Kiteboarding Brazil
The first gust that hits you on Brazil’s northeast coast feels like a promise—steady, warm, and endless. For decades, kiteboarders & windsurfers from around the world have flocked here, drawn by wind that rarely takes a day off and a coastline that’s designed for adventure. Europeans were among the first to make Brazil their winter […]
Lencois Maranhenses National park
stunning white sand dunes Sept 9th. Lençóis Maranhenses is one of Brazil’s most surreal landscapes—a vast sea of shifting white dunes stretching for hundreds of kilometers along the Atlantic coast. The name means “bedsheets of Maranhão,” a fitting description for the endless ripples of sand that look like a giant sheet draped over the land. […]
Closing in on the coast
We’re getting close now—I can almost smell the salt in the air. Just one more day and we’ll reach the coast. These long driving days don’t bother us; they seem to slip by surprisingly quickly. It’s been a few days since I last wrote. Part of that is the ongoing blog dilemma. It’s been really […]
Fordlandia and the Br-230
Belterra Roughly a hundred years ago, Belterra would have been a busy river port. It was the staging ground for Henry Ford’s great Amazon experiment. In the 1930s, ships docked here heavy with machinery, supplies, and workers on their way upriver to build Fordlândia. Back then, the town was also becoming “Americanized,” with houses, offices, […]
to blog or not to blog
I’ve been wondering lately whether I should keep this blog rolling or let it drift into retirement. On the plus side, it’s a wonderful diary of our travels—I know future me will be glad I wrote things down. On the flip side, keeping this old website alive means hiring someone to handle the behind-the-scenes tech […]
Into the Amazon
Long ago Centuries before our voyage, Europeans first set eyes on the Amazon’s waters in 1500, when Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón reached its mouth and named it the Rio Santa María de la Mar Dulce—the “freshwater sea.” A few decades later, Francisco de Orellana became the first to navigate its full length. His 1541–42 journey […]
a week in Manaus
22nd – 29th August history Manaus rose out of the jungle on the back of rubber. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Amazon’s rubber boom transformed what was once a remote trading post into one of the richest cities in the world. European entrepreneurs and Brazilian barons grew fantastically wealthy, importing marble […]