🇧🇷 Brazil · North (Amazon)
Jalapão is one of those destinations that sound made up: a 'desert of waters' in the heart of the Brazilian Cerrado, where orange sand dunes up to 40 metres high sit alongside crystalline springs in which it's almost impossible to sink, monumental horseshoe-shaped waterfalls and pools of emerald-green water. It's in the east of Tocantins, deep in Brazil's Northern Region, and for many travellers it's the most striking ecotourism and adventure destination in the country. It isn't a comfortable destination: it's pure expedition, in 4x4 vehicles, along dirt and sand roads, almost always with agencies or local guides.
The heart of the experience is the fervedouros: underground springs where the water wells up from the sandy bottom with such pressure that it holds you on the surface, a natural floating sensation you won't find anywhere else. Add to that the dunes at the foot of the Serra do Espírito Santo, with their iconic sunset; the Cachoeira da Velha on the río Novo; the green waters of the Cachoeira Formiga; the narrow Cânion Sussuapara, blanketed in ferns; and the river beaches of the finest sand. All inside or around the Parque Estadual do Jalapão, the largest preserved Cerrado reserve in Brazil.
But Jalapão is also living culture. In the quilombola community of Mumbuca the artisans work capim dourado, a golden grass of the Cerrado that they sew with buriti fibre into bags, hats, jewellery and objects that look as though they were made of vegetable gold. That image of Jalapão travelled all over Brazil when the region was used as a location for the Globo telenovela 'O Outro Lado do Paraíso' (2017). Getting there takes effort —and is worth every dusty kilometre—: so come with time, a reliable agency and a real appetite for adventure.
Long before the park existed, this Cerrado land in Tocantins was inhabited and travelled by Indigenous peoples and, from the 18th and 19th centuries, by sertanejo families and by descendants of enslaved Africans who migrated from the sertão of Bahia and mixed with Indigenous people of the Xerente group, giving rise to quilombola communities such as Mumbuca (whose name, in an Indigenous language, refers to a bee found in the region). The name 'Jalapão' comes from the jalapa plant (Operculina macrocarpa / Ipomoea purga), popularly known as 'batata-de-purga', a climbing plant with medicinal, laxative roots that is very abundant in the area; 'Jalapão' is the augmentative of 'jalapa'. In the early 20th century, the Xerente taught some settlers to 'sew grass' —the art of capim dourado sewn with buriti fibre—, a tradition that became the livelihood and the identity of Mumbuca and other communities. For decades the region was an isolated corner, of sertanejo life, extensive cattle ranching and extractivism. The big change came on 12 January 2001, when Decree no. 1.203 created the Parque Estadual do Jalapão (some 158,970 hectares in Mateiros and São Félix do Tocantins) to protect the largest continuous area of preserved Cerrado in Brazil and to bring order to a growing ecotourism trade. Since then, Jalapão has gone from secret to national icon, driven by the capim dourado boom and by its use as a location for the Globo telenovela 'O Outro Lado do Paraíso' (2017). The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The youngest state in Brazil, created in 1988: the former northern half of Goiás, settled by gold-seeking bandeirantes and carrying a long dream of autonomy that goes back to 1821. A land of Cerrado between two great rivers, with the planned capital of Palmas and the dunes, waterfalls and crystalline waters of Jalapão.
Read the history of Tocantins →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before it was an ecotourism destination, Jalapão was —and still is— an immense slab of Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, in the far east of what is today the state of Tocantins. It's the largest continuous area of well-preserved Cerrado in Brazil: a landscape of open grassland, buriti veredas, gallery forest, crystalline springs and sandstone formations sculpted by wind and water over millions of years. It was that erosion of the Serra do Espírito Santo that produced, for instance, the sand that forms the celebrated dunes.
These lands were travelled for a long time by Indigenous peoples and, from the colonial period, by sertanejo families who lived off extensive cattle ranching, hunting, fishing and extractivism. The region was remote, hard to reach and thinly populated, which paradoxically helped preserve its nature: isolation kept the Cerrado relatively intact against the agricultural advance that flattened other parts of the biome elsewhere in Brazil.
That Cerrado holds remarkable biodiversity. Its exceptionally clean rivers are home to the pato-mergulhão (Brazilian merganser), one of the most threatened birds in South America, along with other wildlife and the typical flora of the savanna, capim dourado among it, the golden grass that would come to define the region's identity. Understanding Jalapão starts with understanding that it is, first of all, a sanctuary of the Cerrado.
The name 'Jalapão' has a curious botanical root: it comes from the jalapa plant, a climber in the bindweed family (Operculina macrocarpa, also related to Ipomoea purga), popularly known in Brazil as 'jalapão', 'jalapa' or 'batata-de-purga'. It's a plant native to Brazil, which grows in almost every region of the country and is abundant in this part of the Cerrado. 'Jalapão' is, literally, the augmentative of 'jalapa'.
The plant owes its fame to its medicinal properties: its roots have a powerful laxative effect, so historically it was used as a natural purgative, hence the popular name 'batata-de-purga'. The name 'jalapa', in turn, points to the city of Jalapa, in Mexico, from where a plant with similar properties was grown and traded; the Indigenous peoples of Central America, such as the Aztecs, were already using it to treat digestive problems long before the Europeans arrived.
So the place name that today evokes dunes, fervedouros and adventure was in fact born from a humble purgative plant of the Cerrado. It's a good reminder that many Brazilian place names have roots in the local flora and in popular knowledge about the region's medicinal plants.
The cultural soul of Jalapão is its quilombola communities, descendants of enslaved Africans who found refuge and a home in these remote lands. The best known is Mumbuca: it was founded by people who migrated from the sertão of Bahia and who, in time, mixed with Indigenous people of the Xerente group. In an Indigenous language, 'mumbuca' names a blue bee typical of the region. Today the community lives off tourism, farming and, very particularly, its craftwork.
That craftwork is capim dourado, the real 'gold' of Jalapão. It's a grass (Syngonanthus nitens) whose stems have a natural golden sheen, growing in the damp veredas of the Cerrado. According to local tradition, it was the Xerente who, in the early 20th century, taught some settlers to 'sew grass': to braid and sew capim dourado with the fine fibre of the buriti palm, another native Cerrado species. Out of that technique come bags, hats, trays, mandalas, jewellery and lamps that look as though they were made of vegetable gold.
In the year 2000, a group of artisans created the Associação Capim Dourado de Mumbuca to organize the harvesting of the grass and encourage the sale of the craftwork, which today is the main source of income for several communities inside the park. Working with capim dourado is, moreover, an art carried above all by quilombola women, and a symbol of Tocantins culture. Visiting Mumbuca respectfully, learning the process and buying directly from the artisans is a way of sustaining this living tradition.
The great turning point in the recent history of Jalapão came on 12 January 2001, when Decree no. 1.203 created the Parque Estadual do Jalapão. The new conservation unit covered some 158,970 hectares in the municipalities of Mateiros and São Félix do Tocantins, with the aim of protecting the biodiversity and the ecosystems of the Tocantins Cerrado and of promoting sustainable use of natural resources. Its management was placed in the hands of Naturatins (Instituto Natureza do Tocantins).
The creation of the park added to a mosaic of protected areas in the region (among them the Área de Proteção Ambiental do Jalapão), which sought to bring order to human activity across a territory of the highest ecological importance. It was a response both to the need to preserve the largest continuous area of well-preserved Cerrado in Brazil and to the growing tourist interest the region was already starting to attract.
From then on, Jalapão went from well-kept secret to one of the icons of Brazilian ecotourism. The dunes, the fervedouros and the cachoeiras began drawing travellers from all over the country and from abroad, and visitor numbers grew year on year until they passed the tens of thousands annually. With that growth came the challenges too: the need to regulate visiting (capacity and time limits at the fervedouros, a ban on sunscreen in the water), to protect the fragile springs and to make sure tourism benefits the local communities and doesn't degrade the Cerrado that makes it unique.
Jalapão is also a territory of sertaneja culture: the life of the Tocantins sertão, with its extensive cattle ranching, its home cooking (rice with pequi, feijão tropeiro, carne de sol, galinha caipira, chambari), its knowledge of the Cerrado and the coexistence of quilombola, riverside and Indigenous communities. That rural identity, simple and deeply tied to the land, is inseparable from the charm of the place, as much as its landscapes are.
Jalapão's national fame took off when the region became a television location. In 2017, the cast and crew of the Globo telenovela 'O Outro Lado do Paraíso', written by Walcyr Carrasco, spent around twenty days filming in Tocantins, at the main points of the Parque Estadual do Jalapão and on the beaches of Palmas. The scene in which the lead character falls for the place was shot in the park's capim dourado fields, with dozens of local extras involved in harvesting the grass. The telenovela showed the whole of Brazil the dunes, the fervedouros and capim dourado, multiplying interest in the destination.
That leap in visibility brought opportunities and responsibilities. Today Jalapão's great challenge is holding a balance: preserving the fragility of its springs and its Cerrado, respecting the rights and the pace of the quilombola communities, and at the same time allowing tourism that generates genuine income for the region. That's why visiting is regulated and why it's recommended to travel with licensed local agencies and guides: looking after Jalapão is the only way to make sure the next generations can also float in its fervedouros and watch the sun go down over its orange dunes.