I was hungry after a whole day spent in the water and the caipirinhas were already causing some effects on my brain. I was probably a little drunk when the food finally arrived. I ate my whole dish in a couple of minutes. It was good but quite different from what I expected. I ordered some grilled fish, while the guy served me some kind of fish filet with curry. Never mind. It was good anyhow, and I was hungry. Out on the inky sea the dots were coming closer. Suddenly they became distinguishable objects. I realized that they were sailboats, in the complete darkness of the tropical night, approaching the shore. People 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. Where were they coming from? How long had they been at sea? I couldn’t help feeling intrigued by their story. In the preceeding days I’d seen those jangadas everywhere. The jangada is a special kind of hand-made traditional wooden boat used for fishing, or nowadays as it seems to occur more frequently, for giving tourists an ephemeral taste of the long-lost traditional Ceará. I’d 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.
