Haven´t you always wanted a monkey?

After the gong show of Santarém, we grabbed a flight to São Luis, and Parque Naçional Lençóis Maranhenses. Lençóis in Portuguese for "blankets", and refers to the appearance of huge sand dunes. During the rainy season lakes form between the dunes and make for a beautiful landscape.



To get to the park we took a van 3 hours from São Luis, and then a 4x4 Toyota truck through the sand to the dunes. The truck ride is pretty crazy, and we were thrown around a lot. It´s worth it however, and cooling off in one of the lakes between the dunes is so refreshing. Just perfect to scale another dune and jump in the next lake.

The next day we took a motor boat down the river Preguiça to a place called Vassouras, where we found a half dozen playful little monkeys. They come out of the edge of the forrest to grab fruit and other things offered (or not) by the people there.



They are quite playful and tame. One really wanted to get into my water bottle, and was quite frustrated by it. He tried bashing it with his hands, jumping on it, biting it, and had he been stronger would have carried it away.



While he seemed to have all his attention on the water bottle, he kept himself secured to me with his tail, which has quite a grip.




Vassouras also has a smaller version of the dunes, with one or two smaller lakes between them. Although there were less of them, the dunes were larger, and steeper. There was a rope to help people scale the dunes (we were spry enough to not require them). The sand is very soft, and it´s fun to run or slide down the sides.



After Lençóis, we returned to São Luis, hoping to make it to one of three places next on the list, but found that the roads east of São Luis are terrible, and no one had heard of the places we wanted to go. We might have made it, but it sounded sketchy, and being a long weekend even sketchier. We opted for a cheap flight we were lucky enough to find straight back to Recife, where we are now, recuperating.