Brazil's northeast, the world's best vacation

I'm back from the most amazing vacation of my life. I chronicled this one more intensely than any other, perhaps because I perceived its eminence from the outset, or possibly because the trip was so logistically complex that it warranted documentation. Our trip took us to the spectacular beach of Jericoacoara, the amazing Delta of the Parnaiba River, and the brethtaking fresh-water sand dune lakes known as the Lencois Maranhenses. The trip started with a flight to the city of Fortaleza and ended with a flight back to Rio from the city of Sao Luis. I intentionally avoided bringing a laptop on this trip, which I'm glad of. And I also decided to avoid spending too much time typing on my Blackberry since I've already suffered enough bouts of carpal tunnel. Which means that the first take on all of this came by -- gasp! -- pen and paper.  I enjoyed having a notebook on hand to jot down whatever I was thinking or seeing and hope it will become a habit for me on future trips.  This means I've had to retype all of this to get it onto my blog. I'll be posting chronicles of each day of the vacation, starting today. There's a lot here.

We hope to have pictures ready pretty soon, but some are the old school non-digital kind (our camera clogged up with sand in Jericoacoara so we picked up a point and shoot to replace it). So they may take some time. I won't be offended if people skip the text saga and go straight for the pictures. I hope it might build interest in doing this trip. It's not cheap and its complicated in some ways, but its not lightly that I say this was the most memorable vacation of my life. And I'd like to thank our dear friend Tatiana for making the arrangements that allowed all this to happen.