Cars, Boats, Bikes, Manatees and One Crazy Lady

Cars, Boats, Bikes, Manatees and One Crazy Lady
Maragogi, Brazil

Maragogi, Brazil

I suspect that most Brazilians will have never heard of Maragogi and it certainly not somewhere that I would urge you to add to your to-go list. It was a quaint little beach town and served us well for what we needed but as a pair of foreigners with a limited Brazilian Portuguese vocabulary it was a bit frustrating. We had the benefit that the owner of the little Posada we had booked spoke perfect English, but little did we know she was going to be possibly the hardest thing we had to deal with in Maragogi. She was lovely, but potentially certifiably insane. It is not often someone makes an appearance in our blog for being too nice but we spent the vast majority of our time trying to get her to focus for long enough on the tasks that we needed help with before she got over excited and went off on a completely unrelated subject or started introducing us to each and every guest, staff member or visitor that happened to be passing. The strangest tendency that she had was every day trying to invite herself to lunch or dinner with us, we spent a good ten minutes every time we left our room coming up with an excuse as to why we didn’t want to have lunch or dinner with her, it was beyond strange. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was just overly nice and didn’t know where to stop, Tim on the other hand was convinced that she was crazy, mental, bananas and probably had cameras watching and listening to our every move and conversation. She was crazy but not that crazy, I hope!

We had headed to Maragogi for one reason and one reason only, it was the most civilised beach town in the vicinity of the Association of Peixe Boi’s, a conservation group who care for abandoned or sick manatees. This little group are located in the middle of nowhere but having never seen a manatee this was a perfect opportunity. Our crazy posada owner told us that we could join a tour which went to the centre which was absolutely perfect.

Our first day partially having been forced by the crazy posada owner and a little bit on our own accord we decided to go on a boat trip out to the natural sea pools which are so famous along this coastline. At low tide the reef has a serious of pools which are shallow and perfect for relaxing in. A few people were eagerly snorkelling and having trial scuba dives in the 3 feet of water but with just a few striped fish we just floated and enjoyed the warm ocean. The weather was not being very kind, the sky was filled with grey clouds and the sun made just a couple of brief appearances which showed off the beautiful bright aqua pools to the their full potential. In all honesty South East Asia has spoiled us so much that we have come to expect clear oceans, beautiful coral and hundreds of fish, so Brazil really can’t compete on those levels. Still we were glad we did it and it stopped the posada owner moaning at us for 5 minutes.

When we got back from the beach, Crazy was waiting for us as usual with a handful of new guests who she needed to introduce and she delivered the news that the tour to the manatees was cancelled as there were not enough people. This left us with the option to take a £40 taxi or after much dragging out we established that there is a local way… obviously we opted for the local way. This involved a mini van, a moto taxi, a car ferry and then a return transfer from the association. The only part of this journey that I was dreading was the moto taxi. Whilst I trust Tim implicitly when I am on the back of a motorbike or a moped, a random Brazilian who is on the phone and weaving along the cobbled roads does not in still me with much confidence, but if this was the only way to get to the manatees then I needed to man up.

After breakfast we headed out ready to start our journey and Crazy told us that we didn’t need to take the mini van, she would take us on the first part of the journey, whilst this was super kind annoyingly it meant that we had 2 hours to burn up as we had based our journey on a slow mini man… we spent the next two hours wondering around the small town of Japaratinga in the rain searching for a coffee shop. We found one small restaurant that looked open and when we asked for coffee they delivered the coffee flask from the breakfast bar to our table and then refused to let us pay, which was amazing.

Before we knew it, it was time for me to face my fears we negotiated with the moto taxis and were on our way. I seemed to get the better part of this deal than Tim as my driver had a brand new bike with a perfectly balanced suspension. Tim’s bike had seen better days and he was shaken, rattled and rolled the whole way to the car ferry port. Next was a boat across the river and on the other side a rather cool but battered beach buggy was waiting for us. 3 hours after we started our 30 minute journey we were finally there ready to go and see the manatees.

As expected the entire manatee tour was in Portuguese as foreign tourist really don’t bother visiting these parts and seeing how hard it is to get anywhere I can see why! Thankfully we had read their website and knew what they did so could just follow behind, nod at the guide knowingly and take photos. The project takes in abandoned or sick manatees and nurses and feeds them to full size in enclosures that are built into the river that they naturally live in. Once they are big enough to be released they are fitted with a satellite tag to monitor them for the first few months before being fully released back into the wild. It seems that one of the old rescued manatees doesn’t want to return to the wild and instead just hangs around outside the wooden feeding enclosures asking to be let back in, poor boy. Manatees are so adorably cute, they are massive and whiskered and I desperately wanted one to come and hug our boat as they often do, but we were out of luck and aside from a few brief noses we didn’t see much but we saw enough to make me happy. All too soon it was over and we were back on our beach buggy ready to start the journey back. On the car ferry there were 2 cars with us and as we got to the other side and stood waiting for a pair of moto taxis a girl shouted over to us from one of the cars in English. It turned out to be a Brazilian family on holiday from Rio who were headed our way and offered to drop us at the door of our Posada, what amazingly nice people; I swear someone somewhere is looking out for us.

Back at the hostel and Crazy had some more good news for us, she was going to take us on a day trip the following morning for free to her favourite beach to walk along a sandbar. By this point Tim had completely lost his rag with Crazy and couldn’t bear to be in her company as she scared him. I still felt that she meant well, but she just had a slightly insane and overbearing way of showing it. Suddenly walking home after dinner Tim developed a new limp, he was hobbling home like his leg was made of wood and it seemed highly unlikely that he was going to manage a 1km ocean walk the following day. Apparently he had slipped on the speedboat ladder after our last ocean trip and hadn’t wanted me to worry, yeah right!

So it was me and Crazy and the rest of the posada going for an ocean walk because I was just too scared of Crazy not to go. As it was it was an ok morning, we walked along the beach and about 1km out on an exposed sandbar and when we got to the reef we turned around and walked back as grey clouds turned the sky black and then pelted us with freezing rain. It was not the most fun day trip I have ever had, but I was delighted to see that Tim’s leg was all better when I got back and it was time to depart and catch our bus to our next location. I am pretty sure that Tim did one of those little heel kicks and skipped down the road as we left the posada and Crazy behind. It is not often that a hotel owner makes such an impression, especially by being too nice, but this was a weird weird situation to be in and one that we were glad to leave behind.

Sea pools, tick. Ma
natees, tick. 1km ocean hike on a sandbar under duress, tick.

Maragoji is definitely done. Fingers crossed our next hostel speaks no English and just pushes us a map and takes our money as per usual.

Porto de Galinhas, we are on our way.