Date of Entry: July 7th 2016
Date of Writing: September 5th 2016
After a beautiful but ultimately disappointing tour to the Brazilian Caribbean site of maracajau I have low expectations for the second tour I’ve booked taking me South of Natal to several beaches and my main reason for booking the largest Cashew Tree in the world. I almost didn’t book it but figured hey at 30 reals (12 CAD) just over a quarter of the price of the last tour I figured why not give it a try, and boy am I glad I did.
For most people the biggest cashew tree is one small stop in the tour here, but I love cashews, most of my family does. It’s a christmas tradition that my father buys cashews for the turkey stuffing, then we proceed to eat them all well before christmas, several times over and he has to buy them again and again. In short I love cashews, and here in brazil they are cheaper than Canada and oh so good. It’s going to be a dangerous home I think, though luckily the price in Sao Paulo is much higher than here in the north east.
At any rate the bus picks me up around 8 am from Che Lagarto hostel and again I’m the only foreigner on the bus, but this time I’m feeling a bit more social and more willing to try my still very broken Portuguese making some friends on the bus as we head south from Natal. Our first stop is just a short distance from the city and while it’s hardly incredible the sunny day makes getting out of the bus a pleasure. It’s a space museum of some kind though inside the focus seems somewhat diverted and includes turtle skulls so I mostly just enjoy the warmth of the early morning sun.
After about 15 minutes we’re brought back to the bus by our friendly tour guide for another 35 minutes until we arrive at the small town which is home to the biggest Cashew Tree in the world, which si a sprawling labyrinth of crooked branches capped by thick green leaves. This tree makes so much deliciousness that as we leave the bus and pay our entry fee (5 reals for student price) and enter the maze like collection of roots and branches which seems like a thousand different tress but is actually one single one. I wander the walkways along time fantasizing about eating all the cashews that come from this wondrous tree.
After a lost lens cap below the path and some time lost getting that back I have to hurry through the rest of the giant maze, running up the stair s to the viewpoint above the tree and just barely making it back to the bus at the appointed time. Of course it’s brazil so half the bus is late and me being there on time just means I sit on the bus for 10 minutes waiting. Oh well.
Eventually we’re on our way to our next stop, a very brief one sadly but perhaps the most spectacular view of a beach I’ve seen in years. Maybe ever. Brazilian beaches are beyond beautiful, the waters an electric shade of blue and the sand stretching on forever below cliffs. I wish I could spend a day on the beach below but 15 minutes later we’re on our way again.
Our next stop is lunch, as we pull into a charming little village and get off the nicely air conditioned bus to walk through a few narrow streets in the sweltering early afternoon heat around us to a small hotel restaurant set just back from some more truly incredible beaches. Here everything is on offer, fresh seafood, idyllic hammocks under palm trees, a big wave break shooting up huge clouds of white spray, plenty of places to swim and some marine life to explore. I don’t bother with ordering food.
Afterabout 2 hours spent here I have time to quickly order a shrimp pastel and buy some more delicious cocadas from a beach vendor (Cocadas will be dangerous to me if I ever live in the north east of Brazil). Then we head back through the charming town and I snap a picture of the cat above before re-boarding the bus and heading to our second last stop on the tour, a pretty lake just a short distance from the sea front.
It’s beautiful here and swimming in the fresh water is very nice, though to me the ocean will always be better, that’s probably from growing up surrounded by lakes and removed from the ocean, because the Brazilians on my bus certainly seem more wowed by the lake. I read, and text Renata on some bad data since I’m missing her a lot while swimming every fifteen minutes to cool off before our times run out.
We get back on the bus and head back towards Natal, making our last stop at another impressive beach with more cool rock formations where the waves our really crashing. I think of my mother and father, and I think of so many amazing days out on the rocks at Terrance Bay Nova Scotia and I’m happy just watching the huge billowing clouds of white spray exploding onto the horizon. I do eventually take a quick peak into the water filled cave beneath the rock before snapping some photos of a pair of local kids playing soccer on the beach.
As we board the bus to head back to Natal I can’t help but reflect on how much better this tour was than my snorkelling experience yesterday despite costing just a quarter of the price. It’s been a fun filled day filled with beauty even if there was quite a lot of time on the bus.
We make on last stop in the city at a specialty cashew vendor five minutes walk from my hostel where they offer about a hundred different kinds of cashews. I enjoy some free samples then head quickly back to my hostel and the shelter the AC provides before wandering out later down to main beach of ponta negra and finding an all you can eat pizza place for 19 reals (about 7.50 Canadian) and yes living in Natal would be dangerous.
