THE PARNAIBA DELTA

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Our bus trip from Barreirinhas to Parnaiba turned out to be really great. The “bus” was really a 4x4 jeep with bench seats in the back, not at all comfortable but the roads were simply deep sand tracks so they needed a sturdy vehicle to get through. Amy was happy as she got another bumpy jeep ride that she’d enjoyed so much the other day (however this one was just the public bus so comparatively cheap).

The first part of the journey was fascinating, through tiny rural villages in sandy scrubland. There were lots of children along the way, some playing hide and seek from the bus as we passed, some rushing out of their houses to look at who was on the bus, some in the rivers and lakes washing and playing. There were cattle, horses, goats, sheep and numerous pigs and piglets. Their primitive farming life looked idyllic as the landscape was just so beautiful.

There was a section where we drove through the sand dunes, only for a short while but it was great fun.
We changed jeeps in Paulino Neves, then changed to a “real” bus once we got to Tutoia. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it was worth every bruise on our bottoms.

Delta of Parnaiba River

Parnaiba is a pleasant city with a good, safe feel to it. However, not a great deal to do other than organise a tour to the Delta. We arranged ours through Casa do Turismo in the Porto das Barcas where the owner, Anne, spoke English and had a wealth of information about the area. She set us up with a cruise on the Delta of Parnaiba the following day.

We cruised the delta on a fisherman’s boat along with four Brasilian tourists. It was a good and varied tour.

We went through the main river, then changed to a canoe to cruise the smaller estuaries and get up close to the mangroves and the wildlife within. There we saw iguanas, snakes in trees, monkeys, toucans (the sort with the really big beak with red on the end) and a variety of other birds.

One little monkey (aka Curious George) was all on his own in the mangrove trees and as we watched him he moved closer and closer to us, just as curious about us as we were about him.

The cruise continued on the bigger boat and we went to have lunch in a riverside restaurant (we had the prawns as they are the local speciality) then stopped at a little island where the guide dug his hand in the mud and pulled out a crab. He pulled out a few crabs and Andy got brave and held one.

We went right to the end of the delta where it meets the Atlantic Ocean, stopped at the sand bar which separated us from the Ocean and swam and wandered around there for a while. It was a massive sand bar and was covered with stranded fish which the crabs were making a meal of. The view across the sand was magical.

On the return journey we stopped off at some sand dunes, not on the scale of Lencois Marahenses but still impressive, and ran around there for a while, clowning around.

It was a good day out.

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