Jericoacoara

Sept 30

This is a place that makes me want to put pen to paper.

The approach is across a white sand beach with almost nothing except the stray windsurfer and, a beach so windswept that trees lie down and set down roots along the sand. The wind whips in gusts that fills you mouth with sand and whips sand against your skin, giving the place an almost hostile feel. A five minute drive to the sheltered side of the beach and the same scene feels like something totally different. The wind sways the palm trees, the sun reflects on the water across the majestic dunes.

The lodge we're at is at a quiet edge of the sometimes noisy party beach town of Jericoacoara. The buildings are made out of either red brick or palm fronds. Our room is a thatch hut that sits on stilts and overlooks the water and a group of horses seeking shade under a nearby tree.

This is the vacation I haven't taken in three years, a real vacation which is not the same as going home to see my mom and dad or going to my mother-in-law's for New Year's. It's a package deal in which everything was figured out for us upfront. I feel a little guilty for doing it that way instead of the old-school shoestring style I would have done ten years ago. But I'm glad we did it this way. Improvised vacations (which are great) involve constantly making decisions about where to stay, how long to stay, what to see. After a couple of months of making some major life decisions, I wanted this trip to be a vacation from decisions as well. So we made all the decisions up front, and here we are in Jericoacoara. It's time to relax and unwind.

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It´s a daily pilgrimage that starts around 4 30 to the big sand dune next to town, where the crowds go to watch one of the finest sunsets around. The dune drops off sosharply that it feels like being at the edge of cliff.
I sit with my back to the wind, and i can still feel it bouncing off my chin and my forehead. One straggling windsurfer carves a clumsy jibe and falls over. The dune drops off like a cliff, kids duneboard down it and then walk back up. Don´t sit down, I realize, it gets more sand in your eyes. Sand sticks to my sunscreened face. We stand at the edge of the dune, and watch the show almost until it ends. The sunset creates an amazing canvas in the minutes just after the sun goes down, in which the blue sky almost appears to radiate like rays to the backdrop of the crimson sunset. I suppose you´d have to see it to make sense of it,  I'll hope to post some soon.

Oct 1
Walking anywhere in the environs of Jericoacoara is a reminder of the hostile beauty of these environs. The town is sheltered from the wind by a large hill, with most the restaurants and hotels and pousadas
hidden from the constant gusts. Here behind the mountain the scene is divine, the sun sines over the water and heats everything to a tropical baking point while the breeze cools everything back down. The rustling of the palms compliments the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. We took a one hour hike out to the Pedra Furada, a scenic arch-liked rock formation just down the winding coastline. Five minutes out and you start to feel it. The wind pushes air into your mouth, it blows sand into your eyes. The sand whips against your skin
hard enough to hurt. It makes you envious of the sailboarders out on the water who have figured out how to enjoy the wind without being pelted by the sand.

I was going to try my hand at sandboarding, but couldn’t  find anyone around to rent me a board. Probably better, since sandboarding is not far from snowboarding, which is a bit like skiing,  which I suck at. Instead I decided to run up on the big dune and the charge down the edge. The jog starts out easy but gets harder as you get more exposed to the wind. The gusts created a bizarre echo in my  ears that almost seemed to harmonize with my breathing. My feet sank into the sand at first, but eventually I figured out that you can get
a bit more grip by landing on the darker parts of the sand, the lower parts of those rippled dunes that appear in those Middle-East evoking desert movies. The view from the top is astonishing. To the right a sheer drop off to the Atlantic, with kit surfers whipping back and forth through the choppy water. To the left another striking dune that gave the place an almost Sahara like feel, and a line of shaking palm trees. I charged back down the steep edge, my feet plunging in almost a foot with each step. At the bottom I was again jogging on the flat sand, but this time with the wind in my face, ready to blow my hat off  my head. This is not an easy place to get to and, I would guess with winds like this, is not always a very easy place to live.
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The outdoor lounge at the Villa Kilongo lodge was possibly one of the things I´ll miss most about this place. It´s a wide area with a palm-thatched roof and curtains along the side that has chairs, couches, an some amazingly comfortable chaise-lounge type things made out of palm fiber. There´s a pool table, WiFi, and an assorted collection of trashy fashion magazines that my wife enjoys reading. The place is a good five degrees colder than the outdoors during the heat of mid-day, and there´s hardly anyone in it. Sitting there for a
few hours, I thought to myself, am I really going to leave this place?  Am I insane? That´s when you know you´ve picked the right spot for a vacation.