Fortaleza to Cumbuco: Full-Day City Tour and Cumbuco Beach Escape

The morning light in Fortaleza has a flat, humid quality that makes colors glow: colonial facades on Praça do Ferreira sharpen against a bright blue sky while vendors wheel carts of tapioca down the Avenida Beira Mar. You meet your guide at the hotel, climb into an air-conditioned van, and the city peels away. Thirty-eight kilometers later the pavement gives way to a ribbon of coconut palms, a scattering of wooden fishing boats, and a broad sweep of sand: Cumbuco. The dunes here move like a living thing—wind-sculpted ridges that dare you to climb them, lagoons that reflect the sky, and a small fishing village where the jangadas—traditional wooden rafts—rest on the sand.