Maceió

The jangadas leave from the sand in front of the hotels at Pajuçara beach at low tide, which varies by day, and if you want the pools at their best you time your departure to the tide tables and not to your own preference for sleeping in. I arrived at the beach at seven-thirty on a Tuesday, the light still low and orange, and found a group of a dozen people already negotiating with the jangada operators — a fixed price for the ride out, a fixed time to return, no haggling about the natural pools themselves, which belong to everyone. The crossing takes about twenty minutes over water that gets progressively shallower and changes color through every shade of green as you go.

The natural pools at Maceió form behind a reef barrier that runs roughly parallel to the shore about two kilometers out. At low tide, the reef sits just below the surface or breaks it entirely, creating a maze of shallow pools where the water is warm, still, and colored by the algae on the reef rock in a green so particular and saturated that the first time you lower yourself in, you suspect the color might transfer to your skin. The depth varies from knee-high to chest-high depending on which pool you’re in and where the tide is. Fish move through in small groups, unbothered. There is sometimes a vendor who arrives on another jangada selling coconut water and cold beer, which he passes across the water to you where you stand, which is one of the more civilized transactions I’ve experienced.

Maceió as a city rewards the visitor who extends their stay beyond the reef pools. The waterfront along Avenida Álvaro Otacílio runs past half a dozen beaches in sequence — Pajuçara giving way to Ponta Verde, Ponta Verde to Jatiúca — each with a slightly different character, each backed by a promenade where the evening culture operates with the full Nordeste commitment to outdoor life, food, and music. The caldo de sururu that I first ate in Fortaleza appears again here, with local variations, alongside freshwater mussels in a spiced broth that is the regional answer to everything being too hot and too hungry at the same time.

The Lagoa do Mundaú is the large coastal lagoon that sits behind the southern neighborhoods of the city, separated from the Atlantic by a thin strip of land. Its waters are used for artisanal fishing — small boats working nets in the early morning — and at the waterfront restaurants along its bank you eat the result: fresh fish, crabs, shrimp, whatever was pulled up that day. The restaurant terraces sit over the water on wooden platforms and the tables are close enough to the surface that a slight swell moves the boards underfoot. I ate a moqueca de camarão there on my second evening that was the specific combination of coconut milk, dendê oil, and fresh shellfish that exists as the ideal expression of Alagoas seafood.

The beaches north of Maceió — the Coqueiro Coast stretching up through Barra de São Miguel, Praia do Gunga, and Maragogi — form a sequence of increasingly remote and beautiful beaches that can be done by rental car or by organized tour. Maragogi, about 130 kilometers north, is worth the drive specifically for its own version of natural pools — the Galés — which are further offshore and deeper than the Maceió versions, requiring snorkel equipment but offering coral formations and fish life at a level the city pools cannot match.

When to go: September through March for the driest, sunniest conditions and the lowest tides that expose the natural pools most fully. The reef pools at Pajuçara are best visited between 10am and 2pm at low tide — consult the tide table for your specific dates. April through August brings more frequent cloud and rain but temperatures remain high and the sea rarely gets rough enough to cancel the jangada trips.