Counted along the shoreline from south to north the states run: Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Piauí, and Maranhão. They are lumped together in statistics and federal planning, but calling them one place flattens a country's worth of difference. Salvador, capital of Bahia, is drenched in African heritage and colonial architecture - a UNESCO World Heritage city whose Pelourinho district is the soul of Afro-Brazilian culture. Recife, capital of Pernambuco, is called the Brazilian Venice for the islands and bridges at its heart, and it is the gateway to Olinda's painted churches and the offshore archipelago of Fernando de Noronha. Natal got its name because the Portuguese founded it on December 25, 1599 - *natal* means Christmas. Teresina in Piauí is often called the hottest city in Brazil. João Pessoa in Paraíba holds the easternmost point in the Americas. Every capital has its own dialect, its own saint, and a fierce opinion about whose beaches, whose *forró*, and whose *moqueca* is actually the best.

The inland dry country - the sertão - cooks differently than the coast, and both cook differently than anywhere else in Brazil. *Moqueca* is the coastal icon: a stew of fish or shrimp simmered in coconut milk, dendê palm oil, and tomatoes, eaten from an earthenware pot with rice and farofa. *Carne de sol*, sun-dried beef from the interior, survives long hauls by ox cart and turns tender when grilled and soaked in clarified butter. *Escondidinho* layers shredded meat under mashed cassava and coalho cheese, gratinéed until the top browns. *Buchada de bode* - goat tripe stuffed with offal and slow-cooked - is not for everyone and is proud of it. *Rapadura*, a brick of dried sugarcane juice, was the original energy bar of the Brazilian cowboy: calorie-dense, shelf-stable, portable, vitamin-rich. To drink: *açaí* creamed with banana and cashew nuts, or *cajuína*, a clear cashew-fruit juice bottled in glass.

The Northeast is the sunniest region of Brazil, which sounds good on a beach brochure and means periodic drought-driven suffering in the interior. Crop failures drove waves of migration south to São Paulo across the twentieth century. But the same sun and the same wind shape landscapes found nowhere else. Lençóis Maranhenses is an 1,500-square-kilometer field of towering white dunes that fill with freshwater lagoons every rainy season - nobody told the dunes they were not allowed to be beautiful. Serra da Capivara, a national park in Piauí, holds some of the oldest rock art in the Americas. Fernando de Noronha, 350 kilometers offshore of Pernambuco, is a volcanic archipelago protected as a marine national park since 1988. The Abrolhos off southern Bahia are a reef system where humpback whales calve. The Chapada Diamantina inland from Salvador is a highland plateau of waterfalls and table mountains.

Northeastern Portuguese has its own vocabulary, rhythm, and legendary vowel-swallowing speed. *Oxente* is an interjection that sounds vaguely profane to American ears and simply means surprise or mild dismay - it is Bahia's *oh!* and *come on!* rolled together. *Vôte* is another flavor of surprise. *Quengo* is a word for head. The exaggerated, rapid-fire cearense accent of Fortaleza becomes its own comedy genre in the rest of the country. Recife, Salvador, and Fortaleza have the largest airports; Natal's international terminal handles domestic flights plus a seasonal link to Lisbon. From any of them, buses and short hops carry you into the interior where the drought lives, the music gets harder, and Brazil's first self-invention still happens every evening around somebody's dinner table.