After spending most of the day on aeroplanes, Angie and I finally arrived in São Luís. We met Luis Henrique at the airport and he drove us to our hotel, whilst providing lots of information about the area. This was all done in Portuguese so we got the main points but missed all the rest.

After checking into our room, we went for a walk along the beach, heading for Cabanas do Sol for dinner. We managed to walk right past it, and when we asked a taxi driver for directions he very kindly drove us back. We had a great dinner - two huge skewers of prawns with peppers and onions, with mashed potato, banana fritters and rice, washed down with a large cocktail for me that was served inside a pineapple!

By this time it was only 7pm so we came back to our hotel to have a drink in the bar. There isn't really a bar so we sat in the restaurant. São Luís is quite a windy place so we were rather blown around by the wind coming through the windows as we had our evening drink!

On Monday morning we headed to the port and took a boat to Alcántara. When we arrived the boat was stuck in the mud so we had to wait for the tide to come in and lift it out, then off we went. It was quite a choppy crossing, very sunny but breezy so I managed to burn my arms quite nicely. Out in the São Marcos bay we could see lots of tankers waiting to collect their cargos of minerals from the interior of Maranhão. It took almost two hours to get to Alcántara, watching a few pink dolphins along the way, and when we arrived we headed up the hill towards the main square. Alcántara used to be an important colonial town but has been left to decay so there was a mixture of habited and uninhabited buildings, a few restaurants and a half collapsed church.

We had a wander around then found a restaurant where we could sit with a great view over the water and have fish with a prawn sauce. Very tasty. When it was time to leave we walked back down to the boat and slept all the way back to São Luís.

It was still quite early so we went for a walk in the old historical centre. We saw some of the buildings that the town is famed for which are covered with tiles on the outside, then headed to a small square where there was some drumming and dancing. After a refreshing drink we headed to a church, then took a taxi back to our hotel. We had a lazy evening, just made it to the hotel restaurant for dinner before retiring.