An enormous expanse of barren white sand dunes enclosing vast freshwater lagoons, Brazil's Lençóis Maranhenses is a place of otherworldly splendour, said Michael Snyder in Travel + Leisure.
A national park since 1981, it covers an area of 600 square miles adjacent to the Atlantic coast, just three degrees below the equator in the northeast of the country. Exploring it is a near-hallucinatory experience. The dunes march on to infinity, each curving as voluptuously as a building by Oscar Niemeyer. The pools, which are filled in the rainy season, are so clear and blue that swimming in them feels "like swimming in the sky". And the park's surroundings are wild and lush, making the journey along the coast to reach it slow and complicated, but rewarding too.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
We took a day to cross the "expansive" Parnaíba River delta, navigating its labyrinthine channels and mangroves by boat, and stopping to watch capuchin monkeys playing in the treetops. And equally magical was a journey over the dunes to a beach that felt like "the edge of the Earth" – but beyond which lay a "modest" family restaurant, Toca da Guaaja, where we feasted on a sublime sea bass and coconut stew.
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Political cartoons for February 6Cartoons Friday’s political cartoons include Washington Post layoffs, no surprises, and more
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibition
The Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classic
The Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
-
Is This Thing On? – Bradley Cooper’s ‘likeable and spirited’ romcomThe Week Recommends ‘Refreshingly informal’ film based on the life of British comedian John Bishop
-
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars – history at its most ‘human’The Week Recommends Alwyn Turner’s ‘witty and wide-ranging’ account of the interwar years
