Brazil
Delta do Parnaíba
Every dusk, thousands of scarlet ibis come in to sleep in the mangrove canopy.
The river arrives at the Atlantic as an open hand. Five mouths, more than seventy islands between them, and a labyrinth of mangrove channels that the boats thread from Porto dos Tatus, twelve kilometres out of Parnaíba. Then at dusk the sky fills: thousands of scarlet ibis crossing back to land in the mangrove canopy and sleep there.
This is the only delta in the Americas that opens into open sea, and the third largest in the world, in the company of the Nile and the Mekong. The five barras are named, Igaraçu, Canárias, Caju, Melancieiras and Tutóia, and each empties through its own channel. It is not empty country: Ilha das Canárias alone carries a fishing settlement of more than 2,500 people, and the delta's communities live by fishing, crab-gathering, oyster and shellfish collecting and weaving carnauba straw. Monkeys, caimans and capybaras come and go along the igarapés, and out on the protected area's eastern edge a base at Pontal do Socó has monitored the Antillean manatee since 1994 and keeps a museum of marine and river skeletons. A full circuit takes about seven hours with lunch on an island, fish, crab and regional fruit, and the boats time their return for the birds.
Couple
Take a fourteen-seat voadeira instead of the eighty-berth boat. It reaches the narrower channels, and it gets you into position for the dusk flight without a crowd on the deck.
Family
Children see the wildlife from the boat, monkeys, caimans, capybaras and herons, and there is sandboarding where the Morro Branco dunes run down to the river. The seven-hour circuit builds in lunch, so the day has a shape.
- The Parnaíba reaches the sea through five separate mouths, Igaraçu, Canárias, Caju, Melancieiras and Tutóia, and the boats leave from Porto dos Tatus on Ilha Grande or from Porto de Tutóia in Maranhão.
- Entry to the protected area is free, and the trips run every day of the week, on vessels taking up to eighty people or on fourteen-seat voadeiras for the narrow channels.
- Ilha das Canárias holds a fishing settlement of more than 2,500 people, among communities of crab-gatherers, oyster and shellfish collectors and carnauba-straw artisans.
- A manatee base has stood at Pontal do Socó since 1994, with a museum of marine and river skeletons, and the dunes at Morro Branco come down to the river with sandboarding on them.
Caranguejo, the mangrove crab that the delta's own catadores gather by hand, cracked open at lunch on one of the islands.
Cajuína, cashew juice clarified and cooked in a water bath until the sugars caramelise amber, which Piauí hands a visitor as a welcome.
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