Jalapão

DesertsTocantins, Brazil

August·Peaking now

May–Sep

The dry season, and Jalapão at its fullest: the fervedouros run gin-clear, the red-dirt tracks are firm, and every dune, spring and waterfall is open. June and July are all but rainless; by September the heat builds and the golden-grass harvest opens.

Year-round The upwelling springs, the orange dunes and Cachoeira da Velha stand here every month; the calendar changes the water's clarity, the golden-grass harvest and whether the red-dirt tracks run firm or turn to mud.

Jalapão's springs will not let you sink. Rain falls on the sandstone tablelands of eastern Tocantins and soaks down into the Urucuia aquifer, one of Brazil's largest underground reservoirs. The water is then pushed back up to the surface through beds of quartz sand. Wade into one of these springs, called fervedouros, and the rising water keeps lifting you back up. The sand churns under your feet as though it were boiling, but the water runs cold and gin-clear. Dozens of them surface across the region. The same sand shapes everything else: wind strips grains from the Serra do Espírito Santo and heaps them into burnt-orange dunes at its foot, while the Rio Novo folds over Cachoeira da Velha, a horseshoe of falls roughly 100 metres wide and 15 metres high, too violent to swim beneath. Tocantins protected the core of this cerrado in 2001 as Jalapão State Park — some 159,000 hectares of sand, savanna and buriti palm. Getting here has always been the filter: Mateiros, the village at the centre, lies about 160 kilometres of red dirt beyond the last asphalt, and a long day in a 4x4 is still the price of entry. It is no longer a secret, though. A prime-time Globo telenovela shot in the park in 2017 put Jalapão in front of the whole country, and it now takes over 50,000 visitors a year — 50,302 in 2025. The dunes run on booked vouchers, timed entry windows and licensed guides who may lead no more than ten people at a time. None of those rules have changed what the days themselves are like. You climb the dune barefoot and watch the savanna open flat below you; you stand on the walkway at Cachoeira da Velha with the spray reaching you over the rail; and in Mumbuca, a Quilombola village of a few hundred people, artisans sew stalks of golden grass into bowls with thread stripped from buriti palm.

Worth knowing

Good to know

A licensed guide is not optional — park rules require every group to be led by a guide licensed by Naturatins, and the last stretch to Mateiros is 160 kilometres of unpaved red dirt.
The dunes run on timed entry — book a voucher in advance; the windows open early morning and mid-afternoon, and no guide may lead more than ten people at once.
Sunscreen, repellent and perfume are banned in the springs — rinse off before you get in, and expect a wait: only ten people may be in a fervedouro at once, for about twenty minutes each.
Save the dunes for the end of the day — the sand is brutal underfoot at midday, and the sunset from the crest is the reason people climb up there at all.
Long weekends fill the dunes — more than a thousand people turned up over a single holiday weekend, so aim for midweek if you want the crest to yourself.

Things to do

1
Let a fervedouro hold you on the surface
Groundwater pushes up through the sand floor hard enough to keep you at the surface — lie back and the spring carries you, without a stroke. The water is cold and startlingly clear, the pool is ringed with palms, and the sand underneath churns like a slow boil the whole time you float.
2
Watch Cachoeira da Velha thunder, then swim downstream
The Rio Novo drops here in a wide horseshoe carrying far too much water to swim in; you take it in from the walkway and the viewing deck below, close enough for the spray to reach you. For the swim, carry on to the Prainha do Rio Novo just downstream, where the river spreads into a shallow beach of pale sand.
3
Meet the golden-grass artisans of Mumbuca
Artisans in this Quilombola village coil stiff golden stalks into bowls, baskets and rings, stitching them with thread stripped from buriti palm — a technique handed down from their Xerente neighbours. Sitting with them in the workshop is the closest you get to understanding why the grass is called gold here.
4
Climb the orange dunes at the foot of the serra
Wind has been quarrying sand off the Serra do Espírito Santo for millennia and piling it here, into a field of burnt-orange dunes standing alone in the savanna. You go up barefoot, because the sand is fine and deep, and from the crest the cerrado runs flat to the horizon in every direction.
5
Climb the Serra do Espírito Santo for the whole basin
The flat-topped sandstone hill that feeds the dunes their sand rises straight out of the savanna, and a steep track of roughly eight kilometres round trip puts you on its rim. From up there the cerrado runs to the horizon and the dunes lie small and orange at the foot of the escarpment you just climbed.