Jericoacoara, Brazil
Today started with a bang!
Brazilian hotel rooms are not always designed to accommodate people 6’4″ – a low television on the wall with a large hard-edged metal bracket proved that. Ray didn’t need a coffee to wake up after running his head into that contraption first thing this morning!
Today we started our last leg of what has become an amazing trip thru NE Brazil. Perhaps we saved the best for last – Fernando de Noronha, and now Jericoacoara. Here’s what the Moon Guidebook says about ‘Jeri’:
“For some time now, international travel writers have been raving about Jericoacoara. It’s what you get when a desert-scape of constantly shifting dunes – some of them over 100 feet high – collides with the majesty of the open sea.”
We got an early start this morning with a departure from our hotel at 7 am. We weren’t sure if the trip would be in an open buggy or a 4×4, but our driver, Rodney, picked us up in a Land Rover, which was alright because we didn’t really want our luggage to look like it had been thru a sandstorm.
We made our way through the streets of Fortaleza and within half an hour we were started driving on the beach toward our destination. Rather than taking a relatively boring inland route to Jeri, we chose to take a more adventurous route along the beaches. Most of the trip is driving right on the sand and the only obstacle is high tide. During high tide (11 am today), there were a few sections we couldn’t pass along the coast.
Driving on the beach was faster than we expected – we often cruised at speeds of 80 km/hr. Most of the driving was right where the wet sand was – just at the surf’s edge. It’s amazing to see miles and miles of continuous beaches – there’s really no stop or start to the different beaches so we’re not sure how they give them different names. The landscape was often desert like – nothing but sand and sand dunes. We could have been in the Sahara desert if it wasn’t for the ocean. Check out this video for some typical scenery:
We passed thru many small fishing villages, most notable were Cumbuco and Praia da Lagoinha. They were prettier than the rest of beaches and seemed to have more restaurants and pousadas.
One thing that was a bit sad to see was the sight of about 8 or 9 sea turtles dead and washed up on shore at different places along the way. Apparently most of them died from eating man-made trash in the water, such as plastic. We certainly noticed a bit more trash on the beaches today. It was such a contrast to the clean pristine beaches of Fernando de Noronha. We’re not really sure if the trash is washing up on shore from currents, perhaps bringing up garbage from big cities like Fortaleza, or if it’s produced by the local fishing villages.
Because it was high tide, we had to take a couple of one-car ferries across some estuaries. Here’s a video of one of our crossings with the guys pulling the ferry across manually:
We eventually got off the beaches and took a dirt road for a while, which was a pretty rough ride, especially with Rodney behind the wheel! He’s not just your typical Brazilian speed demon, but he happens to race in a Dakar like event in Brazil. So he’s got this special gift of being able to drive extremely fast over extremely rough terrain. By the time we stopped for lunch at about 2 pm, body parts were starting to really ache.
Lunch was at a restaurant in Praia do Prea where we has a fresh grilled fish with an assortment of side dishes. That was the tastiest fish we’ve had in Brazil so far (and we’ve had some good fish already). They said the fish was Robalo - a Google search shows this to be a common snook. We’ll be looking for Robalo on a menu in the future!
After lunch, it was only about 20 km to our final destination, Jericoacoara along the beach. This entire area is a kite surfing mecca. There are dozens and dozens of kite surfers in the ocean, thanks to some persistent winds at this time of year. Check out this sort video we took:
We finally rolled into Jeri and immediately could sense this place has a very relaxed feel. The roads in this town are all sand roads – quite something to see. After checking onto our pousada, we walked down to the beach to check it out. It was a pretty beach with a big sand dune coming right down to the water. The sand here is whiter than most other places we’ve been. On the way to the beach we noticed a massage place – Ray couldn’t resist the opportunity to have some of the kinks worked out of his neck from the 8 hour drive today.
Thirty minutes later and feeling much better, we made our way up Por-do-Sol, Sunset Dune. Apparently it’s a ritual everyday for locals and tourists to climb up this dune and watch the sunset. The wind was blowing pretty hard as we climbed the dune and the sand was blasting against our legs pretty hard. We were terrified that the sand was going to get into our cameras!
We watched a fabulous sunset and then ran down the side of a 45 degree dune. On the way back along the beach, we came across a capoeira demonstration, which is a form of martial arts blended with dancing. Some of the participants were extremely athletic and acrobatic with their moves. We’ll try to get some video tomorrow to post on this blog.
