A trip to Shetland. 60 degrees North! The beginning

I am in Shetland as I write this and try to catch up on my blogging.

It is Thursday morning around 6am and all is quiet as I got up while the others are still sleeping. I begins to get light here around 3.30am and we were out for a walk at 10pm last night and it was in a prolonged dusk that finally turned to dark around 11.30. There is still a month to go to the summer solstice so I can see that it will be almost light 24 hours a day. Of course that also means that in December it is dark almost all day!

I arrived in England last week and the plan is to visit Shetland, which is about 80 miles off the north coast of Scotland. I was here at the beginning of my RTW trip last year and it is among the early posts on this blog. The weather is somewhat different now!
I am here with my sister Mags (who will be 70 shortly, but shows no signs of it!) and my recently retired brother Steve and his partner Alison. She is a doctor here in Shetland.
I went to Mags home south of London when I arrived and we started out from there a couple of days later.

The evening I arrived Mags and I visited a friend of hers, Peter who had driven his Land Rover all the way from London to Capetown South Africa last year. He is a Ranger in a Nature Preserve (about 150 acres) about 20 miles out of London. They have had some deliberately set fires that burned about 20 acres of natural heather that will take many years to recover. Anyway he was on fire watch for the evening, but we had a chance to chat and learn about the park and his work.

Friday was a more relaxed day and we spent the evening with Piers, Marion, and their 15 month old daughter Erin. She (Erin) is lovely of course and is crawling and will walk if you hold her hand, but is still a bit wobbly and has no inclination to walk on her own at this point. Her dad did not walk until he was 17 months but then got up and ran almost immediately!

Mags and I left on Saturday by train to go up to Newcastle, about 200 miles north of London where Steve and Alison were staying. They had just arrived back from a week in the southwest of France in the foothills of the Pyrenees. I have details on the place they stayed in and they said it was just fabulous.

The train journey was really good and fast (about 3 hours from London) and a good chance to see some of the English countryside.

On Sunday Steve and I went to his house in Scremerston, which is about 60 miles north of Newcastle, and near Berwick on Tweed, which is the border with Scotland. He has multiple projects going on there with the house and it is a major renovation and changing around of the living space. Some is landscaping and some of the work is inside creating a woodworking shop.

Steve's project house. Ongoing for the last 10 years or so.

Dry stone wall and raised flower beds will add to the privacy

In the afternoon we walked along the coast to the train station (and of course got caught in a rainstorm about half way) and caught the train back to Newcastle.

One of Alison’s daughters Emily was in a choral performance that evening in a large concert hall called the Sage. Let’s just say that it was not my sort of music, but Steve thanked me for coming and “showing solidarity!!” so he knew that it was not for me. They enjoyed it and Emily had fun performing.

Berwick on Tweed. A beautiful border town.

Another train ride on Monday bought us to Aberdeen by lunchtime and we met up with Eileen Cruickshank my Facebook friend and her lovely 5-year-old Sam. He is energetic and full of mischief but a lovely little boy who behaved most of the time.

We ate lunch and took a walk along the seashore and then met her husband and daughter Kristy before heading to the overnight ferry.
This is a serious ferry at about 110 m length and carries trucks, buses and passenger vehicles as well as 600 people. It runs nightly to Orkney (3 times a week)  and Shetland daily

The ferry ride is about 12 hours overnight so Steve had booked cabins. Mags and I shared one and Steve and Alison the other. We had an early night after a very good dinner in the “fancy” dining room on the ferry. Nice Shetland lamb chops for me!

Aberdeen is a major port that supports the oil and gas drilling in the North Sea and there are huge support ships and supplies in the harbor. It is a prosperous town that has been unaffected by the economic turbulence of the last few years

We got to our destination Lerwick on time on Tuesday morning and had developed a plan from there. Steve and Alison went to her place and then back to catch the ferry to Out Skerries. It was another 2 ½ hours on that ferry (much more basic) for them and they then settled in to the rental house they had booked (more on that later)

Mags and I had booked a rental car to pick up at the ferry and our plan was to head north to the islands of Yell and Unst. This involves a 45-minute drive to the Yell ferry at Toft and about a 20-minute ferry ride over toYell. You pay for the Toft ferry, but all the others are free after that, mostly because that is the only way on and off the islands beyond there!

Mags had never been to Shetland, so it was all new to her and I had just crossed Yell on my first (and only other) trip. There are almost no trees and the soil of poor peat-land so even the sheep are scarce.

A view across some of the better farmland

Alison is getting ready to join the medical practice at Mid Yell after working in Lerwick for 2 years, as an associate doctor joining the husband and wife team who have had the practice for the last 13 years or so. The previous associate Naomi is taking over on Unst just to the north and where she lives.

Anyway Alison is provided with a house on Yell as a part of the job so we had somewhere to stay and our first job was to find the house and get the key. We were successful at that.

Way back when Mags was a teenager she had completed a 6-month course at the Agricultural College near Aberdeen, and had completed the class with several Shetland girls. They had not met again since then, which was over 50 years ago. Through a variety of coincidences and a little research Mags had located two of these ladies and had made plans to meet them. Yell has only about 600 residents but they are spread far and wide over the island. It turns out that Mary (one of the ladies) owns the shop in Aywick, one of the multiple small communities and is literally just around the corner from where Alison’s house is located.

Mags and Mary outside the Aywick Shop on Yell. Reunion after more than 50 years

We had expected a small store but this place was a massive emporium with everything available from fresh local bread to buckets of organic chicken manure, gasoline, diesel and kids clothing. She employs 7 people some part time and some family.

Sponsored walks are a worldwide phenomena. Note the subtext at the bottom, the age of the participants and the distance. Tough people!

This chicken is ready for the cold weather with his full length pants!

Just like Habitat. Always looking for donations!

Inside the store

We spent about an hour looking around and chatting and then headed up to Unst, again with a 10-minute ferry crossing. We had to wait for the ferry and there was a very basic looking café by the ferry terminal called “The Wind Dog Café”. We had a bowl of their soup of the day that was a spicy (very) Thai chicken and vegetable soup. Excellent and just what we needed.

Ferry terminal

After the ferry ride we headed up Unst to see the “Unst Bus stop” which is decorated by local supporters and has become known around the world. The current theme (it changes a couple of times a year) is the Tall Ships Race that will be calling at Lerwick in July for about a week.

The original bus shelter was blown down in a gale several years ago and a school age child wrote to the authorities asking for a replacement. The locals then decided to decorate it as a means of saying thank you when the new one was built! A neat story.

We then headed up to the very north of Unst to see the shore station for the Muckle Flugga lighthouse. We had thought that we might have time to hike out to see the light but you really need about 4 hours to make the trip. It was also very windy so we decided to hike part of the way on the Hermaness Peninsular. There were lots of other people doing the same thing, more than I would have thought.

Around 4.30 we headed back down towards the ferry and our second meeting with Mags friends from all those years ago.

Mags and Mairie after our delicious dinner in her home.

From my previous trips and various conversations, Alison had sent me a book written by a Shetlander, Lawrence Tullock about his experiences as an associate light keeper in Scotland in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. He is a Yell man and mentioned in the book that he had to go to Out Skerries for work and only knew one person there, Mairie Mann, who was the District Nurse.  She married Tom Anderson, a Skerries man. Mags read the book after me (as a primer for the Shetland trip) and worked out very quickly that it was the same person! She had talked with her by phone and now we were on our way to meet her and her family!

I have discovered that Shetland is a very tight network of intertwined families and that is more concentrated once you get out on to the islands. It is a wonderfully supportive community and well intentioned, but I think that you would have to grow up in this atmosphere to truly accept it. Neighbors and family are absolutely there for you, but equally you have no personal privacy. To contact Mairie my sister had talked with a lady on Out Skerries with the same name, and she said that it was not she, but she knew who Mags was looking for!

When we arrived at Mairie and Tom’s home we found that it was just up from the café where we had eaten the soup and close to the Gutcher ferry terminal. We were well received and spent a few hours and some wonderful Shetland food trying to catch up with what had happened over the past 50 years or so.

Mairie’s husband Tom had worked as a fisherman and told stories about fishing and visits to Norway. He had a dry sense of humor and was a very interesting man who was able to give us a good insight in to Out Skerries where we were to reunite with Steve and Alison the next day.

We left around 8.30 and headed to Alison’s house in Aywick for the night.

We ran out of time to see what we wanted to see the previous day and so had to backtrack to see the Gloup village Fisherman Memorial. It was off on a side road about 5 miles and commemorated the deaths at sea in July 1891 of 58 sailors and fishermen in a very violent storm.

Gloup Fisherman Memorial

To put that in perspective that was 58 men out of a total population of maybe 1000 people on Yell and a significant portion of the breadwinners. They would go out to sea to fish in 16 ft (about 5m) open rowing boats, probably without any sort of life vests or other safety equipment except a rope or two. The monument listed the names, what boats they were on and the community they were from. It was a very simple memorial erected in 1991, just one hundred years after the tragedy. It is hard to begin to imagine the huge impact on the whole community.

Single lane roads with passing places are the norm on Shetland

On the road back to the main road we saw a lady (a teacher we think) with about 6 kids out for a walk or a field trip. The local primary school was just up the road, and this was probably all the kids from the school!

Lunch stop back on Mainland. Fantastic scenery.

I will do a separate blog piece on schools, and the government structure including health care.

Back on the main road it was about 30 minutes back to the big ferry that took us to the mainland. After a brief stop to drop our bigger bags we headed to Tingwall airport to catch the flight to Out Skerries.

Atins and the Grand Lencois

We had only bought our backpacks with a change of clothes and our toothbrushes. Good thing.
The boat put is down on the beach and we were met by about 1/2 dozen people and a Land Cruiser from the smartest (and most expensive) pousada around. We declined in part because it was a long way out of the settlement of Atins.
On the boat we had met a Dutch girl (in her mid 40s) who had been in Brazil for 3 months. She had a deep tan and dreads. She had signed up for the day trip but as we talked she decided that she would stay overnight as she could get a cheap room (within her budget) and a different experience. She had no change of clothes or toothbrush but managed anyway and was delightful company. She stayed in the same pousada as we did. "Pousada da Rita" is very clean, very simple and cheap at $19 per person per night with "Caffe de Mananha"

Pousada da Rita

Hammocks at the pousada

Inside the nice clean kitchen

Dona Rita at the pousada

Atins does not have any paved streets but has some street lights and payphones. Once we were settled in we took a walk down what was in reality "Main St" and just wandered around. A small boy came out of a house and asked that we take his picture.

Note the pose

Note the dress, nice hair do and shoes in the little one

We discovered that he had 7 brothers and (mostly) sisters, so a photo session ensued. Just before we thought we were done one of the younger girls appeared. She had changed her dress and put on her shoes, and had all the attributes of a princess! She was lovely. We promised to send copies of the pictures back to them via Dona Rita. There is no mail in Atins so we will send to a family member in  Barreirinhas and trust it will get there. I think it will. We kind of wandered aimlessly understanding that it would be tough to get lost while in sight of houses. We came across some boys playing futbol (soccer) and one of them (about 6 years old) had a whistle and was the trainer and the referee!. More pictures ensued.

Atins futbol players. The one in white in the middle was the trainer and referee!

We wandered back as it was starting to get dark. We were close to the equator (about 3 deg South) so sun up around 6 and sun down around 6.
There were a couple of places where there were concrete light poles (durable and not subject to insect infestation I suspect is the main reason for concrete) were literally in the middle of the "road" such as it was. 

Note light pole

 
Again no pavement and just beach type sand for the trails. Really cool.
Dinner was not at all exciting. Limited choices in places (maybe 2) and menu choices.  It was pretty bland and unexciting but the beer was cold and we had good company.
We met up also with 2 German girls who were in the pousada and then four Israeli guys who had recently finished their mandatory military service (3 years) and were having fun. After some difficulty and frustration we put together a short tour to the dunes for the next morning for 7 of us (the German girls were undecided at this point) and negotiated a reasonable rate for the trip for the next morning.
A quiet night and a good breakfast "Caffe de Mananha"  and we were ready for the ride on the Toyota Land Cruiser. It is an old style Cruiser labeled a Bandeirante. Built in Brazil but like the Cruisers we had in Africa 20 years ago. Tough as all get out and a high torque diesel engine. Ideal for what we were going to do.
We headed out of the settlement (not quite sure what to call it) and followed some sandy trails and through some water in several places sometimes as deep as 70cm and some soft sand and it was apparent that despite his youth our driver was experienced as we did not get stuck until much later!. 
We were required to have a registered guide with us and the vehicle was not allowed on the dunes, just close enough for us to walk in.

Our guide chillin out before we left Atins

Our drivers son who is already learning the business

Our guide told us that he did one to three day hikes in the area thru the park where you ended up back in Barreirinhas having walked 60km or so in the dunes. There were also shorter walks available.
The whole area is amazing with over 150 sq kilometers of dunes and fresh water lakes and the ocean close by. The best time to go is between June and August when all the lakes are full. Many of them were almost dry but there were plenty you could swim in.

 
  We drove, or rode for about 40 minutes and at some points were very close to the ocean and would see occasional small huts for fishermen, but you got the complete feeling for how remote this place really is. Eventually we stopped and our guide took us into the dunes and we walked for maybe 20-25 minutes and saw several freshwater lakes along the way.

Headed out on the dunes

Dorien The Dutch girl and the others getting spread out.

Group beside one of the lakes

The guide headed back to the Land Cruiser to tell them something (forgotten what) and said he would be back at 11.30 (in about an hour) He was late getting back and we decided to head back towards the shore line where we had left the vehicle. The interesting thing was that we could all agree on the general direction, but could not agree more specifically than an arc of about 50 degrees. In my mined that is huge when you consider how short a time we had walked. It shows how easy it would to get lost or disoriented in desert conditions.

We eventually met back up with the guide and headed back to Atins as several of us had to meet the boat at 2.00. 

This si why we had the Israeli Army guys with us

We had thought about taking the regular ferry (who's schedule was influenced by the tides) but realized that more than half the journey would be after dark and not a whole lot of fun.

The regular ferry from Atins

We caught the boat and actually transferred in Carbure to a bigger boat and the journey back was more direct and took about 90 minutes.
More on Grand Lencois in the next post.

The river trip and Atins

Our boat trip was due to start at 8.30 and was pretty much on time. Basically everyone who had booked trips gathered on the main dock in town and the customers were divided up among the available boats. I think there must be some affiliation between certain boats and certain agencies, but it all seemed informal but worked well. It is a large river and partially tidal at this point.

Headed up one of the loops in the river

Everyone was required to wear a life vest (some other basic safety procedures seen more lax, like seat belts in cars, and we headed out with about 14 people plus the Captain/Guide. We worked our way down the main river and took some side trips in to smaller channels and then came to the first of the smaller dunes where we stopped for about an hour.

We climbed the dunes and for the first time (of many) experienced the small lakes trapped in the sand. The sand was not as hot as I had expected, as there was a nice breeze to keep it cool. The small lakes were 20 or 30 feet down the steep side of the dune and the water was cool but not cold. We wandered around for a while and then back to a small bar/restaurant complete with it’s own generator (small air-cooled Brazilian built) and inevitable satellite dish (even the poorest houses, some without doors) had a dish!). Electrical wiring in general seems to be fairly random and has that temporary look and some of the overhead wiring in town has that Indian look.

TV and random Brazilian wiring

Many jumbled wires and the general feeling that not all the connections are legitimate.

They had a variety of monkeys, ducks goats and other creatures that fed on coconuts that had been kindly split open by the bartender.

Duck pecking at a green coconut

A favorite drink here is Agua de coco, literally coconut water. It is sweet and refreshing particularly when it is good and cold. The coconuts with the best water have not yet developed the complete flesh we would expect to see but there is enough to scoop out with a spoon or let the ducks and goats extract with their teeth or beaks.

We worked our way further down the river and the next stop was a small town with a lighthouse.

As the boat pulled in there were a gaggle of 6 to 7 year old kids all offering to be lighthouse guides. How do you choose between these delightful little kids?

View of the settlement from the top of the lighthouse. You can see Cabure in the distance

They certainly helped by telling us that it did not matter who we chose as they were not going to fight about it anyway. We made our choice and headed off with our guide for the 100m walk to the gate of the lighthouse compound. Our guide was not as knowledgeable as we had hope. When asked how tall the lighthouse was he did not know, nor did he know if it still operated. He did know that he was not allowed to go further than the gate and so we parted company not a whole lot wiser but only Rs1 poorer. He seemed happy!

Lighthouses are a topic that has come to some prominence of late. I have always been interested in them, and visited the Scottish Lighthouse Museum with my friend Geoff back in 2005, and had received a book from my brother Steve’s partner Alison who lives in Shetland about 100 miles north of Scotland. It is about the experiences of a man who became a lighthouse keeper in Scotland in the 1970s just before the lights were all automated. I had finished the book earlier in the trip and Candida was reading it and working at interpreting some of the Shetland sayings!!

It gave us a very different perspective and the opportunity to ask some more intelligent questions of the guide/ keeper at the light.

This one is 45m tall and still operates. We went to the top and got a wonderful view of the town and surroundings.

We also got a glimpse of the realities of this seemingly idyllic life style when we saw the ambulance boat on the dock. It looked neither comfortable nor fast. I did however see a helicopter pad out by the lighthouse so I think either be seriously ill or seriously healthy!

We were back on the boat after an hour or so and headed to Cabure that is on the other side of the river and close to a beach.

Main st of the lighthouse settlement

Approaching Cabure

There were several pousada and a couple of restaurants for the pousadas and the tour boats. We elected to not have lunch but wandered around and explored the area. There were some folks loading up a Land Rover from a dune buggy and they were headed back to town.

The only access to all of these places is either by 4WD vehicles or by boat. They are remote enough that they do not even feature on Google Earth.

The boat dropped us off in Atins around 3pm and basically we were dropped off on the beach.

We did not have a reservation for a place to stay but were told there were several places to choose from at various price points.

More on Atins and the area in my next post.

Saturday was our day to move on and we packed, walked and eventually headed for the airport around noon. Out flight to Sao Luis involved a stop and plane change in Fortaleza and we arrived in Sao Luis about 8.30. Brazil is a huge country and while I understood this it was difficult to believe that Natal to Sao Luis is about 1500 km or about the same distance as Raleigh to Miami. As we were not staying in Sao Luis more than the one night we did little to research where to stay and like Paraty believed we could get a recommendation from the tourist desk in the airport. We did this and ended up in a place close to the airport. It was filthy, in a very sketchy part of town (if there was a nice part we never saw it), and was located behind a truck stop. To top it off there was a sign outside with a warning to the effect that it was illegal to have or solicit sex with a minor! Great!

A further complication was that we could not get in touch with the bus company that was meant to pick us up in the morning. We survived the night and got up and left really early, as we knew that the first regular bus left at 6am. To minimize the amount we carried we decided to ask if we could leave our two big cases at the hotel and collect on our return. They agreed so we left with one small case and the fervent hope that ours be there upon our return (they were I am pleased to say, all safe and untouched).

Our final destination was Lencois de Maranho, a National Park about 260km away, and a world away from Sao Luis. Our bus journey was about 4.5 hours and started on a four-lane highway and eventually on to a much smaller road with the occasional excursion into a small town to pick up or set down passengers. 

Our bus at a rest stop for the driver. Brazilian coffee (strong and sweet) was 50 cents!

Some people also got the bus to stop basically on the side of the road and were either met by someone or they walked off down a small side road to who knows where!

Barreirinhas is the largest town close to the Lencois Park, population maybe 5000 or so.

We had made a reservation at a pousada based on a Trip Advisor recommendation, and knew that it was about 15 minutes out of town and more easily accessible by boat than by car or bus.

Our host Michael

The walk up to the pousada from the river

We finally were able to make contact with the pousada and Michael; the owner met us with his boat at the dock. He is Swiss and owns the property with his Brazilian wife. It was a wonderful place to stay, and made more so by our previous nights experience!

View up river

They have four or five chalets which are large and spacious with a/c and a nice bathroom and a king size bed. There is a small eating area and a small bar fridge in the room. That seems to be a common feature with drinks that are not outrageously priced.

Our room was called Caju (Cashew) The same name of the place where Candida used to work in Chapel Hill

We had a good lunch and a then a siesta base on our early start. 

The dining area

The unpaved street outside

The pousada has a small dock and kayaks available, and the street side is much less impressive although generally nicer than the other houses on the street. We took a walk and saw a place that was being developed as a pousada, but it looked like there had been little work done on it in quite a while.

Between the bus and being picked up by Michael we had arranged some tours including one night in a remote village near the mouth of the river for our stay and a second place to stay for the last two nights back in Barreirinhas.

Morning view of the peaceful river

We have a river trip, a jeep ride out to the dunes, and a float down a smaller river way out of town as the basic agenda.