Árvore da Preguiça

One of Jericoacoara's two postcards is a tree that barely stands up. This button mangrove grows sideways, trunk and crown stretched low across the sand as if it had lain down for a rest, which is where the name comes from: Árvore da Preguiça, the Lazy Tree. Nobody shaped it. Decades of the trade winds that pour along this stretch of the Ceará coast pushed it flat, and it kept growing in the one direction the wind allowed. Button mangrove, Conocarpus erectus, is a tough tree of salt flats and dune edges, and this one has turned the conditions against it into a pose. The other postcard is Pedra Furada, the rock arch along the coast. The tree sits on the unpaved track running east from the village toward Praia do Preá, and most people meet it from the back of a buggy on the East Side tour, which stops here on the way to Lagoa do Paraíso. You can also walk it: roughly 6.4 km each way in full sun, so bring water. Our pin is approximate, because sources place the tree at points a few kilometres apart along the same track. Photographs from 2013 and from early 2025 show it lying in the same place. Nobody has dated it, and nobody has measured the trunk. If you know how long it has been lying there, tell us. Check the national park's day fee before you go: a federal court has suspended it, and that may change.