Journey to the River Sea

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  Jericoacoara, State of Ceara, Brazil
Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Hello from Brazil!
Last time I wrote this i bet i was wearing a jumper- its now nearly 5 in the afternoon and still scorching! You all know how pale I am? well, Lillie finally has a tan! woohoo!
So, Brazil. Its gorgeous. A world away from everywhere I´ve been, hot and much more modern although you still pass mud huts on the side of the road, most with huge sky areals outside! I am no longer travelling alone- David came out to meet me at Manaus for 6 weeks. Amazing to see him after 3.5 months and lovely to have a travel companion. Manaus is somewhere I have wanted to go for so many years. It was hot and sticky and full of beautiful old buildings, all crumbling and surrounded by modern high rises. The heat was over whelming. I lived out lots of childhood dreams there, looking round the theatre imagining scenes from Journey to the River Sea, one of my favourite childhood books, and walkinmg along the docks looking out over the Amazon. Wow. We went into the jungle for four days- totally amazing! all the expected, monkeys, sloths, mosquitoes (dont get me started. itchitchitch) parrots, piranhas and of course bloody huge tarantulas!!!!! We stayed in a lodge only accessible by boat and journeyed out twice a day in a canoe to float through magical flooded forests, get caught in torrentail rainstorms, fish for piranhas ( not me), catch caimen at night and trek through thick jungle. Moments that stood out among all the very cool things we did: David eating a maggotty thing and telling me it tasted of coconut, not bad really except for the squelching... eurgh; watching the sunset in a boat at the meeting of three rivers, pink and grey dolphins leaping all around us making beautiful ripples in the reflection on the sky; holding a caimen in the pitch dark; building our own camp out in the middle of nowhere, cuting things with a machete, cooking over a campfire and sleeping (not so much) in a hammock surrounded by the noises of the jungle; and seeing lily pads about 2 metres accross! and, of course, the blissful shower and absense of mosquitoes, rice and beans back in manaus!
From Manaus we got on a slow boat down towards the coast. the boats become completely packed, hammocks strung up very very close to each other, packages underneath them, the engine roaring na dthe terrible music pumping from top deck. Seriously, one of my favourite experiences so far! Ive been waiting to do this so many years and there is a wonderful sense of achievement in getting somewhere in particular that you feel your life has been travelling towards. We lay in our hammocks, watching the jungle pass by beyond our feet, watching sunsets and sunrises and the moon reflecting on the water, nothing to do but read and write and make friends in our pretty much non existent portuguese- although David is very good at picking it up! our next door hammocks on the first boat were a lovely family who adopted us completely, helping us with everything confusing, the children insisting on teaching us dancing and clapping games and singing us the snippets of English songs that thy knew- black eyed peas, mariah carey and titanic at the front of the boat! They also painted my fingernails a disgusting green which i am still scraping off... we stopped our journey half way at Santarem and went to Alter do chao where there are lovely sandy beaches on the shore of the river and we hired a boat and david rowed, i jerked us around. A really lovely day. Bu then we were back on the boat. It began to feel like home towards the end, Ive been moving on so much Im not used to being in one place so much time! It really did make me so happy and peaceful. Such a beautiful thing to do. After 4 days of river travel we arrived at Belem and only spent a day there bofre going on to Sao Luis which is gorgeous, really old and pretty. We caught the last night of a festival there so the streets were full of costumes, singing and dancing. From there we went to the Lencois Meranhesis National Park, sand dunes with perfectly clear pools of blue water between them in the sunshine. We walked between them, running down sand dunes and swimming in such a gorgeous landscape. We are now at Jericoacoara, a beachy touristy place- very adventurous getting here- 2 toyota jeeps accross the bumpy sand tracks, two relatively comfy busses and then a sand buggy! felt very jolted and glad to have a few stationary days! It is meant to be paradise here, but the sand dunes become grey beaches covered in sand buggy tracks which try to run you over if your foolish enough t sunbathe. So the beach isnt a sucess, but our hostel and th town is gorgeous, the sun is hot, there is bougainvillea everywhere and the people are really friendly. as i write, david is doing Capoiera on the beach. I better go and watch him and then we will climb the big dune to see the sunset- not a bad life! I really am so so happy out here. Love you all!

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