With Manaus completed, I now look ahead to get to the Atlantic coast, my destination this time, Belem. To get there looking at the map, my choices were to fly at a high cost or take a boat at a considerably smaller cost. I opted for the later option and bought my ticket on board the Cisne Branco. Sleeping on board was a tad bit different to the normal places I've slept this time round, I'd be suspended a foot or so above the deck in my very own hammock, swaying in the wind as the boat moved along the water. The key was to get their early to get a good spot, not near the jax, near a pole and preferably not along the side where I'd have a good chance of getting wet if it rained. Arriving early, I managed just one of those, not being near the jax which was something, I suppose. I've never tied a hammock to a pole before, there's a technique you see or a special knot that has to be tied first. After a few pathetic attempts at tying something that would support my weight, a little old lady came to nu rescue to assist me whilst her grandchildren giggled away at my incompetence. Being beside the pole allowed me to secure my bags to it if incas some of the lovely folk on board tried to swipe it and even though I was to the side, I wasn't going to get wet as they had NASA engineers come over to design a sort of plastic sheeting system that would roll down whenever it rained! The boat was small in comparison to others that make the trip, on one count on the first day or so I counted 80 hammocks so it will give you an impression of the size of the boat. It was three levels, the bottom for cargo which on my trip were bags and bags of Brazil nuts, the middle for hammocks, toilets and some more luxurious cabins and then the third, a few more cabins, the wheelhouse, a small bar and a large deck for stretching the legs and breaking up some of the boredom that I was going to experience over the coming days.
It seemed that I was the only gringo on the boat until two young German girls arrived. They were young and very caring but my god, their level of boringness showed me a new level. Ill come to the things that grinded my gears with them in a bit or maybe ill just write another instalment on the blog site of the things that pissed me off in general along this trip. Anyways, off we went for 5 long days on the Cisne Branco. The food was shocking on the boat, it wasn't included in the price but after I paid for one meal I felt like they should have just put their hands in my pockets and robbed me
blind for the muck they served up to those of us that wanted a bite. Thankfully I had stocked up on bottles water, lots of fruit and some exciting biscuits with as much flavour you'd get from licking the back of a camel. I was to shed quite a few pounds over the few days on my newly designed diet, lean P's grilling machine is st protupe stage. The landscape around the boat was obviously water but towards the banks it was all jungle. The river was so wide at times that you couldn't make out anything on the banks or in the trees nor could you see anything in the murky brown water that flowed past. It was the wet season when I visited the region and the river was close to its highest, one of the reasons the water was such a colour. The force of the river was so strong also that it wasn't uncommon to see some grass floating by. Big patches of grass flowing by i tell ya. Begorah, there goes Pa Joe's front garden!
Minutes went into hours and hours into days, time seemed to slide by without me even knowing it. Thankfully with a good selection of reading on my person that made it all so much easier. The trials and tribulations of George David Roberts book Shantarem and Arnie Schwarzeneggers autobiography allowed me to put my mind at rest and keep the boredom at bay and not having to coax ze Germans into having this thing some people call 'fun'. The most craic I got out of the girls was beating their asses at Uno. I told them I had never played before and then I took over and I was winning left, right and centre. Ze Germans got a bit thick so they did, they didn't like ze losing either, yah. I must admit, I did pity them at one stage. The reason that they were so bloody careful about everything they did was that they had been robbed in Rio and had all their belongings taken. The poor girls wore glasses and the glasses had been in their bags. Rio I'm sure isn't a place where you should be, not having a notion where your going, bumping into things and people because your as blind as a bat. Things they used to say to me with me thinking that they might atleast have breakfast or lunch at the same time I was, "we've made a decision". Include me yis b****es This was said numerous times and f*ck its annoying when your thoughts or opinions were never even asked. "We've made a decision". Please. Piss off. I've made a decision. How do ya like them apples? Two days passed and we find ourselves pulling into the Amazonian port town of Santarem, a similar spelling to the book I was reading coincidently. We arrived around 8pm and let some folk off as it was their final destination and some others just to go on the tear for the night as we were going to be in dock for twelve hours. "We've made a decision" was then announced that they wouldn't be budging from the boat as it was unsafe out there, it's dark outside, the night isn't safe, the sky isn't as blue as it is in Germany, whats that sound, that baby looks like it could rob us, all this type of bulls***, so of course I ended up staying too as being Norman no mates in a town like that wouldn't have been any fun. Instead I lay in my hammock reading some more whilst the girls slept in shifts to look after their bags. We had moved into a secure port for the night where there was no outsider access and what was left of the people was minimal in terms of the number of people that would or could steal your bag and maybe steal it to the other end of the boat. Woo! It was as safe as Fort Knox, but I got a great kick out of them the following morning when they couldn't stand up from tiredness. Jaysus lassies, she should have gone to sleep last night in hindsight. "I've made a decision" and it was a good one. You'd swear I have nothing else to say about the boat trip but to be honest I don't, I'm having as much craic whinging and b****ing about them and their antics than what I could see both out to port and starboard. Now each to their own and credit due, but the girls were turning out to be not my cup of tea. There were on a break from college to visit the convent where one of them was working the previous year. Ah now, their going straight to heaven so they are, i said to myself. roll the dice Straight past go, collect your £200 and your in. Gods very own little elves. In the five days I read like a mutha f*cker, I finished one book and nearly another, 1100 pages in total. There was one day I got up at dawn when it was bright as did everyone else, washed my teeth, had some fruit and settled in for a spot of reading. When I got tired I closed the book and looked out. It was dark. I was reading for a good 10 hours I'd say. Good book, boring day. I got confused with the dates at one stage with the lack of entertainment and I actually forgot about St. Patrick's day. Shocking stuff altogether but I made up for it the following day with some cachaca hoping that a snake would come on board so that I could give it a good whacking! Belem was my destination but i hadn't any plans to stay there. The bus journey from there to São Luis was supposed to be known for robberies on the night buses so once we landed in Belem we headed straight to get the first bus out of Belem to São Luis. We had two hours to kill before the bus departed but that was eased by looking at the girls trembling in fear not wanting to be in a place they seemed unsafe in. What made it worse for them then was this sound of rapid firing shots from outside. To be honest, I thought that it was an air gun removing the nuts from a car/bus's wheel but the girls nearly had a pampers moment when it turned out to be some loon outside the bus station firing a weapon. Luckily the police were there to dissolve the situation but I'm not sure if it was their job to help the girls clean the mess that they could have made. Onwards and upwards.
The bus to São Luis was horrible for me. I had a hangover from hell that just wouldn't go away. The previous day I had made up for missing Paddy's day so I now had to endure a 24 hour bombardment of the cranium on route to São Luis with the "we've made a decisions". I couldn't even play a game of Uno, I was that bad. My head is sore I said, I can't play Uno. You don't need your head to play Uno they said. Piss off, your too goody two shoes that ye'd never let a drop pass your drips. Don't tell me about the connection or lack of between playing Uno and a hangover. We got to São Luis in the early evening after twelve hours or so onboard. We stayed at the YHA hostel there, the internationally affiliated group of hostels where everything is so safe, so boring, so predictable. Your probably asking yourself why I didn't potter off on my own but one of them spoke Portuguese so she was handy in a places in northern Brazil where English speakers are rare. Feck it. I was starving when we arrived. I could have eaten a nuns arse through a convent gate but because it was dark and "we've made a decision", they stayed put and starved for the night whereas I went around the corner and noshed it up for half an hour on my own. Terrible isn't it when you can't go outside for something to eat that your so scared even with a guy my height was willing to be with them. A shame really. São Luis, the historical centre at least is nice but two hours there and you've seen it all. You might be able to do it in an hour and a half because we were in one church for nearly half an hour i'd say, me waiting for the girls to finish their chats with God. Sitting there with their little holy heads on them. Come on, we're tourists, lets get a move on. Grace before meals now changes to rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub!
My next place of interest was the natural phenomenon of Lencois da Maranhenses. I waved goodbye to the girls and thanked them for their company but I was glad to be alone again and having a chance to immerse myself with folk of a more similar attitude and outlook to mine. Lencois da Maranhenses is a national park of sand dunes that have blown in off the coast over many years. What makes them special is that when the rains come, the troughs in between the dunes fill up with the water giving a striking contrast of white sand and bright blue water. Unfortunately for me, nor was it the rainy season and nor had it rained properly in the area for the last two years or so, so therefore there was very little water to see. Like Angel Falls and Roraima in Venezuala, Lencois was another place high on my bucket list but I was left disappointed by the experience as I had set my hopes so high for spectacular images of the park. I did a tour there by 4x4 and it was good to do, I visited one lake that hasd fish in them but that's only because there was a natural spring beneath it. I took some nice photos too I suppose, and with black and white mode turned on, I could go all arty farty on the scenery. The town on the outskirts of the park was called barreinhas, a heur to pronounce and to get there, now that I think of it. One night was enough there to see what was of the park and then to get the hell out of dodge.
My next stop along the coast was the hip beach town of Jericoacoara. Now to get there was an even bigger b****** of a challenge. I started early with a taxi (4x4) from Barreinhas to a little place called Paulinho Neves. The driver drops me off at what I think was his house so that I can wait there until another 4x4 comes to bring me to Tutoia. The 4x4 arrives 2 hours later and I'm off again bouncing around in the back of this yoke as we trundle along the sand tracks that they have for roads there. I get to Tutoia just in the nick of time to jump on the bus to Parnaiba. This was my third mode of transport in as many hours. I thought I'd never get to Jeri. It was 4pm when I got to Parnaiba, it didn't look like anything special. All I wanted was Jeri and I did my damdest to get there. I found a French couple at the bus station that looked as confused as I was, presuming that they also wanted to go the same way I was going. Thankfully they agreed with my plan and we shared a taxi to Jijoca, the town where the tarmac ends and the sand starts again. Before setting off we had agreed to pay the driver 200, but on arrival he went no no no, 250. Shafted again. I starting to hate being ripped off. It was late in the evening, dark, with no one around. If there was some people loitering about we were going to stand out like sore thumbs with all over baggage in tow. We paid the p****and told him that he was a robbing b****** and that if he ever has kids, let him have ten daughters and let the daughters marry well! Yet another 4x4 had then to be taken to drive us the last stretch of 30km down through the sand to Jericoacoara. I had no expectations for Jeri, I didn't even have a idea what it was like or what there was to do. All I did know was all the great stories fellow travellers had from their time there. The French couple and I then got in yet another 4x4 down to Jeri and reluctantly paid another overpriced driver. We had no choice as it was dark and late in the evening so it was best to get ther ASAP. My hostel for the next few days was called hostel Tirol, possibly one of the best hostels I've stayed at, and I've been to a few over the years. It was quiet when I got there, not too many people staying there but it was midweek and in the end it was easier to get to know the peeps there. What I found out about Jeri is that its a s sand filled town, no roads, just sand tracks everywhere. You could go everywhere in your bare feet if you wanted. The town was small comprising of three main streets packed with restaurants, shops, pousada's (accommodation) and the the odd kite surfing shop here and there. The mix of people I met there was huge ranging from English, Dutch, German, Italian, Australian, American, Israeli, Brazilian, Argentinian, Chilean, Colombian, Polish to name but a few. We had some great times altogether. The days were passed by chilling at the beach, in the late afternoon climbing the dunes to watch the sunset on the horizon and after dark tearing the proverbial out of it! I had such a good time over the first few days I booked in for the rest of the week. Part of this decision was that I wanted to try out kite surfing, the other being it was such a great place to chill out with like minded folk, a break from the norm, from what I had doing in weeks previous. So to give you an idea of what kite surfing is like, ill explain to you what I figured out for myself as my instructor had about three words of English. We headed down to a fresh water lake just beside the beach so that the wind would be strong enough to learn in and not in the open water. I don't think it would have made any different though, the way I was progressing with the auld kite surfing, there was no chance that I was going to blow off and land on some beach in Nigeria! The only thing that the instructor had to worry about was me breaking my face from me face planting myself each time I managed to stand up. It took a day or a few hours at least to get to understand how to control the kite. Once it was up directly above your head, that was twelve o clock. To move right, you had to motion the kite between one/two o clock and ten/eleven to go left. Simple. And it was. I got it, no problem. The problem was getting my big, awkward legs to stand onto the board. Some things are not for me. I've tried them all, snowboarding, skiing, surfing, wind surfing, kitesurfing. Jaysus I was useless. I stood up on the second day which was good I suppose, but putting the two together was difficult. The only thing I can truly say that I'm good at that requires both feet and hand co ordination is driving. I'm much better with my hands. Every pun imaginable... Intended. My instructor kept on, how should I say, encouraging me. But the more of this encouragement that came my way, the more thick and frustrated I got. One o clock, two o clock, one o clock, two o clock!! On and on and on! This isn't a song I roared at him over the noise of the wind. What were we going to do? Rock around the clock tonight? For f*ck sake! Anyways, I must say I'm glad I did it and I'm sure with a bit more patience and time
I'd get better at it. My mother is probably reading this going "oh my god, sher you have no patience". Head down and burst into things! Haha! A few more beers, caipirinhas, some forro dancing and skinny dipping in the sea it was time to say goodbye to Jericoacoara. I must say I had a cracking time there, I'd highly recommend it to anyone visiting north eastern brazil. With so many new friends and such found memories of the place, I've reserved a little place in me just for Jeri!
My next movements bring me south along the coast to Natal, Praia Da Pipa and Recife which will include my
visit to Brazilian hospital. An enlightening experience. The writing is coming on so ill have more instalments coming thick and fast so that you can feast your eyes upon.
Boats, buses, beaches and other stuff. Done!