Qualla: Jericoacoara National Park

Jericoacoara National Park: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1499, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón anchored in the bay at Jericoacoara. He had captained the Niña on Columbus's first crossing and was now running his own voyage down the northern coast of South America, and the landfall he made here should count as one of the earliest European sightings of Brazil. It did not count. The Treaty of Tordesillas had already carved the unmapped world in two, and this stretch of shoreline fell on the wrong side of the line for a Spanish captain to claim. Pinzón sailed on. The dunes he saw from the deck are still moving, and they are now the reason the place is protected.

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jericoacoara National Park: Lair of Turtles

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Luiz Felipe Sahd, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is Tupi and it means the den or lair of the sea turtles — jericoacoara, worn smooth by five centuries of Portuguese pronunciation into the shorthand everyone now uses, Jeri. The word covers three different things that visitors regularly confuse. There is the beach. There...

Image: Luiz Felipe Sahd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jericoacoara National Park: Drawing a Line Around the Sand

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anna Falcão, CC BY-SA 3.0. Protection came in layers, and each layer was a response to the last one failing. An Environmental Protection Area was established on 29 October 1984 by federal decree, covering 8,416 hectares and including the village inside its boundary. That framework proved too permissive for...

Image: Anna Falcão | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jericoacoara National Park: The Rock With a Hole In It

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MTur Destinos, Public domain. Pedra Furada is the icon: a sea-worn rock arch standing at the tide line, and the formation everyone agrees is the emblem of the place. It also does something specific. Between 15 July and 15 August the setting sun lines up with the opening and drops through the arch, and for one...

Image: MTur Destinos | Public domain

Jericoacoara National Park: What the Wind Does

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anderps, CC BY-SA 3.0. The trade winds that scour this coast are the engine behind everything. They build and move the dunes, they keep the water surface broken and the air cooler than the latitude suggests, and they have made Jericoacoara one of the most heavily used windsurfing sites in the country. ...

Image: Anderps | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jericoacoara National Park: Thirty-Eight Families of Birds

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anderps, CC BY-SA 3.0. Behind the beach, the park protects a genuinely complicated set of habitats — mobile dunes, fixed dunes, freshwater lagoons, mangrove and coastal scrub — stacked against each other within a few kilometres. Surveys have recorded birds from 38 families here, including species that ...

Image: Anderps | CC BY-SA 3.0