Jericoacoara - The hippie experience - Part II

--

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, the highlight of the day are the sunrise and the sunset, specially the sunset, everyone comes out to enjoy the experience and right after the sun is gone, they light a fire on the beach and you find yourself in a party... every day, but I'm getting ahead of myself here... let's start with the sunset. :-)

Getting to the right spot to enjoy the sunset requires some effort since you have to climb a good sand dune in order to get a good view.

You can see the little people down below...

And this is not a photographic trick... it was that steep!

You may think it gets kinda boring waiting there for the sun to disappear... but we had plenty of entertainment while we waited, from people doing sand-surfing




A guy doing some amazing acrobatics



and even we decided to have our little fun too. };-)

While we were travelling with Sandro, he gave us plenty of experience on how to push people down the dune so we thought it would be only fair to help out Javier to enrich his life with such an experience... after some careful planning we got everything in place, Susana distracting him, me ready to pull him down and María recording the event, Javier's sand babtism



In the end I ended up eating far more sand that I had anticipated and doing some acrobatics myself... but nothing like the taste of sand in your mouth when you are on holidays. :-)

On the positive side, I reckon that day I managed to provide my body with all the minerals I may require in my entire lifetime and the next one too.

There were quite a lot of people waiting to see the sunset

Finally, the sun decided to leave us for the day so everyone took their cameras and started shooting pictures.

As we were leaving the dune and making our way back to the village we heard some music so we decided to investigate, there was a small crowd making a circle and as we approached them we realised we were witnessing a Capoeira demonstration. The videos are quite dark but the sun was gone so I'm afraid that's as good as it gets.







But that wasn't all!
Out of nowhere, the main entrance to the village was filled with trolleys selling caipirinhas and caipiroskas of any flavour you can think of, strawberry, melon, mango, anana, ...

They also had a fire and everyone was around chatting and drinking caipiroskas so we obviously decided to join them and embrace the real Jeri experience

Tough life!

Apart from laying down by the beach and enjoying the food and the sunsets we also did some minor trekking to check out the surrounding areas.

Jericoacoara it's a weird place full of weird people indeed but I would totally recommend the visit.

After this, Rio de Janeiro was next. :-)

--

Jericoacoara - The hippie experience - Part I

--

Jeri is a place like no other, it's hard to describe as well. Up until 10-15 years ago this was almost exclusively a hippie community.

The access is difficult as it requires driving through dunes for over an hour (that's on top of a 3 hour trip from Fortaleza), there are no roads instead you follow some dirt tracks through the dunes. They do have electricity, most of the time, and 20 years ago they didn't even use money, they used to trade instead. No TV, phones, newspapers etc

Nowadays things have changed, you can actually buy a newspaper and they have some pretty decent hotels where you can spend some luxurious time and in case you were wondering, they do use money nowadays, yes and they love the colour of yours!

The village is located on the north-eastern coast of Brazil, in the state of Ceara, 300kms West of Fortaleza. It is almost exactly on the equator.

The town has gained fame as being one of the most beautiful and lengthy beaches in the world, surrounded by sand dunes and freshwater lagoons.  

The village is in such a place that allows visitors to admire views facing the east and west side of the ocean, making it possible for you to see both the sun rising and sun setting into the sea. This special geographic position is also what makes Jeri one of the windiest places in the world, hence very popular with wind-surfers and kite-surfers. 

After the 4 day trip through the long Brazilian beaches we stopped in Fortaleza to spend the night and wait for the new addition to the group. Javier which would be joining us at Fortaleza and continue the trip with us all the way back to Europe.

For the trip to Jericoacoara (from now on Jeri) we hired a driver to take us there since there is no public transport and we were advised against renting a car on our own. He drove us to the airport, where we picked up Javier and without delay we drove off to Jeri. It was a very long trip and in one of the stops we did along the dunes, Javier's passport and money must have fallen out of the car and he didn't realise until we were at the hotel so one of the first things we did the following morning in Jeri was to go to the police station.

I must add that when I say "police station" I am using that term in a very loose way... since the station was closed and the "Jeri" police was at the local coffee shop so we went there talked to the guy and he took us to a neighbour who had a printer, logged on to some website and printed out the report.

Later in the afternoon, when we got back to our hotel the receptionist told us the police was asking for us and gave us an address where to go... so we went there and he told us that one of the villagers had found Javier's passport and money but that the villager in question wanted a reward and he even made a suggestion of what the reward should be... How dodgy is that!!! the police acting as an agent for a blackmailer!

At this point, getting the passport and the money back was good news indeed so after a little negotiation we managed to reduce the "reward" money a little and after payment the villager handed over the documents so not a bad ending.

As you can see from the pictures below the weather was very changeable and we had a couple of strong storms although we also managed to enjoy the sun. :-)

As you can see from the above picture, it's quite a small village and the streets have no pavement whatsoever, it's all sand.

Our hotel wasn't the most luxurious in the area but it wasn't bad at all, in fact we were quite please with the place

And we didn't have any complaints about the food either :-)

It's really a nice and quite place

It is a very windy area so the sky was changing all the time

Due to the winds in the area, Jeri is a very popular place for people practising windsurf and kite-surfing and there is quite a large community of wind-surfers living there for longs periods of time (4-6 months a year).

The highlights of the day in Jeri are the sunrise and sunset, specially the sunset... there is a small party every night after the sunset but that's another story for another day... :-)

The beach road experience

--

I think that not many people know this but Brazil is a very curious country where you have a mix of first world country and third world country all in one. If you go to the big cities like Rio or Sao Paulo, you'll notice they have nothing to envy to any other big city in the world when it comes to infrastructures and services but in areas like the one we were visiting things were quite different.

There were either few roads or no roads at all in some places and the most fascinating thing is that in those situations people tend to use what they have, which in this particular case was the beach.

That's right! check it out! This was the road (you can see the marks left by the tyres from all the cars passing through).

And now you may think that yeah, maybe some crazy guy goes with his 4x4 every now and then... well, you couldn't be more wrong... even the school bus was using it!

I kid you not! That is the school bus doing its daily rounds...

Another interesting thing we found in this area is that people don't have much to live with but they don't really need much either... One day we stopped at a "restaurant" (and I use the term 'restaurant' in a very generous way here). The place was as isolated as it gets, in fact we were the first customers they had in 3 weeks!!!

Life was simple for them... they would get up in the morning and go to the sea to get some fish and lobster... should some customer pass by that day, they would give them the lobster and the fish, otherwise they would eat it themselves...

They only had two dishes...fish and lobster no other choice but despite of not being very fond on seafood I must admit that the lobster was fantastic... judge by yourself!

We visited a few fishing villages

Not everyone uses a 4x4

Another thing that is really weird, at least for me... is being close to Christmas and having a nice warm sunny day (35C). :-) The below Christmas tree won't get you into the Christmas mood but for me you could be singing jingle bells all day long...with 35C outside there is no way you can get me into the Christmas mood.

yeah... I know... not the nicest looking Christmas tree in the region that's for sure.

 This region we were visiting had lots of cashew trees and people tend to use cashews for everything. In one of the places we stopped to spend the night, the owner (a nice old lady) offered us a cashew cake and a cashew refreshment. They were both delicious and they are both very common in this region.

You may remember the cashew tree from a previous post (the largest in the world) :-)
Below you can see the fruit of that tree as sold in a local market.

If you are not careful handling this fruit you can hurt yourself. The green thing on top of this fruit releases a liquid that will burn your skin or so they say, luckely this is one of the few things I haven't experienced in my own flesh. :-)

Replenishing liquids with one of the local refreshments...

We were getting to the end of this 4 day excursion and we ended up in a peninsula (you can see the water on both sides of the road).

From here we had to take a local ferry in order to make it to the other side

And then it was a fairly quick drive to Fortaleza were we were ending our 4 day excursion and where we would be waiting for a new team member that was about to join us for the rest of the trip. Javier Valdés.

We took some amazing photographs but I think the most remarkable thing in the whole trip, at least for me, it was the different landscapes and colours and despite of my initial hesitation about the trip, María and Susana managed to make this trip an unforgettable experience.

We even had a couple of nasty storms...

but they never lasted long...

  

Next on our agenda was Jericoacoara. A weird place you can only reach by 4x4 and only after a long, long trip through the dunes, but that's a story for another blog entry. :-)

--