Day 9 - 14 Dec.2011 - Lençois

Today we woke up with the sun and had a walk on the beach again. It is very pleasant to do so in the early morning because the beach is still relatively empty and the sun not too strong. This morning it was only us and a couple of local fishermen. As we walked along, we spotted one of the areas fenced off for the TAMAR (Tataruga Maritima) project – The National Marine Turtle Preservation Programme. The project focuses on sea turtles eggs protection because the sea turtles are at risk of extinction. Once every year the sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs and burry them in the beach sand.
We left the Sítio do Conde at about 9:45am to hit the road towards Lençois. We had 500 kilometres ahead of us. We went back to the BR-101, which was surprisingly empty today and continued our way. After Feira de Santana we stopped for lunch and got in contact with a truck driver from Santa Catarina, in the South of Brazil. He had 28 tons of Coca Cola to be delivered in Barreiras in Western Bahia. He was just assembling his “travel kitchen” at the underside of his trailer and started to peel potatoes for his lunch. He said, the local food in the Northeast of Brazil is not to his flavour and prefers to cook his own food. With his 40 tons truck he does on average about 800km per day. That makes our 500km look quite insignificant, considering that we are much faster than his truck. We mentioned that we are planning to travel as well through Santa Catarina and further South to Argentina and Chile and he revealed that he used to travel a lot to these countries. Nowadays he sticks to Brazilian territory, as he doesn’t like to travel through the Andes during winter. Despite of that he is only a couple of days per month at home. He spends most of his time/life on Brazilian roads and truck stops.
We wished him a good journey and continued our last 200km towards Lençois where we arrived at 5:00pm and booked ourselves into a lovely pousada (B&B). We went to the centre to arrange a guide for the next day to explore The National Park of Chapada Diamantina. After many hours sitting in the car, we thought a thorough walk would do us well and we decided to hike to Brazil’s second tallest water fall of 384m height - but more about that in tomorrow’s blog. We finished the day with a lovely meal of Picanha, a Brazilian beef speciality washed down with a couple of Skol beers. We went back to our pousada and fell asleep to the sound of the surrounding forest. Especially the big Brazilian grass hoppers can be quite dominant with the noise produced when they rub their rear legs against the forewing. Good night and till tomorrow.