Sunset on Jacare Beach

Experience the world’s most sensual sunset at Jacare Beach, where watching the sun go down to the accompaniment of Ravel’s Bolero is a ritual no visitor to Joao Pessoa can miss. Grab a spot at the shoreline and watch in awe as the inimitable saxophonist Jurandy plays Ravel’s romantic and intimate composition while being rowed in a canoe across River Paraiba as the sun drops into the horizon, painting the sky in bursts of gold, orange and red – a sunset like no other.

Like many a great idea, the Bolero sunset tradition at Jacare Beach – which is not a beach but a river estuary – came about through a set of unprecedented circumstances. Legend has that in the 1980s a mysterious foreigner moored his boat and ambled up to one of the two bars in the area. He asked the barman, the legendary Senhor Gringo, to play a record and the tune that coincided with the sunset was Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, which at the time featured in the soundtracks to popular movies. Everyone agreed that it heightened the drama and sensuality of the sunset. The next day, a customer asked for it to be played again at sunset and so a tradition was born.

Today it has been perfected to a ritual with the live saxophonist and people come from all over Brazil to be able to say: ‘I saw the sunset at Jacare Beach.’ This excursion brings you in time to savour the atmosphere and find a good spot at one of the bars along Paraiba riverfront.