Getting to Icarai de Amontada

After the bustling tourism scene of Jericoacoara, we were ready for a quieter scene. The fishing village/small beach town a few hours east, Icarai, sounded exactly what we needed. Like all great places, it wasn’t easy to get to, particularly since the bus service, Fretcar, had shut down during the pandemic and never re-started. While Icarai looked pretty close on the map, unless we wanted to pay a ton of Reales to hire a 4×4 to drive along the beach the whole way, we had to hire a 4×4 to get us to the main junction, then a bus to Amontada, and a long taxi from there.

The airbnb we had booked was so new that the road it was located on didn’t exist on Google Maps so it took a little while to locate, but was exactly what we wanted. A small, two bedroom cabin with hammocks on the porch and a nice laundry sink outside. It also had an oven, so I ambitiously decided to make a Brazilian version of eggplant parmigiana, using local ingredients. It was all going well until it was time to bake it. After a lot of failed attempts we realized we had to physically hold the on button the whole time. Undiscouraged, we took shifts! The result was worth it.

Exploring Icarai and its Surroundings

Our place was only a few blocks away from the beach. While it wasn’t the most beautiful beach with wind turbines dotting part of it and ATVs running up and down other parts, there were only a couple of bars on the beach and it was blissfully uncrowded.

We spent the next four days on the beach, either suntanning, swimming or walking. One day we decided to walk even further, to the next town, a couple of hours west. When we arrived, the restaurant I had my sites on was another hour walk in the extreme heat, so we decided to head to the river instead. I had seen mention of short boat trips but didn’t really know where they went, other than this cool-looking and hilarious-sounding love tunnel. Turns out they also go to the restaurant! We hopped aboard, opting for the restaurant first, as the sky had turned suddenly. Sure enough, we were pretty wet by the time we got to the restaurant.

We situated ourselves right along the water in a covered area and waited for the rain to stop. It turned out to be one of the best meals we had had in a long time, with fresh seafood cooked in coconut milk, and delicious passionfruit juice. With the rain tapering off, we hopped back in the boat for a trip through the love tunnel, a tunnel of mangroves filled with crabs. It was actually pretty cool.

Disembarking, we had planned to ask the boat driver about finding a taxi back to Icarai because Jon’s feet were hurting due to his awful sandals he had bought at home, but instead we got into our first and only dispute over the price of the boat. The driver was suddenly asking for twice the price we had originally told us. Never fun, we ended up starting the long trek back to Icarai. This time we decided to take the road as it was faster, but Jon’s sandals had other plans. Partway back one fell completely apart. Two minutes later, a shuttle van passed our way and we hailed it down. Perfect timing.

Football in Fortaleza

The next morning we called the same taxi driver to take us back to Amontada so we could catch a bus to Fortaleza, capital city of Ceara state. Being a big city without a ton of attractions, we had booked one night in a downtown hotel. There were however a few things we needed to do: buy Jon some new sandals, book a ride to our next destination, and see a football game. A few hours later with sandals and a tour booked for early the next morning, we headed to a pizza place before the stadium to see the local team, Ceara.

The stadium wasn’t packed but they were enthusiastic, particularly as our team won handily. We were excited about the very reasonably priced beer and finally making it to a football match after the rain turned us off one in Rio. We ended up enjoying Fortaleza more than we expected, especially with the delicious hotel breakfast that we were pretty sure was being instagrammed by the cook, but were ready for more beach time.