Mundaú is a village in the municipality of

Trairi Trairi is a municipality in the state of Ceará in the Northeast region of Brazil. Trairi has a population of approximately 56000 inhabitants (2020) and is famous for its shoreline stretching from Guajiru to Mundaú. In 2013 the construction o ...

in the state of

Ceará Ceará (, pronounced locally as or ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is the eighth-largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the ...

. It is located 130 or so kilometres from the state capital

Fortaleza Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...

Nature

Most of Mundaú's original vegetation is still intact. The east and south of the village contain many palm trees, sugar cane, banana plants, castanholas, mango trees, guajiru and cashew trees. In the dunes there is no vegetation, only cows and donkeys walking around. Mundaú is famous for lying by the mouth of the Mundaú River. Besides this river there are dense mangrove forests. The river flows from Trairi.

Fishing

Fishing is the main source of income for the people of Mundaú. All the men sail the sea on

jangada A jangada is a traditional fishing boat (in fact a sailing raft) made of wood used in the northern region of Brazil. The construction of the jangada incorporates some improvements in neolithic handcraft - better materials were found and the ph ...

s which are rather small and simplistic. These courageous men used to sail 200 kilometres, being away for a week. Nowadays a mere 50 kilometres is travelled to get lobsters and camurupim Despite the small size of the ships (10 by 4 feet) there are hardly any accidents, but if they happen heroic tales are dragged out of them that are to be told for many years. The accidents usually involve the gigantic waves caught by tankers. The tankers couldn't see the fishermen since they didn't carry any lights. These accidents don't really happen anymore because the fishermen don't sail out that far anymore and now can take safe lights. Because of the river, Mundaú has a natural harbour which enables fishermen to also use larger boats that can take more fish.

History

Some people say that in the early 17th century a Portuguese princess was travelling to what was then still a

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. She got on land by a river and went upstream towards the little indigenous settlement of Trairi where she left a

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...

. Populated places in Ceará {{Ceará-geo-stub