Jericoacoara

The coast here was the land of the Tremembé people, and the name Jericoacoara comes from Tupi, usually explained as "lair of the turtles". The Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón is reported to have anchored in the bay in 1499, though under the Treaty of Tordesillas the landing carried no official weight. In the early 17th century, during the Portuguese campaign against the French colony in Maranhão, Jerônimo de Albuquerque built a small wooden fort at the foot of the Serrote, dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary.

For the next three centuries Jericoacoara was a remote fishing settlement among moving dunes. A lighthouse was opened on the Serrote in 1952, but the village had no road, and its electricity came from diesel engines. In 1984 the area was declared an environmental protection area. Tourism began to grow in the mid 1980s, and grew rapidly after the Washington Post listed the beach among the ten most beautiful in the world.

Mains electricity reached the village in 1998. In 2002 the protected area became Jericoacoara National Park, and in 2005 a strip around the village was added to stop it spreading into the dunes. Road building and paving are banned inside the park, so the sand streets survive even as pousadas and restaurants have replaced most of the fishermen's houses. The regional airport at Cruz opened in 2017, shortening the journey from the rest of Brazil.

Jericoacoara's culture is a meeting of an old fishing community and an international beach scene. Tourism is now the main source of income for the whole municipality of Jijoca de Jericoacoara, and pousadas, restaurants and kite schools now line streets where fishermen's houses once stood.

The day turns on the sunset. In the late afternoon visitors and villagers climb the Duna do Pôr do Sol to watch the sun drop into the sea, a gathering the community treats as a daily ritual, and capoeira groups often play on the beach below. After dark the village fills with diners, music and dancing — forró, the accordion music of the Northeast, has given its name to one of the main streets.

Sport is part of the identity: the steady winds made Jeri one of Brazil's best-known places for windsurfing and kitesurfing, and the dunes are used for sandboarding. Rules born of the national park shape daily life — no paving, no electric street lamps and limits on building — and residents are protective of the place's informal, barefoot character.

Jericoacoara is a village within the municipality of Jijoca de Jericoacoara, the northernmost in Ceará, whose seat is the inland town of Jijoca. Tourism is by far the main business, and the village fills with visitors in high season.

Life follows the wind, the tides and the sun. Mornings are for the beach, the lagoons and the water sports; the sand streets are hot by midday; and everything converges on the dune at sunset before the restaurants fill. Supplies, workers and visitors come in over the sand by 4x4 and truck, and the 2017 airport has made Jeri reachable in a day from much of Brazil.

The main issues are the pressures of popularity: rising prices and property values, the strain of crowds on the dunes and lagoons, and the balance between the national park's rules and the village's growth.

Seafood is the base of Jeri's cooking: fish grilled or stewed, shrimp and lobster, often with rice, beans and farofa, toasted manioc flour. The Ceará staples are everywhere too — baião de dois, rice and beans cooked together with queijo coalho cheese, and tapioca, crêpes of manioc starch filled with coconut, cheese, banana or chocolate, which are a breakfast and a street snack.

Açaí na tigela, frozen açaí pulp served in a bowl with cereal and banana, is a favourite after a day in the sun. Visitors from abroad have brought pizza, pasta, crêpes and other foreign cooking to the restaurants of Rua do Forró and the streets around it, and the beach bars serve cold beer, coconut water and caipirinhas made with cachaça and lime as the crowds come down from the dune.

Out at the lagoons, the bars beside the water serve fried fish and snacks to buggy passengers, and simple restaurants in the fishing villages along the coast cook the day's catch.