We once again had a very nice breakfast, though this time they forgot our juice for quite a while. Before we left the pousada, I went for a dip in the river. It really was just a dip, though, as it was too shallow to swim.
Because of our van experience we paid extra (about 3x) for a private car back to São Luís. We had to leave reasonably early because of a work thing. He picked us up and drove us to all the way back to São Luís and we didn’t have to transfer or wait for other people or anything. It was way more expensive than the van but it was worth it.
This second hotel in São Luís was a lot nicer than the first, and also a lot larger. Whereas the previous hotel was on the lagoon side, this is on the beach. And it has a large pool overlooking the beach.
The main road, which we had to cross to the beach at the previous hotel, was a block away. It’s a 6 or 8 lane street with a large median inside with very few places to cross. (Basically, just the odd “crosswalk” that nobody will stop at unless you’re already crossing.) We ran across both parts to a bakery for lunch. We had “Lebanese” sandwiches that appear to be a thing in Maranhão. I did not love it, in part because the chicken was overcooked. Maybe we ate at the wrong restaurants but everywhere we ate chicken in Brazil it was overcooked. (I have not noticed the same thing in the Portuguese and Brazilian restaurants in Toronto.)
After lunch we ran back across the huge street and walked back to our hotel because I had to work. Jenn went down to the pool while I delivered an hour-long presentation for work.
After I was done, I headed down to the pool. Though I had glanced at it earlier I wasn’t really prepared for how nice it was to be in a pool overlooking the beach. Even though São Luís is a massive port and the water is full – and I mean full – of container ships, it was still a really pleasant experience. Especially since there were very few people. The hotel isn’t quite positioned well enough for a sunset, as there is a least one hotel to the west in the way. But we still hung around out there until close to sunset.
Oh, and it was really breezy. One of the things that’s fascinating about this area is it’s really hot but if you get close enough to the water the breeze is so strong it doesn’t really feel that hot.
We went looking for dinner, ran across the big street, and found our way to a pizza place. The pizza was really excellent, worthy of an AVPN certification (if it would qualify). We were very pleasantly surprised.
We had somehow managed to discover that the local beer bar was across the street from our hotel so we once again ran across the massive street and headed back to the hotel. At the beer bar we tried a decent saison, a pretty great mixed fermentation, and an okay imperial stout that tasted a little too much like a baltic porter. It was the best beer we’d had in Brazil so far, by a mile. (We tried a few IPAs and APAs early on but had mostly been drinking lagers because they had not been good. And this surprised me because I’ve had some excellent Brazilian beer at Mondial.) We vowed to return tomorrow.