While I was still drinking my caipirinha on that small terrace I saw some little spots of colour contrasting on the black horizon. Suddenly they became distinguishable objects. That’s when I realized that they were sailboats out at sea in the complete darkness of the tropical night and approaching the shore. Some people then started to gather, in a seemingly spontaneous process from the backstreets of the little village to the beach. Like ants exchanging information with each other, they probably got the news of the arrival of the boats by some mute and inexplicable messages.
As the boats were getting closer to shore I started to recognize their shape and size. They were all small wooden jangadas out at sea by night without any light. Where were they coming from? How much time did they spend out at sea? I couldn’t help feeling intrigued by their story. Jangada is a special kind of hand-made traditional wooden boat used for fishing, or more frequently nowadays, for giving Brazilian tourists an ephemeral taste of the long-lost traditional Ceará way of life. In a way I thought that they were just a remnant of the past, kept alive to please tourists and foreigners alike. What I saw that night radically changed my perspective about jangadas.