Alcantara historical village

The morning ferry ( since there is only one ) is at 7am to Alcantara. There are very few boats a day because of the tide.

The entire bay of Sao Luis is dry and muddy most of the day.

The crossing is very bumpy, the boat is swinging a lot and if you are prone to motion sickness, you definitely need to get a pill for this 1h15 ride.

Once on the other side, we are welcomed with a very different landscape. It's mangrove and a small village, the opposite of the big city of Sao Luis.

We arrive in a village that looks out of time, it's colonial buildings and very old cobblestones, buy it's also rundown. The city of Alcantara exists since the 16s century by the French before passing to the Portuguese. It was once a famous trading post for cotton and after slavery was abolished, completely declined. Today it only lives of a trickle of tourist coming for day trips and fishing. And if I am being completely honest, there is no real effort to maintain the historical buildings or renovate the crumbling ones. This could become a village museum, and as a half day tour, it would be enough. Unfortunately because of the tides, you either have 3-4 hours to visit ideal ) or like us 7hours and we ended up with 4 hours to wait.

In hindsight because of the long wait to go back, I would have skipped. It's not worth that effort.

What do you see in Alcantara? A charming village life, some colorful façades. If you could find ab English speaking guide ( we looked for one online and didn't), maybe we would have enjoyed it more.

There was 4 barons, each with their own palaces, and we only see dark colored walls left of them.

An imperial palace that was never finished.

Old churches, but unfortunately if they still have a roof, they were not open to visit.

Some fort walls - we walked to the very end of the village, the grass is overgrown and we saw some snakes. We backtracked very quickly after that and took pictures from afar.

There was a small museum, which was free and included a guided tour in Portuguese. Alexis's portugnol was enough to get 90% of it and it was quite interesting. It's where you could get the most information about the city's history.

Online they show you pictures of Alcantara after a good renovation had been done. Today it is really shabby looking.

One of the city interesting point is also the space center 12km away, but it's not visitable, although there are some taxis near the docks. You could get driven there to take pictures from outside the fences of the launching pads. That is, if you are into this kind of things.

If you have time, why not visit, but it's certainly not a must do in Sao Luis.  We needed about 3hours ( including a long breakfast break at the café) to visit everything.

Small tips if you go and visit:

• Good breakfast and coffee available here (Padaria progresso). Take your time.
• this simple restaurant by the docks had good food, and at the back two hammocks to stay in for the couple of hours you will be stuck there waiting for the return boat. Eat your lunch there, and regularly order some drinks and that is not the worst way to spend the time. Clean toilets inside as well, but bring your toilet paper with you.
• clean toilets ( bring your toilet paper ) behind the snack counters by the docks on the left when you exit the boat.