Lençóis Maranhenses

The Lençóis Maranhenses are dunes that behave like a delta. Rain from January to May sinks into the sand, meets an impermeable layer and rises again in the valleys between the dunes as lagoons: thousands of them by July, turquoise and green, warm, clear, and full of fish that arrive as eggs on birds’ feet. By December they are gone and the park is a white desert until the next rains. It sits on the north coast of Brazil, four hours by road from São Luís, and the villages inside it are reached on foot.

What the model says

June to September, with the lagoons deepest in July and August and the trade wind strongest in the same months. Thirty degrees every day of the year, twenty-four at night, no rain from August to November. The daylight at two degrees south is a fixed twelve hours, and the circuits run in the late afternoon because the sand at noon is a hot plate. The Climate Simulator here is really a lagoon simulator: the rain months decide the water months.

What the ground says back

Atins, the village on the coast, is the better base: the dunes begin at the end of its sand street and the guides walk you to a lagoon in twenty minutes. The 4x4 circuits from Barreirinhas are the standard version and crowded at sunset in July. The multi-day walking crossings between the oasis villages are the deep version and cost almost nothing but sunburn. Cheap, warm, empty and strange: the water realm’s easiest place.

Days

Three days covers Atins and a circuit, four adds the second circuit or the kitesurfing. Brazil’s north-east pairs it with Jericoacoara down the coast for a week of dunes and wind.