The Lençóis Maranhenses are among the strangest landscapes on Earth. From the air, they look like bedsheets laid across the coast, which is exactly what lençóis means in Portuguese. White sand dunes roll for hundreds of square kilometers east of São Luís, but the twist is the water. Between May and September each year, rainwater collects in the valleys between the dunes, forming thousands of crystal-clear lagoons. You can swim across a dune field in flip-flops. Technically the Lençóis are not a desert at all, since a true desert doesn't get this much rain, but the unbroken white sand sells the illusion. The national park protecting the dunes is accessed mainly through Barreirinhas, a riverside town that has quietly become one of Brazil's premier ecotourism hubs.

The state capital sits on São Luís Island, founded by the French in 1612 as Equinoctial France. The Portuguese drove them out in 1615, the Dutch held the island from 1641 to 1644, and the Portuguese won it back for good. The layered history left São Luís with a historic center of pastel azulejo tilework, narrow cobbled streets, and shuttered townhouses - the most Portuguese-feeling capital in Brazil. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1997. After Bahia, Maranhão holds the deepest Afro-Brazilian cultural presence in the country. That heritage is audible in bumba-meu-boi festivities, in capoeira rodas, and especially in the reggae clubs that earned São Luís the nickname the Brazilian Jamaica. The 640 kilometers of coastline supply shrimp, crab, and the prized sururu mussel for regional cuisine.

Maranhenses love a party enough to invent one. The Açaí-Folia Micareta is one of the largest off-season carnivals in northeastern Brazil, a second helping of revelry months after the official February carnival has ended. Other cities keep their own rhythms. Imperatriz, the state's second-largest economic center on the Tocantins River, anchors the industrial west. Carolina draws daytrippers to its waterfalls. Grajaú offers riverside scenery and sandy patches that give it a charm distinct from the dune-focused east. Across the interior, the Grajaú River's waterfalls draw visitors, and the southwestern corner of the state serves as a staging ground for ecotourism into the cerrado and the edges of the Amazon basin.

At Maranhão's eastern border, the Parnaíba River meets the Atlantic in a delta formed of islands, lagoons, dunes, and mangroves. It is one of only three open-sea deltas in the Americas. Ilha do Caju, a private nature reserve on one of the delta islands, shelters rare birds and attracts serious birders from across the continent. Smaller settlements like Primeira Cruz and Canto de Atins, a fishermen's village turned kitesurfing hotspot, mark the edge of the Lençóis Maranhenses. The tiny coastal town of Tutóia serves as a jumping-off point for the Pequenos Lençóis, a smaller cousin of the main dune field. Travelers moving between the dunes and Parnaíba tend to stop in Barra Grande or Paulino Neves, which offer a different kind of charm than the main tourist hub.

Marechal Cunha Machado International Airport lies 13 kilometers from central São Luís, handling the bulk of Maranhão's air traffic since international flights began in 2004. Renato Moreira Airport serves Imperatriz in the west. Highways BR-010 and BR-230 cross the state, though the road network is notably weaker in the south. Brazilian health authorities (ANVISA) classify Maranhão as endemic for sylvatic yellow fever and recommend vaccination at least ten days before arrival. And if a cold red can of Guarana Jesus appears at your table, accept it. It really does taste like bubble gum. That is not a flaw. That is, somehow, the whole point.