Experience the best of Santo Amaro do Maranhão

Santo Amaro do Maranhão is a small town on the north-east coast of Brazil, on the edge of Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, a vast area of rolling white dunes. It is one of the park's gateways, where the roads end and sand tracks, boats and small villages take over. Life revolves around fishing, small farms and the guides, boatmen and inns that serve visitors.

Lençóis Maranhenses covers more than 1,000 square kilometres of dunes, mangroves and coast. After the rains, between roughly January and June, fresh-water lagoons fill the hollows between the dunes in shades of blue and green, and they are at their fullest around the middle of the year. The name means bed sheets, from the way the dunes look from above, like white linen.

Fresh fish, shrimp and crab, cooked simply, are the local food, with rice, cassava flour and sweets made from coconut. The coast is hot all year, and the lagoons shrink through the dry months that follow.