Date of Entry: July 8th 2016
Date of Writing: September 6th 2016, My Apartment, Sao Paulo.
I’ve booked a night bus north to Fortaleza for this night but also decided I might as well make the most of every day on the road now that I have a home waiting for me and stricter time schedules to deal with. I’ve just got a bit over a month in the north east and I want to make the most of it so I’ve booked a third tour from Che Lagarto hostel to the backpacking mecca known as Pipa, where sometimes if you’re lucky you can see dolphins off the beach. It’s another cheap tour at 30 reals so I figure I don’t have much to lose and this way I can decide If I want to come back to Pipa on my way south to Salvador where my trip in the northeast will end.
Again I’m picked up around 8 am and climb in to a crowded tour bus where once again I am the only non south american with one Argentinean family making up all the diversity on the busWe drive South of Natal along the coast again stopping at a completely different beach based in a little town called Tibau do Sul, a truly beautiful place. Here we have the option to board a boat trip (4o real or 16 CAD) to search for dolphins but I decide I should save the money and just wander around. At first I make the mistake of heading out to the point crowded with tourists, though I’d be lying if I said it was anything but beautiful, the sun shining down through a thin white haze of clouds displaying lots of brilliant blue.
After exploring this point and realizing I still have about 80 minutes to kill I do something smart and start wandering towards the endless side of the beach where no one seems to have the energy to walk, or at least where the crowds are reduced to a lucky few. And as I walk about shin deep in the warm atlantic waters the light and scenery only grows more impressive. I’m joined for a little while by a friendly yellow bird flitting along from black rock to black rock along side me too. It’s so beautiful any direction i choose to look and some of the best photos come from looking back the way I’ve come.
I keep walking at a leisurely pace loving the cool caress of the water on my legs and singing as I go, picking my way through rocky sections of the beach and watching a few of the local fisherman going about their day. I round the point fringed with palm trees and find another beach just around the corner. that seems to go on forever. I’m justsad I won’t be able to explore it all, but still I pick up my pace a bit and walk along this second beach with cliffs at it’s edge and a few small beach restaurants having built makeshift staircases down from the road to the beach to allow access to a very small group of tourists.
I find a sand dollar which might be my favourite beach find from back home and then realize I have to head back, but not before taking a second swim running into the crashing waves and getting knocked off my feet repeatedly. It’s an incredible feeling, especially completely alone as I am and I revel in the paradise around me before heading back to the beach and walking quickly back to where the bus will be waiting.
I take one brief detour for a chilled coconut and choose the tiny beachside place showing a big Canadian flag. Turns out the owners are from Alberta and we chat about brazil and Canada for a few minutes as he gives me a discount on my second coconut before my time runs out and I hurry back to my bus.
Our next stop is another brief but impressive one, a lookout point further along that second beach on which I was walking just a while before, but the views from above are completely different and make for some amazing photos and a view I think I might never forget. The north east of Brazil shines bright
From here it’s another 40 minutes or so in the bus until we pull into a parking lot at the edge of Pipa and around 12:30 where we’re told we have the next 3.5 hours to wander this famous little hippy vibe surf town / backpacking mecca. I wander through the streets and grab a little snack before finding my way to the top of a staircase above the main beach in town. I take a seat there and only after about ten minutes sitting there do I notice my new friend crawling up a lamp post blending perfectly with the greenery. He’s awesome and I point him out to lots more tourists as I sit there watching him for a while.
Eventually I say goodbye to my new lizard friend and opt not to go down to this beach as I’ve hear Praia do Amor just outside of town is much nicer, so instead of going down I head back to the main street and after enquiring in broken portuguese with some friendly locals I find my way to Pipa’s most famous beach and it’s parking area where coconuts seem extra pricey.
Out past the parking lot I stumble out to another stunning lookout of yet another stunning beach just south of Natal. It’s hard to believe how many of them Brazil seems to have.
After some photos I head down and walk along the beach, which is more crowded than the earlier one, with surfers, tanners and football players dotting the golden sand. Still it’s utterly beautiful and the waves are once again awesome for me as I spend as long as I can in the ocean leaving my bag hidden behind some shrubs and hoping no one will find it.
I decide that rather than walk back up through the town I’ll try to follow the beach which looks possible since it’s low tide. I meander through the sand past some backpackers doing yoga with local guys seeming to enjoy it very much and I feel like I’m suddenly back in south east asia. The scenery though is beautiful and before you know it I’m around the point and on the beach I’d been looking down on below the center of Pipa. Sadly there’s no dolphins in sight.
After a bit of time looking for the elusive dolphins I give up and head back in to town opting for subway of all things for a late lunch before joining the bus and dozing through the 90 minute ride back to Natal texting Renata whenever I’m awake. It’s strange to miss home like this and not something I’ve experienced in a long time.
As I walk back to Che Lagarto Hostel to get ready for my night bus to Fortaleza I grab a quick shot of the local cemetery and then settle in for a 10-12 hour ride north.
