In Brazil, the Lençóis Maranhenses Desert, a Mirage on the Ocean

Here is the translation in English:

 

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**These lines seem to have been drawn by Oscar Niemeyer**

 

The Atlantic washes the northeast facade of the park, while the Preguiças River loops around the southern boundary. To the west, the desert is bordered by a handful of small towns, the largest of which, Santo Amaro (10,000 inhabitants), is not the least isolated: you reach the nearest paved road by 4×4 after thirty-six kilometers of a sandy, bumpy road, even more challenging when partially flooded. By car, the Lençóis desert is hard-earned.

 

By plane, it is viewed as a massive land art piece composed of white sheets, reminiscent of Christo’s wrappings. Hence the term “lençóis maranhenses,” meaning “sheets of Maranhão,” used to describe these faux fabrics that seem to dry in the sun while their folds, shaped by the wind, create the typical arabesques of sandy deserts. Except that this desert has a unique feature that no other can boast: under the seasonal accumulation of rain, a fleeting river of diamonds emerges in the form of “lagoas,” lagoons that alternate between emerald and crystalline. In this astonishing desert stretched across seventy kilometers of coastline in the northern Nordeste region, up to 1,600 millimeters of rain falls annually, more than in Glasgow, Scotland, for example. These rains, concentrated from January to June, gradually transform the landscape month by month: between each dune, clay depressions fill with freshwater. Thus, at the end of the rainy season, one observes a landscape that is undoubtedly among the most spectacular in the country. From dolines that can reach up to a hundred meters in diameter and several meters in depth, with curves so perfect they recall the sensual shapes of Brasília’s public buildings designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. But this is a landscape to be wary of. When it doesn’t rain, temperatures can soar to forty degrees Celsius and, in this reflective sand universe, can be quite overwhelming. Indeed, the panorama is so astonishing it can be mind-boggling.

 

Paradisiacal beaches in the middle of the desert, a cross between the Maldives and the Sahara, how is this possible? This phenomenon is due to the alluvium of the Parnaíba River, which separates the states of Maranhão and Piauí to the south. Carried to the Atlantic Ocean, it has been pushed by tides towards the beach for 10,000 years and then by trade winds inland. Upon encountering the first obstacle, the grains accumulate to form a dune. All that’s needed is rain to turn the clay intervals into pools.

 

To the southeast of the park, Barreirinhas, with 50,000 inhabitants, is the main gateway for the 60,000 tourists who visit this sandy sanctuary annually. Wrapped around a bend of the Preguiças River, the “lazy river,” referring to its slow flow, the town is two hours by boat from the Atlantic. Here, the asphalt ends. Sand infiltrates everywhere, invading streets and gardens. The dunes advance twenty meters each year and encroach on vegetation. On the edge of the desert, they have already swallowed houses (and even an airport, in 1979, in the town of Tutóia). In Barreirinhas, a giant dune grows in the city center, its slope descending to the Preguiças River. On the right bank, 200 boats and a fleet of 4x4s await tourists. For visitors, the program usually boils down to a dip in the nearest lagoons: Lagoa Azul, Lagoa Esmeralda, or Lagoa do Peixe. A half-day excursion, undoubtedly unforgettable but not the type preferred by Maciel Brito: too easy, too marked! The owner of the Roots Bar in Barreirinhas, 29-year-old Maciel, was born in Queimada dos Britos. When he’s not listening to reggae from morning to night, he is one of the most skilled guides in the desert. A young man capable of navigating to the oases with nothing but his knowledge of the terrain and natural elements. “The dunes move with the wind, but I’ve known them since I was a kid,” he says. With him, one can cross the Lençóis in three days and, at the heart of the “primitive zone,” experience life in self-sufficient communities largely unaffected by modernity. Always on foot. In the park, the use of motor vehicles is indeed prohibited for tourists to avoid disturbing the dune ecosystem. Even locals are supposed to use their quads only in medical emergencies. However, violations are frequent and this vast territory is difficult to monitor.

 

**Setting out before sunrise, under the watchful eye of black vultures**

 

At the mouth of the Preguiças River, on the left bank, lies Atins. The main street is a white sand alley flanked by tall buriti palms indicating the proximity of water, a pair of “pousadas” (guesthouses), and a small bar serving chilled beer. This is where the adventure begins, an eighty-kilometer south-to-north crossing of the Lençóis. First warm-up, in the late afternoon: two hours walking on turtle beaches and crab mangroves before reaching the first dunes at dusk. The night will be spent at Canto do Atins, a fishing hamlet where two pousadas serve “the best shrimp in the world.” It will be short: under the gaze of large black vultures, departure is before sunrise to avoid the heat. “But there are always those who want to leave late in the morning, claiming they want to return super-tanned to São Paulo!” laughs Maciel. Destination Baixa Grande, the first of the two oases marking the trek.

 

With the Atlantic behind, the desert now unfolds before the eyes. On the sand compacted by the trade winds, one must climb a first dune, with a gentle slope, and then slide down its steep face. Before repeating the operation two, ten, a hundred times. Soon, the sun burns, the breath is short, muscles ache, and the back bends under the pack. But comfort can appear behind each crest when, like a mirage, a lagoon emerges where one can bathe among piabinhas, small fish adept at exfoliating dead skin.

 

One would like to stay in this primordial soup, but the journey must continue. The sand is dotted and streaked with animal tracks left by a burrowing owl (coruja-buraqueira), a six-banded armadillo (tatu-peba), or a fox (raposa). Like the remnant of a vanished civilization, an abandoned oil rig emerges between two dunes. Before their transformation into a park in 1981, the Lençóis attracted black gold prospectors. The Baixa Grande oasis finally appears after eight hours of walking without shade: seven scattered houses, a herd of chickens, goats, pigs, and horses, and a group of men busy butchering a preá (wild guinea pig) for dinner. “I’ve seen people arrive here in tears,” laughs Dete Brito. She and her husband Moacir, in their fifties, are used to hosting exhausted trekkers under a hut where hammocks are hung. The habitat is extremely rudimentary even though an old television broadcasts variety shows—images from another world, so to speak. Dete, without losing her cheerfulness, summarizes her daily life: “We receive only one form of aid, that from God. We have no access to health or education. The park was created without considering our presence.” According to park regulations, all human presence should even be banned from its grounds. “But ICMBio, the federal authority managing the park, cannot expel these communities due to a lack of means to compensate them,” observes Manuel Rodrigues, 28, a researcher in sociology at the Federal University of Maranhão. “So it imposes restrictions on the use of natural resources, complicates the construction of new houses, agricultural production, and livestock. All things essential for the families’ subsistence.”

 

In the morning, three hours of walking—“a breeze,” say the locals—connect the oases of Baixa Grande and Queimada dos Britos. The latter, covering 1,800 hectares, now has about a hundred inhabitants in fifteen palm and clay houses. When the lagoons fill, they surround the hamlet with a crystalline moat. Sometimes, men must flatten a dune so that the water drains, preventing flooding. In Queimada dos Britos, one must walk twenty minutes through the “restinga,” a sandy shrub ecosystem, to visit a neighbor. Vegetables are grown above ground in planters, while spaces between houses are used for small-scale livestock.

 

**Masu switched to livestock; he was too afraid of sharks**

 

Further in the desert, around 7,000 goats and pigs frolic freely, feeding around the lagoons. In June and December, they will be captured and sold to butchers in Santo Amaro, seven hours of walking away. Fishing has two seasons. One is practiced in lagoons populated with traíras, cará-bicudos, and jacundás, fish whose eggs, buried in the clay, have patiently awaited the arrival of the rains. The other occurs during the dry season on the Atlantic shore, an hour and a half walk from the oasis, using lines and nets. But fish are becoming scarce: the two successive droughts the region has experienced—the 2013 drought being the most severe in forty-seven years—have dried up the lagoas. And at sea, shrimp trawling impacts biodiversity.