There are boat capacities for reasons

January 17, 2012:  “When a boat can only fit a max of 6, why are we trying to fit 9?” I said to myself as we were piling in the bodies, about to set off into one of the small channels of the Delta outside Parnaiba.  Not knowing how unstable the boat was going to be prior to departing our main vessel, I had all 3 of my cameras with me and only one of them is waterproof.  

Our boat was so overcapacity, when anyone made a sudden or unexpected move, water would flood in from the sides.  Fortunately though, there was a man scooping water out the boat to help keep the water level in the inside from not getting as high as it was on the outside.  This really added to the excitement level on what could have been a peaceful float down the channel.  If I didn’t have so much photography equipment this would not have been a problem, but…I did.

It is all about the middle of Point A and Point B

January 16, 2012:  Sand is sand and if you don’t look left or right when at an ocean or large body of water in the evening.  You could be on the Jersey Shore and it would look the same as the Bali – garbage and all.  Perhaps I am just getting “beached out.”

The past few places I have been such as Jeriocoacoara and Parnaiba, the middle of point A and point B has been much more exciting than Point B.  If I was to take out all the beaten up buses, jeeps, buggies, vans, taxis, water taxis, long boats, canoes, ferries, fishing boats, ships, motorcycles, bicycles, walking, crawling and hitchhiking I did the past few years…I wouldn’t have much of a trip.
 

At times I don’t have any idea on what I am going to see at the destination, only choosing to go there because I hear or read how exciting of an adventure it is to get there.  This is what happened when I recently went to Jeriocoacoara.  Here I thought I was going somewhere far away from the ocean and after over a 20 hour trip needing to take 3 buses and a mammoth 4x4 truck, Jeriocoacoara ended up being a beach town.  Staying here for a few days, I enjoyed the mediocre sunsets, long walks along the beach and blah, blah blah – that sentence was about to resemble an internet dating site if I didn’t quickly kill it.

When leaving Jeriocoacoara for the town of Paraniba, my driver was reminded the importance of leaving at low tide and not high tide.  This is especially important when in this region because the cement roads are limited, so there is a lot of travel that you need to cross open dunes and capitalize on the sandy beaches when the tide is low.  Since we left at high tide, there were some points our driver had to time the waves, going as soon as the wave would temporarily pull back into the ocean.  It got so bad at one point, that I could sense that the driver wanted to turn back…but there was no option due to being no place to turn the truck around.  I really do enjoy trips like this…as long as it is not my vehicle.