Frugal Traveler Blog: A 41-Mile, 4-Day, Best-Brazil-Beach Quest

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 31 Oktober 2012 | 17.35

Four donkeys eat seaweed for breakfast. A teenager break dances in the surf. An old man nudges a coconut from a tree. And an entire town agrees on how to misspell "crepes."

Those were the highlights of my end-to-end hike last month along the 41-mile length of the coast of Piauí, a state in northeast Brazil that barely registers in the Brazilian consciousness, let alone guidebooks.

Why would I do such a thing? It started with a pet peeve and an overactive imagination. I had come across yet another article naming the "world's best beaches," a conceit that truly irks me. How could anyone ever declare such a thing with any authority? To create such a ranking you'd have to visit every beach in the world (a task beyond even the most intrepid team of sun-worshipers).

Then I remembered looking at the intriguingly tiny Piauí coast on a map. The mostly inland state sticks a toe into the Atlantic between the much beachier destination states of Maranhão and Ceará. Couldn't I simply walk every inch of its shore, and designate "Piauí's Best Beach" with absolute authority?

I zoomed in on Piauí on Google Maps and switched to satellite view. Two rivers broke up the coast, but aside from those it was pure, uninterrupted sand — no cliffs or ports or naval bases in the way. Although I'm not an avid hiker, I figured four days was enough to walk 41 miles, especially considering the flat terrain. (Funny thing about the sea — it tends to be at sea level.)

I printed the map, deciding to do no further research — to add to the adventure and to avoid biasing the rankings — and booked a flight from São Paulo to Teresina, Piauí's inland capital and a six-hour bus ride to Parnaíba, near the coast. Then I took a crowded minibus to Porto dos Tatus, upriver from my starting line, the isolated northwest tip of Ilha Grande.

Porto dos Tatus is where boats take visitors on tours of the Parnaíba delta. An idle guide named Bal agreed to take me in his boat for 150 reais ($75 at 2 reais to the dollar) to the spit of sand I had pointed to on the map. (He thought I was nuts, but money is money.) An hour or so darting around the mangroves, and we were there. I coated myself in sunscreen as Bal tied my two water bottles together with a shoelace so I could hang them around my neck. Then I slung on my small backpack (with camera, flashlight, toothbrush and two changes of clothing), and was off.

The open sand — no trees were even near the water — seemed daunting under the blazing sun and in temperatures in the mid-90s. But a stiff breeze had kicked up, alleviating the heat. My goal for the day was to reach the other end of Ilha Grande and find a way to cross the river to the town of Luís Correia, about 12 miles away. Bal had told me I'd hit a village halfway there, Pedra do Sal, where I could find lunch. But for now, flat sands and tidal pools to the horizon were all I could see. I set out in flip-flops across the hard sand.

At first, the only attractions were flocks of birds flitting by above, and below, striking tricolor black-and-beige-and-white designs in the sand that seemed computer-generated. But it was thrilling enough to finally see what the landscape looked like after staring at a satellite image for weeks.

Every mile or so, I'd run into actual humans: fishermen who stood in the water casting and pulling in their nets. They were engrossed in their labors and not eager to stop and chat. I came across a dead sea tortoise being consumed by vultures — also not eager to chat — and every hundred yards or so I'd also see a neon-pink-and-purple jellyfish corpse, blown up like a malformed Hello Kitty balloon. Such novelties made the time pass quickly.

I reached dusty Pedra do Sal in a few hours and had a 27-real plate of pan-fried fish and sweet potatoes at a beachfront stand called Bar Farol where, on a weekday, I was the only visitor. At least until I was joined by five extremely polite stray dogs looking for scraps.

In the afternoon, the novelties continued. There were the wind turbines that stretched east from Pedra do Sal, evidence that the cooling wind I had thought fortuitous was instead part of the package. Then I was startled when the harsh daylight began flickering like an impure candle. After about five confounding seconds — Was I fainting? Was the world ending? — I looked up, and realized a turbine was whirling precisely in the line between me and the descending sun.

Night fell just before I reached the river that separated Ilha Grande from Luís Correia, and out came the flashlight. I could see the town lights glittering across the river, but on the Ilha Grande there was not a soul. Time to sleep under a bush, I thought, when I spotted a campfire in the distance.

Thank goodness for boring small towns. Three teenage boys with nothing to do in Luís Correia had come across the river to fish; they were roasting their (lone) catch on a stick over the fire. Sure, they'd take me across, they said, and before long I was boarding their precarious raft, about 3 feet by 5 feet of wooden planks, propelled by some sort of a rowing rudder whose mechanism I didn't quite understand. If I had not been confident I could swim to the other side had anything happened, I would have declined. But sure enough, we made it across and I quickly found a basic bed for 40 reais in the Boa Esperança pousada (small hotel), and an "arrumadinho" — a bowl of rice and beans and assorted meats — at the Bom Lanches food stand.

The next morning, I set out from Atalaia beach, a dreary stretch of sand that was, even so, apparently popular with beachgoers: it was lined with restaurants and bars that were sprucing up for a long weekend. There was also something extremely curious: scattered on the sand in front of the restaurants were little stands advertising "krep's." Not crepes, not krepes, not creps and not even kreps, but, universally, krep's with an apostrophe.

A few miles in, I reached palm-lined Coqueiros beach, and lovely looking resorts and pousadas began to appear occasionally. I stopped for lunch at Alô Brasil, an expansive palm-frond spot with overpriced crab and fish (an appetizer of each, plus a drink, cost 60 reais).

As I rested sore muscles, I realized how much fun I was having. It's amazing how little things — a dead tortoise, a spelling mistake, teenagers roasting a fish — are so much more fascinating when you have no idea they (or anything else) are coming.

When I started out again, another attraction appeared on the beach just ahead: a 17-year-old named Antônio Max, spinning on his head in the shallow surf.

"I'm practicing my hip-hop," he said, pronouncing it HIP-ee HOP-ee, as Brazilians tend to do.

I stopped for the night in Maramar, a tiny, sand-swept town where I was shocked to find a pousada. But its name explained everything: Kite Pousada. I had stumbled upon Piauí's (barely) emerging kitesurfing scene. Kite Pousada is run by a mother-and-son team who charged me 70 reais for a room — a bit much, I thought but I was too tired to bargain.

Also staying in Kite Pousada were the only foreigners I would encounter along the whole coast: a kitesurfing crew made up of a Finn, an Englishman, a Canadian and an Italian. Together we went to eat in the lone open beach bar (more fish and sweet potatoes). They told me the coast was known for its wind, and were intrigued by my hike, which of course I was taking east to west with the wind.

"Actually, I'm going west to east," I said. "I guess that was a mistake."

"A very big mistake," said the Italian.

No matter. The next morning I left the kitesurfers behind and planned to head straight to Macapá, the next town over, where, I had been told, it would be easy to find a fisherman to take me across river No. 2 to Barra Grande. But again an unexpected sight interrupted me: along the white sand of a small bay, a family of four donkeys was munching on seaweed.

In retrospect, it shouldn't have been surprising. Farm animals run loose all over this region, and if someone had asked me, hypothetically, "Would a donkey eat seaweed?" I'd have said yes. But for some reason, I stared. I took pictures. I briefly wished I were starting a band so I could name it Donkeys Eating Seaweed.

Snapping out of my donkey-induced trance, I walked to the mouth of the Macapá River, where a sand bar formed a sort of semi-lake. I watched two kitesurfers speed along and lift off the water, carried by the wind to astonishing heights before landing again. Cool. Not donkeys-eating-seaweed cool, but cool.

With significant rowing assistance from me, a fisherman named Francisco took me across the river to Barra Grande for 20 reais.

I found a crepes place that was actually open — the Bar e Restaurante O Tutuca. When I crossed the Macapá, I had finally left the municipality of Luís Correia and its misspelling ways, so I should not have been surprised that the owner, who goes by just Tutuca, used a different spelling: "creps."

I watched as he ladled batter into oval molds on what resembled a waffle iron, then sliced hot dogs and cheese and placed them in the batter, covering it with more batter and closing the top. The result was a sort of cruller-shaped stuffed pancake. It was delicious.

My goal for the day was the town of Cajueiro da Praia, and I'll admit I couldn't arrive soon enough — blisters and sore muscles had slowed me to a semi-limp. By midafternoon, though, I should have been nearing town, but there was no one, anywhere, to ask. Until, that is, I came across a simple one-story house — unusually situated right at the sand's edge and with a yard surrounded by fencing made from rough branches. It was clearly a local residence, not a fancy beach home. I went to knock on the door.

No need — it was open, and a wiry 70-year-old named Francisco Alves Ferreira was watching a Brazil-Iraq soccer match on television. He wore no shirt and from the dark, leathery skin of his chest, I questioned whether he even owned one.

I WAS pretty close to Cajueiro da Praia, he said: "It's about 10 minutes from here to where that point juts out into the water, and then a bit more than 10 minutes from there, since it's further from the point to the town than it is from my house to the point."

I thanked him. "Do you want something to drink?" he asked. Francisco grabbed a pole and a machete and led me into the impeccable sand yard, where he poked a coconut out of the tree, hacked it open and handed it to me. I took a swig of coconut water and he told me about his seven children and something like 12 grandchildren, scattered around Piauí and neighboring states.

His directions were right; it was 25 minutes to Cajueiro da Praia, where I'd stay at the Pousada Lu (30 reais) before walking the last bit of the coast the next morning, ending at a shrimp hatchery that workers told me sent shrimp to the United States and China.

To be honest, I had completely forgotten about my original goal, to find the best beach in Piauí. But no matter, it would have been impossible to choose a winner. It depends, of course, on who you are and what you want.

I'll go this far: if you're looking for a classically tropical beach, it's palm-tree-lined Coqueiros. If you want solitude, it's those first miles of Ilha Grande. If you're a kitesurfer, it's Barra Grande. And if you're Francisco Alves Ferreira, it's the (as far as I know) unnamed beach with excellent coconuts that can be found 10 minutes west from the point that juts out into the water just before Cajueiro da Praia.


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