I left on what was supposed to be a 2 to 3 day trek into the national park. It started well, with a decent amount of sun, and a lovely shower under the 35m high Capivarí waterfall. However, it rained quite a bit during the night, and much more in the morning, with no end of it in sight, so we decided it would be better to backtrack. I enjoyed it though. The capivarí was a lovely waterfall. I had taken a video of me under it, but internet here is simply too slow to upload it (I once heard [View Full Entry]

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I'm back! Unfortunately, the walk only lasted 3 days, as a couple in the group had to return early to São Paulo early. Pity, but it was worthwhile nonetheless. It was quite testing, actually. Long walking days, including large parts walking on very steep slopes of mud or wet clay, offering numerous opportunities for falling on your backside which I took full advantage of. We also had to cross river rapids with slippery stones, which was not too easy. Undoubtedly the most annoying rainforest feature though was the 'capim navalha' (I think I'm writing it correctly), a plant with long, sharp [View Full Entry]

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I should really feel ashamed of my current blogging performance. My latest entry was on the 31st March, and was really uninformative. I will do my best to make up for it. I am still truly enjoying Lençóis. Its small size allows one to meet many of its inhabitants in a short period of time and to soon call it home, whilst its cosmopolitanism (a large part of the population came from other parts of Brazil or from ‘o exterior’) makes you feel connected to outside, makes you feel no different from many of the locals. My work at the pousada [View Full Entry]

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It's been a long break since my last post. Not that I have been doing strictly nothing, but prehaps nothing worthy of a full-scale article. And you wait, you wait, for something important to happen, but only mondane events have punctuated the last few weeks. This article will not have an overarching theme, but will rather be a little collection of some of the - as I have said - rather banal things that have occurred. Firstly, the obvious: I'm still in Lençóis. I thought my work at the pousada would have been finished by now, but they seem to be [View Full Entry]

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