Ceara Coastline: Kite Surfing, Lencois Maranhenses, and the White Dune Coast
The Ceara coast around Fortaleza is one of the finest adventure travel destinations in South America for wind sports, beach exploration, and natural spectacles including the extraordinary lagoon-filled dunes of Lencois Maranhenses and the open-sea delta of Parnaiba.
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The Ceara Coast: Wind Patterns and Kite Surfing Seasons
The northeast trade winds that define the Ceara coast experience blow consistently from July to January, making the 570-kilometer coastline from Fortaleza west to the Lencois Maranhenses one of the finest kite surfing coasts in the world; Cumbuco, Icarai de Amontada, and Jericoacoara are the internationally recognized kite surfing spots with schools, equipment rental, and a global community of riders.
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Lencois Maranhenses: The White Desert Lagoons
The Lencois Maranhenses national park in the neighboring state of Maranhao, reachable from Fortaleza by bus or flight to Sao Luis, is a unique landscape of white sand dunes extending 70 kilometers along the Atlantic coast with thousands of freshwater lagoons forming in the dune valleys each rainy season from January to July. The blue and green lagoons in the white dune field create an otherworldly landscape that has made Lencois Maranhenses one of the most distinctive natural attractions in Brazil.
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Jijoca de Jericoacoara: The Access Town
Jijoca de Jericoacoara, the administrative municipality that includes the Jericoacoara beach, is accessed from Fortaleza by a combination of long-distance bus to Cruz and local 4x4 transfer through the dunes. The no-paved-roads rule inside the Jericoacoara national park means that access by conventional vehicle is impossible, and the 4x4 transit through the coastal dune system is itself a significant part of the destination experience.
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Sunset from the Duna do Por do Sol
The dune above Jericoacoara village that faces west over the Atlantic provides the most celebrated sunset viewpoint in the Brazilian northeast; hundreds of people gather each evening at the top of the dune to watch the sun sink into the ocean, and the capoeira dancers and capoeira music that accompany the sunset ritual give the event a performative cultural dimension beyond the purely natural spectacle.
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Buggy Tours: The Ceara Beach Circuit
The beach buggy tours from Fortaleza and from Jericoacoara, which cover sections of the coastal dune system by open 4x4 vehicle with stops at freshwater lagoons, dune viewpoints, and isolated beaches, are the primary activity experience for the domestic Brazilian tourist market visiting the Ceara coast and remain one of the most enjoyable ways to experience the scale and variety of the northeastern coastal landscape.
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Delta do Parnaiba: The Brazilian Amazon of the Northeast
The Parnaiba River delta on the Piaui coast to the west of Ceara state, accessible from Jericoacoara or Sao Luis, is a complex of islands, channels, and mangrove forests that constitutes the only open-sea delta in the Americas; the boat excursions through the delta islands pass between the dune landscapes of the northeast and the lush mangrove forest in a transition that changes completely from one riverbank to the next.