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Natal and Pirangi :
As per our usual trick we collected a map of the area from the info desk at the bus station. However this lady had had way too much coffee and coconut milk this morning... She was hyper excitable to say the least! She wanted to know where we were staying and handed us flyers and flyers of different hostels and hotels, then she opened up a big brochure of pics displaying all the beaches near Natal. As she turned each page she would 'ooh' and 'ahhh' as if she had never seen the brochure before and insisted we visit each one, tapping on the pic emphatically, then holding it up close to her face as she made the 'manufik' expression.
It was a tough decision but we decided that she was the most excited about Pirangi, a beach just 15km south of Natal. We hopped on the local red and white bus as per the lady's Portuguese instructions and hoped it took us there...and it did:)
Pirangi is home to the worlds largest cashew nut tree! It stretches over 500 sq meters of ground. It's branches weave in all directions laying down more roots as they touch down on the ground - it looks like a 3D spiderweb underneath the canopy of leaves covering the outter 'body'.
The Pirangi beach is split into the north and south by a deep river mouth flowing out to sea. We set up camp on the north side which was like a series of mini paradise-type beaches. Tiny bays were created by the black rocks so we had our own private little bay with small Luci waves lapping on the soft fine white sand and coconut trees growing just far away to fit your towel between the line of trees and the waters edge. We could see the south beach from where we were, it was less protected, less idealistic looking, so we took some pics with our extra zoom camera and saved the conquering flag on top of our sand castle for another beach.
We then caught the bus back to Natal to see what we could see...and it wasn't very much. We walked and walked and by passed so many "historical sights" because they either didn't seem very special at all or were not well preserved. On a whole Natal was seedy and run down, and I don't mean old and quirky great photo op run down, more like the clutch your bag run down. The beaches were the kind you don't reeeally want to swim at. So feeling a little disappointed with our name sake we headed south to Praia de Pipa for the night.
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