Jericoacoara: Sun, Sand and Enough Wind to Make the Big Bad Wolf Blush

The local bus...full of tourists

After what felt like a week straight of getting up at 5am and travelling for the entire day, we finally made the unusual trip to Jericoacoara – a small, quiet coastal town famous for its wind sports.

The journey into Jeri from Fortaleza is one of the more fun and unusual we have made by way of public transport. The first 4-5 hours are standard, travelling along fairly well maintained bitumen highways, overtaking and being overtaken at will, sharing the road with horse and carts, making a 300km trip take 5 hours, all the standard normalities of travelling in South America.

However, upon reaching Jijoca, a small town at the end of the highway, we changed from our standard coach style bus, to a 4WD truck fitted with bench seats to fit about 50. The next 30km (which took over an hour) took us through dirt tracks, over sand dunes and finally onto the white sands of the Atlantic coast where we cruised in between piles of drift wood and beach shacks onto our final destination – Jericoacoara.

An interesting journey to say the least.

We spent 2 full days here, spending our time between lazing in the hammocks, walking the 2 main sandy streets and chilling on the beach. Jeri is famous for its kite and wind surfing with the majority of people either trying to learn the sport or teaching it. We had heard it had a good surf beach, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how the beach we found could be termed such.

There are also numerous tours to be taken from Jeri, but given our last hectic week of what seemed like sitting on our arses for a good 11 hours a day trying to get here, we thought we would take advantage of the hammocks and the cool waters of the main beach and do absolutely nothing.

Jericoacoara

We did  become regulars of a local restaurant where the table and chairs are simply set on the sandy floors of the roadside, and the meals cost $5 (AUD) for a T-bone as big as your head with salad, rice and beans served on an accompanying plate.

Although the sunset in not unreal, it does however set over the water, which for an eastern coastal town is somewhat unusual, although not unheard of. We watched the sun sink into the ocean from one of the nearby dunes, with a caipirinha in hand and more than our fair share of wind and sand as the last of the kite boarders made the most of the fading light.

Taking in the sunset

For many, Jericoacoara would be a highlight of their trip, but for us, being Australian (the beaches don’t amaze us as they do Europeans) and having being lucky enough to see a fair amount of Brazil and its natural beauty, Jeri was more of a gateway into Lençóis Maranhenses, a place we had wanted to get to since we first decided to come to Brazil. Still Jeri was a great place to relax, unwind and enjoy the pleasures of holidaying. More of you should join us!

When the sun sets in east?