Brazil
Canoa Quebrada
A crescent moon and star cut into thirty-metre red cliffs, and nobody agrees who carved them.
The cliffs here are the red of iron in the ground, standing about thirty metres above the sand, and somewhere along them a crescent moon and a star have been cut into the rock. They are the image the whole Ceará coast is sold on, and down in the village people still argue about who put them there.
Canoa Quebrada sits on Ceará's east coast, 163 kilometres from Fortaleza and about twelve from Aracati, the town it belongs to. The beach runs roughly fifteen kilometres beneath the cliff line. The carving is usually credited to Kako Limaverde, who picked a face that already carried the moon's outline and then spent ten years repairing what the wind, rain and tide kept taking back; other versions in circulation credit a Moroccan visitor doing penance for his nights out, or a couple marking their star signs. After dark the village moves to Broadway, the street of restaurants and live music set back from the beach.
Couple
Walk the cliff line late on, when the light is full on the red rock and the moon and star are at their clearest, then come down to Broadway as the music starts.
Friends
Take a licensed buggy for the dune circuit, which runs eight to five and takes in the sunset dune, and split the evening across the beach barracas and the Broadway tables.
- The moon and star carved into the cliff face is treated as the postcard image of this coast.
- Licensed buggy operators work the dunes and the sunset dune between eight and five, morning to late afternoon.
- Lobster is landed off this coast between May and October, and from February to the end of April the federal rule takes lagosta vermelha, verde and pintada off the domestic market.
- The beach runs roughly fifteen kilometres, and reaching the sand means crossing the cliffs.
Baião de dois, rice cooked down with feijão-de-corda and queijo coalho, the dish Fortaleza names before any other.
Lagosta is what the boats off this coast are after, fresh from May to October and on declared stock to the end of January; from February to the end of April the vermelha, the verde and the pintada come off the home market.
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