São Luis whet my appetite for doing nothing, so over the course of the next few weeks, that´s about all I´ll be doing. My next destination was Fortaleza, another state capital conveniently located on the coast, though notoriously less tranquil, larger and more prone to a bit of crime. As such, I decided to spend just one evening before setting out for greener waters and less people.

The evening that I spent there, luckily, was Monday. In most towns Monday is a recovery from the weekend and still a bit early to start partying again, however Fortaleza takes pride in having the wildest Mondays in Brazil. As luck would have it, I scored a cheap, grungy hotel just a couple blocks from the heart of the action and sauntered over in the evening to have a look. Sure enough, it looked like a weekend, with hundreds of beautiful people packed into a three block string of nightclubs and beach bars. The crowning achievement of the area (at least on Mondays) is an open air pirate-themed bar with multiple stories, a live band, big screen televisions, the works. It was jammed with folks rocking to the forro music and working on a Tuesday hangover. Not a bad way to spend a Monday night as far as I´m concerned.

The following morning, I started to make my way to Jericoacoara. Jeri is apparently one of the most famous beaches in Brazil, though is peculiarly difficult to get to. After a five hour bus ride, you have to take either a dune buggy or a ATV for an additional hour to get there. There are no roads. As a result, the only thing they have is tourism, and tourism in spades. Bars and hotels line the three major streets, nightly capoeira demonstrations occur on the beach just after sunset, and wind surfers dot the horizon of the gorgeous rock-strewn beaches.

I got lucky and found a guy renting out a small room on the backside of town, which looked out onto the adjoining National Park.

He had room for my hammock and invited me to pick green coconuts to my hearts content. Taking a machete to a green coconut and drinking the water inside is one of the most common and most refreshing treats of northern Brazil. Their are best when they´ve been kept refrigerated for a few days, but when they are free it´s hard to complain. I spent a couple of days exploring the abandoned coastline surrounding Jeri and enjoying the isolation and relaxed pace of the town. Brazil being so big, though, I had to get on the road to the next stop. After a buzzing through Fortaleza once again, I headed east to Morro Branco.

Morro Branco is a much more typical beach town, with dozens of beach buggys lining the road waiting for an unsuspecting pedestrian to walk within screaming distance. Owing to its omission from the Lonely Planet guides, however, it is noticeably short on gringo tourists. The majority that make their way to Morro Branco are on organized beach tours, large upscale buses packed with tourists that pop from beach to beach, spending an hour or two at each. As a result, at night, there is almost no one in town. I was there on a Friday and had trouble finding an open restaurant.

Adjoining the town is a very nice park with a fantastic array of dunes and canyons rising from the water. It was spectacular right at sunset and a nice change from all beach all the time.

The beaches weren´t bad either. Jangadas, small fishing boats, lined the beach in the evenings after returning from a day pulling fruits from the sea, and as is typical on every beach I´ve visited, when the tide is out the locals come out in droves to play soccer on the hardpacked sand.

After two small towns, it was back to capitals, as I headed to Natal. Natal is slightly smaller than Fortaleza, and a bit more laid back. Additionally, it is made up of about 25 km of urban beaches. I camped out at the last one in the line, Ponta Negra. It is a very relaxed area with numerous hotels and bars dotting a nice stretch of sand. At the end of the line is a large dune which is off limits in order to try and preserve some of the fragil ecosystem. It still makes for an impressive sight, though.

My hostel in Natal has to be one of the most unique in the world as it is a reconstructed castle. It hardly seems the cheapest option for a youth hostel (which are meant to be cheap) but it certainly has a lot of culture, and when I was there, a lot of Brazilians. Natal was packed with folks who came to take an entry exam for government jobs. I was told as many as 24,000 people had come to take a test for one of only 60 jobs, but I think that might be a bit of an exaggeration. None the less, it does highlight the fact that Brazil, while mighty in the international economic picture, still has some domestic troubles to work out. Well, enough of that serious stuff, I´m off to João Passoa, and the only nude beach in the northeast. Woo-hoo!