March 20th – 23rd: Jericoacoara
The Journey There
Initially, Helen and I weren't able to get seats next to each other on the night bus from Recife to Fortaleza. We smiled as Helen's neighbour was quite a good-looking guy and a man of larger proportions came to sit next to me. We did, however, swap and it was a relief ... as soon as the bus pulled away, Helen's ex-neighbour put a coat over his head and started singing out loud. He was quite a loop! Otherwise, apart from people cracking up now and again over someone's mobile ringtone, which itself was the sound of someone in hysterics, the rest of the first part of this journey was uneventful; just painfully uncomfortable so no sleep was to be had.
After the 11 hour coach journey to Fortaleza, we then had a 7 hour journey to Jericoacoara, the last 1 ½ hours of which was spent riding along the beach in a mode of transport possibly comparable to a sturdier version of a bus at Disneyland which might take you from the car park to the park's entrance; a cross between a beach buggy and a truck, with no sides and rows of wooden benches, each accessible from the outside. As other motorbikes passed us by in the opposite direction, it became clear that the beach was, in fact, the main road, the motorway if you like, leading into and out of Jericoacoara.
The Location
Needless to say then, Jericoacoara is in quite a remote place. Originally just a surfing spot, restaurants, pousadas, craft shops, bars and kite-surfing schools have sprung up out of the sand in recent years to create a unique village with a great vibe, set by huge yellow dunes to one side and green hills on the other.
Our Arrival
The sun was setting over the sand dunes as we neared Jeri and a number of men in beach buggies were waiting for us, all hoping to take us to the guest house they worked for. We favoured the guy who showed us a photo of a lovely-looking private room with wooden walls and ensuite bathroom and shot off in his buggy along the sandy streets, now under a night sky of stars with the wind in our hair. I remember thinking to myself right then that we had arrived in quite a special place.
Setbacks
Unfortunately, we couldn't make the most out of being in such a unique place. Firstly, the persistent rainfall meant our beach buggy trip to nearby lagoons (THE thing you should apparently do there) was cancelled two days running. Secondly, I spent the early hours of one morning in the bathroom surrounded by a half-digested form of the “stingray in coconut sauce” dish I had so adventurously tried the evenening before! I felt quite weak the following day and was very lucky to have Helen, who strangely shared the dish with me but felt fine, to look after me.
It Could Only Happen in Jeri ...
You would be pushed not to enjoy Jeri even in the rain and with a bout of food poisoning. We took pleasure in wading through sandy streets which had turned into rivers (the flow of rain water was so strong that it ripped Helen's flip flop), got merry on cocktails from mobile carts down at the beach, found immense satisfaction in discovering a place to eat where we could get a huge portion of chicken, rice, beans and manioc flour for 6 Reais, (about 2 GBP) and laughed about the added entertainment value of drops dripping through the ceiling and water gushing out of a pipe whilst we ate.
At Last, A Nice Place To Stay
For the first time since Helen's arrival in Brazil, we had a room to ourselves. We were able to enjoy the freedom of listening to our ipods on loudspeakers, video-Skype mum on Mothers' Day from bed (which delighted her but concerned Helen because she would be seen without make-up on) and we woke each morning to a wonderful breakfast buffet. No queues for the shower, no worrying about our stuff being stolen by other people in the room, nobody waking us up in the middle of the night coming in drunk, no having to whisper and feel awful about rustling plastic bags when we came in merry, no having to read in bed using a headlamp. A backpacker rar
Walks in the Rain
One afternoon we hooked up with a Swiss guy, Matteo, who was travelling on his own and had a walk in the rain over the dunes, our clothes and the sand sticking to us nicely. A limping stray dog followed us for a while and I had to laugh when it tried to take on a whole herd of cows which was crossing over the dunes at the same time (a bit random, but true!). As the rain cleared, we decided to walk on and made it up to the lighthouse, which itself was highly unspectacular, but the views of Jeri, the neighbouring beach and the surrounding, well ... nothingness, were great.
Figuring Out How to Leave
On researching how to get out of Jeri, we were told there would be no other way but to get the Disneyland-style truck and then a coach back to Fortaleza. We were reluctant to do this as it would mean back-tracking, going south when we needed to go north. It then just so happened that we bumped into a girl we had met in Olinda, Ganine, who told us that there was, in fact, a pick-up truck arriving at 3am on the next Tuesday morning which could take people to a town called Sobral, from where we could get a bus to Belém without having to go back to Fortaleza. It was all a bit random, as these things often are in South America (our names weren't taken, we didn't have to pay in advance, just to be at the right place at 3am), but we decided to risk it.
The Departure
We left our guest house around 2am, not having gone to bed to save on a night's accommodation, and splurged through puddles in the darkness to Ganine's guest house which was the collection point. There was nobody else around, not even Ganine, so Helen started to get a little nervous (we had a flight booked from Belém so it was important that we weren't delayed too much). I figured that the time to get nervous should be at about 4am if there was still no sign of anyone as an hour in South America is not actually much of a delay. As we sat on old, damp sofas in the lobby, we tried to stay awake by chatting and drifted onto reminiscing about babysitting when we were younger and the amount of money we made on an evening for doing relatively little work. I joked that I should tell Mum that I was going to become a professional babysitter on returning from my trip. (The search for career inspiration, however, goes on.)
It was going on 4am by the time the pick-up truck arrived ie. just verging on the moment of disillusionment, although Ganine had shown up at 3am which had comforted Helen a lot - how numbers ease distress! There were already another 3 passengers on board who all looked shattered and hardly said a word. We squashed into the back with them, rucksacks and bags all around us. It was raining and the truck was open-sided so it was damp. It was still pitch black outside as we pulled off along the sandy roads and then onto the bumpy beach. It was the start of what was to be a very long and uncomfortable journey; the longest we were to endure together in Brazil and I think the longest bus journey of my entire trip so far.
March 24th: Journey Sobral to Belem
It's alright visiting these wonderfully isolated places but it's usually a pain in the back(side) trying to get to and from them, especially when you are dragging your yearly belongings around with you . The ride in the pick-up truck from Jericoacoara was very bumpy, cold and wet. Several times the truck had to be put into reverse and another route tried as the heavy rainfall had created enormous puddles on the beach aka. road. I felt incredibly tired and tried to rest my head on my arm which was holding on to a bar above my head. Helen and Ganine laughed when my arm came crushing down and my body jerked forward – incredibly I must have nodded off and my arm had given way to the weight of my head.
Darkness turned to light but with no spectacular sunrise. We stopped off at a roadside place for a breakfast of coffee and cake at around 7am and arrived in Sobral around 8am. There we discovered that the first bus to Belém wasn't until 15:30 – in fact, it was the same bus coming from Fortaleza, so we hadn't actually saved ourselves any time getting the pick-up truck in the middle of the night, we just lost a night's sleep in the process. We stored our luggage at the station and went outside to try and find a spot where we could sleep. We found a stretch of grass not too far from the station, plonked down but struggled to snooze as it was too hot and ants were running all over us. We therefore returned to the air conditioned VIP room in the bus station, pretending to be important people (with backpacks!). Trying to sleep there also proved futile so we decided to have a wander around Sobral with Ganine. It isn't the most attractive of towns but we were able to find a supermarket to stock up on supplies for the next bus journey and a chemist which sold some cheap malaria tablets so the walk served a purpose.
We spent the rest of that day, night and most of the following day on the bus to Belém. I noticed that the further north we drove, the greener and wetter it became. There were lots of people at the side of the road, mainly men, and most, like I have seen from so many bus windows on this trip, just sitting around. The areas looked poorer. The roads leading off the road we were on were almost all dirt tracks, leading to shacks and huts, homes and businesses for the people who lived there.
We arrived in Belém at around 15:30 and got a bus into town with the accustomed struggle of trying to stay on our feet, pay, go through the turnstile and sit down whilst the bus jolted off. After the 30 hour plus journey, we decided we deserved a cheap hotel rather than a hostel and found one not too far from the banks of The Amazon. We had made it!
