Lençóis Maranhenses National Park

One of Brazil's most impressive natural attractions is Lençóis Maranhenses National Park (Parque Nacional dos Lençóis Maranhenses) near São Luís.

This is a fantastic desert with huge white dunes, the height of which reaches 50 meters. Surprisingly, when it rains heavily every year from June to October, the desert comes to life and turns into a lake region: sandy valleys are filled with water, forming a series of jade lagoons, and their mirror surfaces reflect piercing blue sky filled with drifting clouds.

The grandeur of the landscape cannot be expressed. The sense of timelessness is impressive. Real miracles happen there: you should sometimes turn around to see how the wind has destroyed the only sign of civilization - the footprints on the soft sand left by travelers just five minutes ago.

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park is constantly changing: dunes move, lakes appear and disappear, rare small vegetation is being covered by sand.

The rainy and drought seasons are radically different there. In dry times, you can meet only rare tourists or researchers of the park phenomenon. And in the rainy season, in addition to people, there are exotic birds, fish in the lakes, hares or moose in the mangroves.

Everything there is romantic and magical. Even the name of the park is translated from Portuguese as "Sheets of Maranyensis". The correctness of the name becomes clear when you look at the desert from a bird's-eye view. Then it seems like a huge white blanket, which waves and changes its shape in the wind. The view is extremely beautiful: the landscapes of the Parque Nacional dos Lençóis are varied and short-lived.