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The Times of India
The Times of India
World
TOI World Desk

Brazil has a 1,565-square-kilometre "desert" that floods every rainy season; freshwater lagoons appear between white dunes, then vanish

Brazil Fish UNESCO Smithsonian

Imagine a desert. Now imagine that same desert filling up with thousands of turquoise lagoons deep enough to swim in, all in a matter of months. This is what happens every year in northeast Brazil, in a place called Lençóis Maranhenses. The site covers 156,562 hectares, or about 1,565 square kilometres, of white sand dunes dotted with temporary and permanent freshwater lagoons, according to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre , which listed the park in 2024 as a World Heritage site.

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