TIANGUÁ and UBAJARA NATIONAL PARK

Current location: click here

Without Venezuela in the plan, my new route to Colombia should go from Pantanal to Fortaleza, Belém, Manaus and Tabatinga. This change also removed some of the time pressure that had accumulated, allowing for longer stays or even new places. 

I was therefor glad when Inés, a good old friend from Magdalena del Mar, and her husband Jim invited me to their place in Tianguá. To get there I took a 5 hours van from Pantanal to Campo Grande, stayed overnight, flew to Brasilia, then to Fortaleza and took a 6 hours bus to Tinguá. I'm very good on all these by now and my friends and the fresh and mosquito free air in Tianguá more than compensated the effort.

Here a view of Fortaleza from the air. I'm back at the ocean.

The same day after arriving to Tianguá Ines and I went to the Ubajara National Park. The park attractions include a trekking path through the forest with view over the canyon, waterfalls, and a cave at the bottom of the canyon. The trekking is done using a 7km path build by the Portuguese hundreds of years ago and which is still in use by some neighbor communities. The way back up to the park entrance is normally done using a lift chair which happend to be on maintenance that day so that we had to decide is just see everything from the top, or walk to the cave and come back up all walking (14 km in total length and a "few" meters in altitude).

We reached the park's entrance around 11 am.

The falls provided a nice refreshing point. The day was rather cloudy and fresh so that we didn't have to fight against the heat. A place with fresh drinkable water is available at Mijo da Velha (good we didn't see the sign before drinking the water).

We also saw a few animals like this frog and monkeys on the way down.

Finally and after about 2 hours walking downhill we reached the cave around 1pm. The stone formations inside the cave and the welcome we received from the many bats was just impressive.

Around 2 we started our way back, talking less than 2 hours to be back at the entrance. Tired but happy from accomplishing our project even without the lift. Good Ines!

The next day Jim invited me to visit the farm and plant that he is managing. Here, everything turns around "acerola" or barbados cherry, a cherry native to south america, known for being extremely rich in vitamin C, almost as much as camu-camu. 

After the visit I was very much impressed about an operation of this kind and size being done in a remote rural location as Tianguá in a strict ecological and sustainable manner. An excellent job!

There was also time to walk around town. This photo shows some boys practicing "capoeira" a kind of brazilean martial art. 

With about 70.000 people, Tianguá is a small municipality in the state of Ceará, in Brazil's poorest region.