After a 12-hour bus journey that seemed to take me hardly any distance at all across Brazil, I arrived in São Luís on Wednesday morning. I travelled with Armando and Lucía, the Argentinian couple that I first met on the boat in Manaus, after we bumped into each other again at the hostel in Belém. Once we'd arrived in São Luís, we had quite an unpleasant time trying to find a hostel; our first choice was full, which meant that we spent the best part of an hour walking around in the blazing sun with our backpacks on, looking for somewhere else. Eventually we settled for Pousada Internacional, which was a cheap hostel in a good location, but was probably the most run-down place I've stayed at in my whole trip. Anyway I put up with it because I only planned to spend one night in São Luís.
I spent most of the day wandering around the historic centre of São Luís, which is one of the best preserved colonial cities in the whole of Brazil, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has several grand civic buildings, including the Court of Justice and the Palácio dos Leões (Palace of the Lions), as well as a 17th century cathedral, below.
Here is a photo of one of the streets in the historic centre, and this is a typical house, with the Portuguese exterior tiling that you see throughout the centre. A lot of the colonial-era buildings are in a fairly crumbling state, for example here and here, but there's an ongoing restoration project in the city that means that these buildings will most likely be rescued.
The following morning Armando, Lucía and I left São Luís and travelled to Barreirinhas, which is the usual starting point for trips into Lençóis Maranhenses National Park. We arrived around lunchtime, and I'd planned to spend the rest of the day in Barreirinhas and then go on a 4x4 tour of the national park the following morning. However, as soon as I got off the bus I was accosted by an employee of a tour agency who told me that there were places available on a tour that afternoon, leaving in less than an hour's time. Since my first impressions of Barreirinhas weren't too good, I made a snap decision to change my plans and join the tour that afternoon, which meant that I'd be free to leave Barreirinhas the following morning. Armando and Lucía were organising a three-day hike into the park, and I would have liked to have joined them, but I decided that I didn't have enough time to do that. So once again we said our goodbyes, and I rushed off to get ready for the tour.
A short time later I was picked up from my hostel by a 4x4 vehicle, and there I met the other nine people in the group, all of whom were Brazilian. They were all chatting to each other so enthusiastically that I thought at first that everyone knew each other, but I worked out eventually that that wasn't the case - I guess they were just being typical friendly Brazilian people. After driving a short distance we had to wait our turn to cross a river on a car ferry, which was pushed across the river by a small motor boat. We then had an unbelievably bumpy ride to the edge of the park, which was as far as we could go in the 4x4, because motor vehicles aren't allowed to enter the park.
We then left our shoes in the vehicle and set off on (bare)foot for a four-hour walk around the national park. At first glance Lençóis Maranhenses looks like a desert, but officially it isn't (although I'd say it looks a lot more deserty than that desert I went to in Colombia). The reason it's not considered a desert is that it has a relatively high level of rainfall, and during the rainy season (March to September), which is obviously when I was there, the water collects in the valleys between the sand dunes, forming dozens of lakes, for example here, here and below.
We'd been told to wear swimming gear, so we were able to go for a swim in each of the lakes that we visited. None of the lakes was more than waist-deep, but some of them contained fish, which is pretty amazing when you consider that the lakes dry up almost completely during the dry season (apparently the explanation is that the fish eggs are brought by birds from the sea).
Unfortunately the only photo of me in Lençóis Maranhenses is a bit rubbish and out of focus, but here it is anyway. There are a few more photos of the national park in my August 2010 album. Our guide told us that the whole park has roughly the same area as the city of São Paulo, i.e. it's huge, so we were only able to see a tiny fraction of it in our half-day tour. We stayed until sunset, after which we got back in our vehicle and had another bumpy ride back to the river, where we found ourselves at the back of a long queue to use the car ferry. Fortunately there was a long row of shops and stalls there, all keen to sell us stuff.
After I returned to my hostel I was finally able to spend some time looking around Barreirinhas, and in fact it wasn't too bad after all. Just one street along from the main street there was a row of riverfront restaurants and bars, which was actually quite pleasant. But by that time I'd made my decision, and the following morning I left for Jericoacoara, which I'll tell you about next time.
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