After leaving Roab, the macaws, rottweilers and little monkeys we visited a string of places; Recife, Olinda, Fortaleza, some nice some not, but all pretty unremarkable 4 months down the line. Perhaps it was as if we were bulding up a crescendo to the one place i will keep in my heart forever: Jericoacoara, or Jeri for short, a small seaside village 300 km west from Fortaleza, in the state of Ceara. We decided to visit Jeri after receiving enthusiastic feedback from other travellers; it is a place to switch off, to catch up with the slow pace of life characteristic of the far north-east coast of Brazil. relaxing becomes a state of mind rather than a physical necessity; three days turn into a week. Jeri is hard to get to, and even harded to get out of. The bus from Fortaleza follows tarmac rroads for approximately 5 hours, until everything (passengers included!) is unloaded onto the back of a truck for the final 2 hour stretch. the truck runs parallel to the beach, following sand tracks that appear vague in the moonlight. All with th backdrop of a stunning starry night. After reaching the count of 8 in the first 15 minutes, I stopped counting falling stars; I had ran out of wishes.
There are no roads in Jeri, all the village is built on sand. there are no cars, only a few trucks and beach buggies. Jeri's surroundings present a variety of landscapes; a broad grey beach surrounded by a majestic golden dune, white sandy beaches, a rocky coastline... Winds blow virtually constantly between July and December, making it popular amongst windsurfers and kitesurfers. Some stay for months at the time, some never leave. We shared our accommodation with Adrian, a Swiss windsurfer, and Patrick and Caroline, a couple of Austrian kitesurfers. they were all staying in Jeri fo several weeks. Our host, Ingrid, was a Brazilian-German woman who fell in love with Jeri over 20 years ago, when the place was a little more than a collection of shacks by the beach. So she bid farewell to Frankfurt and Sao Paulo, and never came back.
All our days in Jeri started and finished in a similar fashion. We woke up and visited Joao, maker of the best juices of the world. He open when he feels like, closes when the juices are finished, and doesn't own a shirt. For 1 real onne can choose between pineapple (alone or mixed with mint), guava, acerola and my personal favourite, passionfruit. At sunset, everybody gathered up under the dune on the main beach to watch the sun setting in the ocean. there is music, and capoeira on the beach; plus a myriad of cocktail carts serving caipirinha and other fruit cocktails. My drink of choice was maracujaroska, a concoction of vodka and passionfruit pulp (yes, i am rather partial to it). And before bedtime we had a chocolate cake from the lady across the road with Patrick and Caroline. It could be plain chocolate, or with coconut or carrot, sold from the window of her house. We grew accostumed to this ritual so much that imagine my disappointment when she was closed on our last night.
Between a passionfuit juice and a chocolate cake our days were long and mellow. We walked along the coast for hours followed by vultures and wild pigs; woke up at dawn to buy prawns from the fishermen; took pictures off surfers and even had a little go at kitesurfing; took a day tour of the region on a beach buggy. It was there, with the wind in my hair, that for the first time I felt freee. I thought of Janis Joplin's words in Bobby McGee "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose"; I could have stayed there.
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