this is the beautiful jeri, considered by many travelers to be brasils most beautiful beach. it is stunning, as you will see from the photos to follow. in my opinion it is top 4, alongside boipeba in bahia, fernando de noronha, and lencois in maranhao. to get to jeri, take the bus in fortaleza, the capital city in ceara. jeri is 7 hours away, some of the way along very dodgy bumpy roads. but the destination is well worth any discomfort.

these are actual colours. this is what jeri looks like every single night when the sun sets, and then the massive nightlife kicks in. it is a little paradise, decadently beautiful and alive, with great bars, dance halls (not clubs! these are forro dance halls ;) ), open air drinking lounges, and everything stays open all night. so go to party and play, and dont stay in any of the central BBs if you want peace and quiet.

in my memory jeri is a bit like this blurry photo: wild, temperamental, and insinuatingly beautiful. jeri is out in the middle of nowhere, not easily reacheable, but wildly popular with the freer tourists. it has a feeling of the frontier, hedonistic in character and wild in temperament. it is never dull, never fully domained or asleep, and it always has something beautiful to offer.

the colours in jeri are intense! maybe its because of its far away location, free from any polution, any big cities, anything that could cloud the air. the ocean is the bluest of all ive ever seen, as you will see in these photos.

this sail-less jangada is made of a few planks of wood, and literally a chair tied down. as you can probably get from the photo, the ocean around jeri is quite feroceous, and it gets very deep very quickly, which is what gives the sea its intense and rich colours, so being out there like this is quite a brave thing, i think. it must be an amazing feeling of oness with the sea.

i love these last two photos. they remind me of freedom, and of undiluted emotions. i remember i had to walk into the sea to get them, and i kept walking, holding my camera up high above my head, until i had the aggressive sea hitting me just about chest high. i then took these two shots with a 200m lens, thats how far into the sea he was. i love, first of all, the sensual memories: the colours - the intense and undiluted blue-, the sound and sensation of being one on one with the sea and nothing else-; and second, i love the idea of a man out there in the midst of this vast and powerful creature, attending to his life's business. his singularity and seeming serenity, his lack of complicated protecting gear, and thus his lack of fear. the intimacy of his relationship with something this wondrous and powerful. i think i would be petrified being out there in such an exposed contraption, so obviously at the mercy of the deep and voluminous blue. im not that intimate with the sea. he however, exudes a familiarity with it that captivated my imagination. so this is what is possible if one lives a different life, takes on a different relationship with the sea.