The Journey to Jeri

Sao Luis was a cool place to spend the afternoon and evening, but we had bigger fish to fry. We were very excited about getting to our next destination: Parque National Dos Lencois Maranhenses (a national park with fantastic scenery) and then on to the unpronounceable backpacker mecca of Jericoacoara (hereafter "Jeri").

As we were short on time, we wanted to see all that the national park had to offer in one day, and then ideally get on the road to Jeri that evening. This meant getting the very painful 5am bus out of Sao Luis. Somehow we roused ourselves, caught the bus, and reached the gateway to the park - another unpronounceable town called Barreirinhas - at 9am, just in time to be shepherded onto a tour leaving for the park at 9.30.

We clambered aboard an enormous 4 wheel drive truck and set off. Before long we had left the tarmac and were slipping and sliding on a sandy track. This track soon gathered gradient, and we found ourselves racing up and down sand dunes, and fording the occasional 3ft deep river. This truck was amazing - nothing could stop it. A bumpy couple of hours later, we stopped on the side of a dune. We had arrived.



It was scorching hot, so we applied some sun cream, grabbed a bottle of water, and headed out over the dunes. Parque National Dos Lencois Maranhenses is so called because of its immense expanse of sand dunes that supposedly look like lencois (bed sheets) stretched across the landscape. We didn't see anything that remotely resembled bed sheets, but we did get to see a few turquoise lakes interspersed between vast white dunes. It was amazing. Just look at the photos!

We walked from great lake to great lake, jumping in each one to cool off, then taking hundreds of pictures. The scenery was just incredible.

After a few hours of wandering around with our mouths open in amazement, we clambered back into our van and headed back on the bouncy road to Barreirinhas. It was then that we needed to try and sort out passage to Jeri - and it was here that things got a little tricky. A bit of research in our guide book revealed that there was no direct bus to Jeri from Barreirinhas. Not only that - there were no real roads either.

Getting to Jeri from Barreirinhas is so complicated, that the Lonely Planet guide has dedicated more than one entire confusing page to the travel arrangements. You need to get a combination of 4WD trucks, large buses and even dune buggies on the following route: Barreirinhas - Paulino Neves - Tutóia - Parnaíba - Camocim - Jericoacoara. An absolute mission considering the distance is just 200 miles down the coast (a very short distance in Brazilian terms). None of these forms of transport have any kind of regular schedule either - they just go "whenever they feel like it".

From Barreirinhas we got lucky, as one of the guys at the tour company knew of a family who owned a 4WD truck, and were travelling the first leg of our journey that afternoon. He gave them a call and we were on our way - over sand dunes and through rivers once more. We reached the tiny village of Paulino Neves at dusk and were dropped off at the only guesthouse in town. The driver said he'd pick us up for the next stage of our epic journey at (oh please no not again) 5 the next morning.



We grabbed a quick very cheap meal at the only restaurant in the village, then managed a couple hours of sleep. Next thing we knew we were on the truck again, barrelling over dunes as the sun began to rise. The next transfer ran very smoothly, and at 8.30 in the morning we found ourselves rolling into Parnaíba - just two stops from our destination. Here we hit a stumbling block ... the next bus out of there was at 7.30pm. Cue an 11 hour wait in a small town bus depot. Apparently this happens to everyone trying to get to Jeri. Why they don't have another bus going at a sensible time is beyond me.

We caught the 7pm bus, and were forced to spend a night in Camocim at the cheapest (and contender for the worst) hotel in Brazil. Our room had just 3 walls. Where the other one should have been was a large gap facing backwards out of the hotel. As it happened - that night there was a big fiesta in the adjacent plaza ... with fireworks and a parade ... that did not stop until the wee hours.



Our luck changed the following morning after we'd lugged our luggage the 1k to the "Jeri Bus Stop" - actually a car park where various vehicles going in that direction pick up passengers for a price. After an hour of waiting we managed to hitch a ride on a dune buggy! The route to Jeri is literally across miles and miles of deserted beach, which we burned through on the buggy. It was great fun. At one point we reached a small river where we had to put the buggy on a "ferry" - more a collection of wooden planks lashed to some air drums - which was then punted across.



Finally, windswept and sand blasted, we rocked into Jeri. The whole journey from Sao Luis had taken the best part of three days. Some parts were wonderful, and we did see some great scenery. However, the many hours waiting, and the insistent jerking around on uneven terrain, made it an adventure we weren't keen to repeat in a hurry ...