Night Life
The Capital of Ceara has a great night life. For each day of the week, one club is chosen by the locals to be the meeting point for that evening. It starts on the Monday at Pirata Bar on Iracema Beach.

Crafts

Fruit of the most genuine popular manifestation, the craft still keeps characteristic from its first artisans, the indigenous people that inhabited the territory from Ceará in the pré-colonial period. Since then the techniques were passed on from father to son. The creativity and the simplicity of Ceará's artisans can also be seen in works in bobbin laces, mazes, wood and clay. Usually, the work keeps a beauty that surpasses time.

Among the techniques used in the State there are:

L A C E S 
Instruments: bobbins and headed pins or, almost always, the thorn of the coradeiro or mandacaru, pillow. Production Centers: in the artisans' own residence, at the coast.

R M A Z E S
Instruments: fabric fixated on a wood grating, pins, needles and line. Production Centers: in the artisans' own residence, at the coast.

B A S K E T R Y A N D B R A I D I N G
Raw materials: bamboo (taquara, to make waterspouts and gutters; taquara, to make baskets; taquari to make birdcages; boards to make rockets, to pick olho de carnauba and to do make pífaros); vine (more resistant than the shaft, to do caçuá; on the donkey goes the cangalha and over it, the caçuá) . Production Centers: Sobral, Russian, Limoeiro do Norte, Jaguaruana, Aracati, Massapê, Crateús, Baturité and Camocim.

C E R A M I C S (utilitarian and for entertainment) 
Production Centers: Fortaleza, Rattlesnake, Ipú and Juazeiro do Norte. Main pieces: "quartinha," jar, pot, little doe, plate, filter, basin, pitcher, piggy banks, capitação-de-pé-de-cana, coffeepot and balaia (utilitarian), ornamental and entertaiment (mud puppets, rafts, etc).

L E A T H E R
Products sold in larger scale: sandals, shoes, footwear in general. Points of Sale: fairs in the interior and shopping malls at the capital. Most traditional and typical products: clothes and harness, hat, short jacket, gloves, "perneiras," saddles. Points of Sale: small workshops of the urban zones of cattle areas, such as; Aracoiaba, Itapiúna, Crato, Morada Nova and Jaguaribe. Other products: belts, suitcases, ornamental objects, "pirogravuras," "penduricalhos," rugs, cortinas. Production centers: Fortaleza, Jaguaribe and Juazeiro do Norte.

W E A V I N G Main product: hammocks (utilitarian and for decoration) Techniques: with "roca" and spindle Production Centers: Fortaleza and Jaguaribe.

M E T A L Types: tinwork, ironwork, cutlery, etc, Products: buckets, mug, basin, glass, grater, lamp, saucepan, scythes, net trappers, rattles for the cattle, horseshoes, gates, "passarinheiras" rifles, etc. Production Centers: Juazeiro do Norte, Fortaleza.

W O O D
Tools: basic utensils for woodworking. Products: pieces of furniture, from the simplest and rustic until the finest, machinery of mills, barrels, and sculptures. Production Centers: Fortaleza, Canindé, Cascavel, Juazeiro do Norte (furniture), Barbalha (machinery of cane mills), Fortaleza (sculptures).

G R A P H I C A R T S
Main product: "xilogravura" for illustration of layers of line pamphlets, showing illustration of singers, herdsmen, bandits, oxen, birds and animals of our fauna, much found at the Northeastern fairs.

I M A G I N A R Y
Concrete proof of the passion of the people from Ceará for its faiths in its saints. Products: saints' image. Producion Centers: Juazeiro do Norte and Canindé, two Centers that stand out as places of mystic-religious pilgrimage.

S O U V E N I R S
Products commonly found at Fortaleza's seafront and at the stores of the tourist centers: rafts in miniature, turtle objects and decoration objects in general.

Not into pampering or fluff? Canoa Quebrada has the charm

BRAZIL
Not into pampering or fluff? Canoa Quebrada kicks back with charm
Forget the margaritas, this 'real' fishing village in the northern part of the country trades the tourist stuff for pristine beaches and white-sand dunes.
BY TODD LEWAN
Associated Press

CANOA QUEBRADA, Brazil - You know you're in for a tough day at the shore when the red, clay cliffs are already baking at 9 in the morning, and Daisy, the mule that's supposed to be carrying tourists down the cliffs to the sand, is pooped out under a palm tree.
But there was no way I was going to let a little sun-scorched sand keep me off the beach. I had traveled far to reach the northern shoulder of Brazil. And this was Canoa Quebrada, a slice of paradise that made the airbrushed posters of the Caribbean on the wall of my travel agent's office look washed out in comparison.
After hotfooting it down the ramshackle wood stairway between a fault in the cliffs, I scampered across the sand and took refuge under a wide, straw-topped umbrella.
A barefooted fisherman trudged slowly past, a roll of shrimp netting on his bare, sun-browned back. I called out to him, waved.
He stopped.
Say, I said, do you know if they serve margaritas at any huts down on the beach?
He gave me a quizzical look, lifted his sun-blotched shoulders, turned and trudged on to work, shaking his head.
OK, dumb question.
NO FRILLS
No, Canoa Quebrada isn't another primped, polished resort with barmen at the ready to make margaritas all hours of the day. It's a fishing village, a real fishing village, and they take creature comforts, well, on the lighter side.
Sure, there are a few trinket and T-shirt shops along the main drag -- a red, sandy road the locals jokingly refer to as Broadway -- as well as two or three watering holes and a few brick, stick and vine places to nosh. And there is a Cyber Cafe, run by a couple of Italian transplants.
But I wasn't here for pampering.
I was in Canoa Quebrada -- Broken Canoe, in Portuguese -- for the sweeping ocean views, the salty, soft sea breezes, the driftwood-colored sand squeezed between blood-red, wind-carved falesias -- stone cliffs -- and a palate of azure Atlantic.
ENDLESS SHORELINE
You can hike dunes as white as sugar. You can splash about in sun-gilded, natural pools left behind by the tides. You can ride the backs of donkeys up and down an endless ribbon of shoreline, all the while listening to the rollers thump and break on newly wet sand.
For 10 bucks, you can hop a ride on a jangada, the log rafts used by the fishermen of northeastern Brazil, and let the winds take you out to the darker waters of the deep ocean.
Or you can go buggy.
I had a guide, Ermilson Bernardo, 29, drive me in a dune buggy to seven of the most pristine beaches I have ever laid eyes on -- and I've seen the Greek isles. The three-hour ride set me back $40. It was worth every nickel.
BUGGY TO HEIGHTS
Bernardo was polite, friendly, and intent on having me see even the tiniest, most minuscule details that composed the mosaic of his native shore. More than a half-dozen times, he stopped the buggy and led me through caverns and faults and other natural marvels such as the Devil's Throat.
That was a cleft in the cliffs a couple of miles east of town. Underground aquifers and the tides had, over the years, eroded and carved caves and jagged, tooth-like outcroppings.
The cliffs hugging the shore changed in hue from auburn to blush to violet, from driftwood to gold to coral. Sometimes I imagined seeing a cathedral in those cliffs, and other times pyramids, and other times trees and clouds and giant toes and cactuses and the muscled arms of sea gods, and even the finlike sails of jangadas.
No doubt the highlight of my tour was when we buggied up to the top of the highest dune on Ponta Grossa beach, 33 miles east of Canoa Quebrada.
Standing there atop the dune, all around us were sea and sky and sand, all sun-drenched and timeless, majestic and uncluttered.
Below, the sun shone brassy on the wave crests. The clouds painted splotches on a topaz sea. In the distant Atlantic, white fins jutted from the horizon a cluster of jangadas.
To me they looked like butterflies posing on a spread of sapphires.


VISITING CANOA QUEBRADA

Getting there: All of Brazil's major airlines -- Varig, TAM, VASP and Gol -- offer daily service from the gateway cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to the northeastern region of the country. Fly to Fortaleza, capital of Ceara, and then either rent a car or hop on a bus and head 100 miles due east along the BR-304 highway to Canoa Quebrada. There are frequent departures to Canoa Quebrada, and bus fare from Fortaleza is about $10; economical rental cars can be had at a reasonable $35 a day, but pay the extra $15 a day and get one with air conditioning.
Climate: Hot, and the sun is strong. Temperatures in this tropical region are around 80 degrees at night and 95 degrees in the daytime. Steady, strong coastal breezes will give you much-needed heat relief. It rains more often between June and August, the South American winter, but the downpours are usually fleeting.
What and where to eat: Seafood is what they do best here. Try the Bistro Natural (011-088-421-7162) and the Tenda do Cumbe (011-088-421-7252) for great salads, fish and side dishes of manioc flour, white rice, sliced tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions and red beans to go with your fresh fish. The typical seafood dishes are amarela, beijupira, pargo, cavala and robalo, salted lightly and moistened with a touch of lime juice and garlic, and then broiled.