The most unique thing about the Belem mercado is the fish market. I’m no ichthyologist, but I’m guessing these are not your normal grocery store varieties. Some of these are Amazonian beasts. If you’re not cleaning your fish with a machete, then maybe you’re just not catching big enough fish.

One guy was only selling nicely-presented head halves. I assume these beauties will be floating in a bowl of soup down the street later today.

It was another long haul to Belem. 600 km. You can really tell the impact now from all the rain this far north. We saw water buffalo!

Unfortunately, we pushed the bus a little too hard and arrived in Belém with a major oil leak from the front seal. We won’t be driving very far without fixing it.

We spent our first day researching boat options (info to come) and walking around. Belem is a market town. Besides the famous Ver-o-Peso market, every other street in a 4 block radius is filled with stalls selling ear buds, phone covers and other random junk. But, it seems like every stall sells the exact same things.

The Ver-o-Peso market’s name ‘see the weight’ refers to the Portuguese tax infringed on the weight (not value) of the items coming down the river. The market itself is a sprawling assault on all your senses, and has dedicated areas for clothing, fruit, souvenirs and baskets, fish, birds (alive) and special Amazonian natural cures for everything that might ail you.

We keep mentioning the heat, but it is real and intense. And, it is not so much the heat as the humidity. We had to keep finding stores with A/C to ‘browse’ just for a blast of cool air.

Amazon tourism revolves around the Amazon Basin, meaning it’s many smaller rivers and tributaries. We experienced this type of tourism back in Bolivia and it was interesting. We aren’t counting on seeing a heck of a lot of wildlife while on the Amazon barge, so we went to the tiny zoo in Belem. Even with the aquarium closed (no manatees or anacondas on display today!), we got to see a few of the Amazon favs. The best part was that it was one of those places were some of the animals are just walking around uncaged.

Unfortunately, the camera was out of batteries, so you’ll just have to trust us on this.

We were buying water when a zoo employee walked by me holding what I assumed was a child. But, I turned around and he was putting a sloth on a tree 10 meters from us. Then, walked off. We went right up next to it and he looked at us with that cute perma-smile they have and starting crawling down the tree. Apparently, he didn’t like that one. We continued to watch this sloth make it to the ground and crawl about 3 meters. It was amazing, but this small feat took him about 20 minutes, and it was hot so we were forced to move on. It took all the morals I had not to scoop him up and put him in my bag.

We were also able to get up close to a scarlet macaw, and a 20 foot long caiman (I am not exaggerating), a jaguar and saw an awesome giant river otter.

From the park, we headed our for another long day of driving. The bus is still sputtering and I think the issue is now the the distributor itself. When I watch the timing mark with a light, the advance seems to go backwards before forward. And, it’s inconsistent. I’ve lubricated it, but nothing changes. I’ll try to pick up a ‘real’ VW distributor while still in Brazil and ditch the 009 if I can.  At full throttle, it’s fine.

We made it to São Luis in the pouring rain and headed straight for the ferry terminal. São Luis seems okay based on what we’ve read, but others have told us to avoid it. We didn’t have any major reason to visit, so the ferry across the Baia de São Marcos was the plan.

There was a huge line of cars and most of them had tickets. It took us a while to figure out the system, but the system is… you can’t buy tickets. So, we waited in the ‘no ticket’ line. And, waited.

We missed the next two ferrys, but made some friends in line. The 3rd ferry arrived about 4 hours later and we were the last one allowed on.

The ferry knocks 250 km off your route if you are going to Belem. We recommend buying a ticket in advance (somewhere) or getting there early!

After the boat, we headed to Alcântara for a peaceful night’s sleep.

The Portuguese, French and Dutch all took turns wiping out the indigenous population here in the 17th century. Then, duked it out among themselves. This town boomed during the cotton and sugar rushes and became a big slave-trading center to support the industry. Later, when Brazil outlawed slavery, the town collapsed when all the barons left with all the cash.

Today, it’s pretty much just fishing and tourism. It’s an interesting place with crumbling colonial architecture and old mansions being overtaken by the jungle. One of the major landmarks here is it’s well-preserved whipping post. Prominently located in it’s original location -  in front of the Catholic church.

There have been impressive sand dunes for hundreds of kilometers, but Parque Nacional Lençois Maranhenses is a highlight. First, you have to take a 4 wheel drive jeep equipped with a snorkel to even get out there.  It takes about an hour driving through sand and lagoons. In the end, you’re led into an otherworldly landscape of crystal clear freshwater lakes separated by enormous dunes.

Huge white sweeping dunes which,  lying just outside the Amazon Basin, mean the region is subjected to the rainy season (and therefore isn’t technically a desert). In fact, it rained on us on our way home.

Running full speed down sand dunes is even better when there is a blue lake at the bottom to jump into. We played for a few hours before watching the sunset. The ride back at twilight was another adventure.

We were on our way to Barra Grande (Ceará), on a tip, and only ten minutes down the road we were stalled.

The bus was ‘missing’, sputtering and jumping and generally not running well. We pulled over on the side of the road and Jason went to work on the engine, while we tried to keep cool. Even at 8 AM, the heat and humidity was unrelenting.

It took a while to figure it out, but our electronic ignition died. Kaput. Jason swapped it out with and old set of points and we were back on our way.

Barre Grande is a kite surfing destination, but was a ghost town today. We took zero photos.

The next day, we knew it was going to be a long drive to Parque Nacional Lençois Maranhenses, so we got up early and hit the road.

Jason had a plan to knock off 250 km of pavement driving via shortcut that would take us directly there. Most of the roads were on the map as dirt, but there was a missing section in the middle. He checked out the satellite photos and was convinced there was a path where ‘the road should be’. This was our plan – we were going to try to follow the Rio Magú for while and then turn north where there is no road on the map.

After a few hours, Jason turned onto the dirt and announced, “Now the fun part begins!”

The bus was running like crap, so we pulled over to tweak a few things – not much help.  Eventually, the road turned too sandy (and narrow) for us and we had to turn back. The power lines were our clue that the road would continue and actually went somewhere, but the sand was just too deep. But, we had a Plan B. We headed inland a bit and tried another route. This one turned from dirt, to mud then to deep sand and we repeated this for a few more hours.

The ‘towns’ we drove through were mostly just a collection of houses, with everyone sitting on their porch looking at us drive by like we’re idiots. The road usually turned to mud around civilization, and in one place we got stuck. About 10 guys from town helped push us out, walked with us another 500 meters where there was another muddy place, pushed us through that and insisted we would be able to make it the rest of the way. Then, it started raining.

Our original detour had cost us a couple hours. The roads we found were definitely 4×4 territory, but we pushed on.  It most spots it was very narrow and and had brush along both sides, or was a gully – not even a place to turn out to camp. We had to break our rule and drive at night. This made things way more interesting.

For some reason, the roads in the little villages seemed to be worse than anywhere else on the route. As we bounced a scraped our way through town, the townsfolk just stared out their windows at what was obviously a normal form of entertainment. We lost our skid plate at some point, but hopped out and got it.

In one nameless town (none of them were on a map or had signs to indicate where we were), we followed the road downhill to find giant impassable crevices in front of us. There were also giant crevices along both side of the car, making backing up (uphill) a feat of terror. Again, kind folks in town showed up to help, but in true South American style, there 8 guys yelling different things to us.

The car didn’t have enough power to back up the hill, so I had to start pushing from the front, then everyone else started. But in the dark going backwards, it was impossible for Jason to see where to steer the car, and one wheel started sliding down into the crevice. The bus was dangling at a fortuitous angle, with Jason and Bode inside and me panicking outside. Everybody was yelling and more people started showing up. Some logs and palm fronds (these don’t ever really hold a car do they?) were placed under the wheels and a team of guys put themselves in great danger holding up the right side of the bus to prevent it from sliding further down the crevice.

We finally made it backwards up the hill and we were pointed to detour. It’s the rainy season and major washout can happen, but we were a little amazed that someone didn’t use one of those logs to block the road. Regardless, we made it out safe and sound, with at least another two hours ahead of us.

Except, we were running out of gas.

In the next village, we spotted a hand-painted “gasolina” sign on the side of somebody’s house. I don’t know how we saw it in the dark, but we were absolutely lucky. Nobody was home, so we asked next door and the girl had a key. We managed to negotiate soda-bottle gasoline for R$3.50 a liter, until granny showed up and bumped the price to R$4. The grannies are always the toughest businesspeople. Still, at only a 30% markup over posto prices, we couldn’t refuse.

When we got to our final destination of Barreirinhas after a 14 hour day we were shocked at the modern conveniences and upscale tourist amenities, (there’s a paved road  from the north). Wwe checked into a hotel and immediately jumped into the pool.

From the lake, you can hop in the back of a 4WD truck that drives you through the sand to Jericoacoara (Jeri). It takes about 45 minutes of bumping, sliding and hitting your ass hard on a bench seat in the back of an old truck. It was fun.

This is another in-the-middle of nowhere, hard to get to, sandy tourist town that we love. But, this one has a lot of high-end stores and hotels.  We got there late afternoon and found a place to crash for the night. After the daily dose of acai, we headed to the giant sand dune at the end of town.

The sunset here is the big event, and everyone in town climbs the dune and watches the show.  Since the Atlantic Ocean is directly north of us now, the sun seems to both rise and set over the water.

Bode must have run down that dune 25 times. It’s a lot steeper than it appears in these photos.  He talked Jason into running down twice, me only once. It was the climb up I didn’t want to do over again.

When the sun went down, there was a capoeira performance on the beach. Lots of energy, music and song.  Bode’s been practicing his own version for weeks now. It’s definitely something we’d love to learn.

It was too dark for us to get a good video or photos, but here’s a sample of the awesomeness: