Lagoa Azul in Lençóis Maranhenses

Our Airbnb host also owns a tour company and we organized our next few days with him. This way we don’t have to explain how & where to pick us up in our remote location. It’s really helpful. 

But we had a miscommunication, and the half day tour to visit the famous dunes and lagunas originally planned for the morning, is going to happen in the afternoon.

And I think, it was a blessing in disguise, we really enjoyed our lazy morning. We had a taxi phone number, so we arranged for him to drive us downtown for lunch to a very nice restaurant by the riverfront called Mangue restaurant. We had communicated to our host the change of pick-up location so this should be easy.

After a good meal, a nice stroll of the river promenade and an ice-cream – it’s time for the tour. They pick us up in the jeep. We drive a short while before the river crossing, there everyone jumps off the jeep and we cross to the other side. 

We climb back up and start the 40min drive to the Lençóis Maranhenses national park. I saw a lot of complains about this part, where it’s bumpy and people find it uncomfortable. It’s proper sand driving, some river crossings and real 4x4 track. We were seated inside the truck, while the other guests were at the back in the open-air seating areas. The group at the back decided to go full on, and was screaming their lungs out like it was a roller coaster, they had a blast and it made us giggle on a few occasions. Being inside, we could see that the driver was also having fun, getting a little sharper on some turns to hear them scream. 

We arrive at the park and see our first glimpse of the dunes. Today we visit Lagoa Azul. I was really scared at first because there were already 5 to 6 jeeps and 20 more on the ferry crossing. That means hundreds of people in there visiting the same place as us.  The reality is that it’s so big, that everyone spreads out and find its own corner. We had 3 hours to walk around 4 to 5 nice looking lagunas and incredibly white sands with endless dunes ahead. It’s a beautiful landscape, I understand the hype. The lagunas were shallow now, as we are in the medium season entering the dryest, but it was enough to just sit and refresh ourselves. We walked, took a dip and walked some more.  What is great with the evening tour is that you get to stay in the park and watch the sunset. The guide has given us a meeting point over a specific dune and our group just fanned out, leaving each other enough space to enjoy the gorgeous colors. I can see that each tour operators had their own dunes. I found that despite doing the most touristic tour, we really didn’t feel cramped. That was a great half day.

On the way back. We asked to be dropped off at the city center so we can buy some groceries for the next few days and then it’s a short taxi ride back to our accommodation for the night.