Lençóis Maranhenses, Maranhão, Brazil.

I am back from my trip and things are really well.  My first stop on the trip took me to North East Brazil   so that I could see Lençóis Maranhenses, a national park filled with sand dunes and lagoons.  I arrived at the airport in Sao Luis and at 5am I took a bus four hours east to get to the little town entering the park.  I checked into my hotel and immediately booked an off road tour to visit the sand dunes later that day.  After exploring the hotel premises, a swim, and lunch it was time to head to the tour! I had been dreaming of this moment for months and now it was finally here! The vehicle that picked us up was a 12 person off-road 4x4 dune buggy.  It was a gigantic truck but where the bed of the truck was supposed to be, we sat.  Although there were no sides just seats and one bar to hold onto and man, did you have to hold on! We travelled 12 km across sand and fields, threw desert brush, by cacti bumping and jumping all along the way though it was all super fun! The drive took about 45 mins and we finally arrived.  The tour guide instructed us to take off our shoes and we climbed the sand dunes in our bare feet! I thought the sand was going to be boiling hot because the sand can get extremely hot in Canada and I am thinking Oh Gosh I am kms away from the equator this is going to be hot but the sand was cold! The wind continuously blows thus the sand on the top never stays still unable to retain the heat.  It was absolutely the coolest thing ever, trekking across the sand dunes, one minute at the bottom looking up, then on top of a sand pile 30m in the air.  Unfortunately, I was there in the height of the dry season so all the lagoons that were supposed to be there, one after every sand dune (if you type Lençóis Maranhenses google images you will see its beauty), were gone but one lonely lagoon so our tour group walked 3km across the sand dunes to the lagoon and went for swim! Though now that I think about it, if I was there during the wet season I would not have been able to be at the sand dunes bottom and scale the side to the top, seeing how high the sand dunes actually are.  After a nice swim we trekked back to the highest sand dune in the area and watched the sunset over the dunes.  I can honestly say, I felt like I was on a movie set.  The place looked computerized and doctored.  It was absolutely beautiful and as the sun set, you could feel the magic of where you were. We arrived back to the hotel, I had dinner at the restaurant again and with a dance lesson included as I was the only one there and the bartender was bored. The next day I was travelling back to the airport ready to fly to Manaus for my Amazon adventure to begin!