| Few travellers spend much
time in Piauí. The capital, Teresina, is strategically placed for
breaking the long bus journey between Fortaleza and São Luís, but it’s
a modern, rather ugly city where the heat can be oppressive. The southern
half of the state merges into the remoter regions of Bahia and forms the
harshest part of the Northeast. Much of it is uninhabited, largely
trackless, arid badlands, in the midst of which lies, ironically, the
oldest inhabited prehistoric site yet found in Brazil. Cave paintings show
that this desert was once jungle. Other than the capital, there are two
places worth making for: the pleasant coastal town of Parnaíba,
which has excellent beaches, and the Parque Nacional de Sete Cidades,
good walking country with weird and striking rock formations. Strangely,
this poorest of states has an excellent highway system and the main
roads between Teresina and Parnaíba and towards Ceará are very good: as
the country is largely flat, the buses really fly.
Piauí was sparsely settled by cattle drovers
moving westwards from Ceará in the second half of the eighteenth century
and has a violent history. The few Indians were never really conquered and
were assimilated with the newcomers rather than being defeated by them,
leaving their imprint in the high cheekbones and copper skin of a
strikingly handsome people. Apart from cattle, the only significant
industry revolves around the carnaúba palm, a graceful tree with
fan-shaped leaves that grows in river valleys across the northern half of
the state. The palm yields a wax that was an important ingredient of
shellac, from which the first phonogram records were made, and for which
there is still a small export market. It’s also a source of cooking oil,
wood, soap, charcoal and nuts, and many livelihoods depend on it.
Carnaúba country
|
| Heading west from Ceará
towards Amazônia, there are two routes you can
follow. The fastest and most direct is simply to take the highway through
Teresina and on to São Luís or, a day from Teresina, to Belém and Amazônia
proper. But if you have the time, there is a much more interesting and
scenic route north up the BR-343 highway, a fine drive through a
plain studded with carnaúba palm plantations to Parnaíba
and the coast. From Parnaíba there is a direct bus service, over country
dirt roads that get seriously difficult to travel in the rainy season, to
São Luís, capital of neighbouring Maranhão state, where the Amazon
region begins. |