Rollercoaster

A never-ending up and down takes me along the Brazilian Northeastern coast. Here sand-dunes and lagoons create a landscape the 4x4 sails like an ancient sailboat, like an everlasting rollercoaster of rocks and sand. My travel companions are not tourists like me, instead they complete this journey once and again. This ride is a constant in their lives maybe because destiny decided to put them in this ‘no-man-land’ where roads were forgotten, or maybe just because they wouldn’t know how to live far from the beauty that surrounds them. Paulino Neves, where a gigantic sand-dune is the main attraction, is the destiny of this journey, or the first stopover of a bigger journey that is just starting. From there onwards the rollercoaster gets rougher, even more uncomfortable. The discomfort is numbed only by the sleepiness given by waking up in the middle of the night to take the day’s only available transport. One, two, three towns go by before the road shows up again, eventually taking me to Camocim. There I hop on the 4x4 once more, which this time rides the sand along the beach to Jericoacoara, my final objective.
I’ve been on many roads before. This was one of the roughest, surpassed only by an Angolan road where 30 years of war still managed to leave some asphalt in between the holes. Nevertheless, and bumps apart, this northeaster road of Brazil was, is, will always be one of the most beautiful routes I had the pleasure to cross.

Jericoacoara, Brazil, February 2009