Saturday 6th March: Up the river Paraguaçu
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Sun 6 Mar 2016 11:13
We set off around 6 am and motored round to the entrance and up the river as both the pilot book and the 'Mina2's had recommended the place for its rural charm and an opportunity to see real rural Brazil. The entrance was slightly disappointing as the most obvious feature is the biggest gantry we've ever seen - more like Belfast than jungle - on the port side, as well as an elephant's graveyard of four giant oil rigs. But that past it did live up to expectation.
It's actually quite inhabited with houses, some quite grand, fairly frequent but a charming river with sandstone cliffs, small sandy beaches and mangrove trees. On the way up river we saw a shark of some sort, about 2 m long and greeny/sandy spotted, and some dolphins as well as eagles, white storks or egrets and a flight of bright red and quite large birds.
We went to the small town of Maragogipe well in time for the famous Saturday farmers market to still be in full swing we thought. The pilot book says 'no need to ask directions, just follow the crowd'. Well, there were 2 sleeping dogs and a donkey we might have asked. We wandered around and found scores of bars, so very likely it is or was a market town, but few people. We stopped for a beer in one and asked where the market was and were directed to a small supermarket: either the farmers had been, done all trade and completely cleared up and then out by 10:30 in the morning - which is entirely possible but surely there would have been some still hanging around in the bars? - or 'progress' has rendered it obsolete. A bit of a disappointment: no oxen and more importantly no vegetables.
We then caught the last of the flood tide to anchor off the hamlet of São Francisco do Iguape where there is a decaying but rather fine monastery. We rowed ashore in the evening for a beer and a wander around. Everyone we met was quite friendly but either shy or incurious; not that our Portuguese is up to any chat but it's nonetheless different to reaction elsewhere be it Iceland, Norway, Scotland or Spain: if you anchor a boat off a bar and go and have a drink the barman at least says 'hello' or 'where are you from'. Here not a single word is spoken unnecessarily: the choice of beers and the price is stated, and a 'boa tarde' provided we say it first, but that's it. Yet they are far from hostile. We haven't worked it out yet.
Anyway we had a very peaceful night at anchor (but no GSM coverage) and started at first light to catch the ebb tide down river and back towards Itaparica.