Make sure your sun hat has a string: The Brazilian dune buggy makes for a ferociously fast and furious ride. Motorsports are an obsession here, and in the far northern state of Rio Grande do Norte, this love of things with four wheels and an engine has been melded with the Nordeste love of the beach. The result: the boogie, as it's called in Portuguese. The best beaches for boogieing, located just to the north of the city of Natal, boast monstrous dunes of shifting sands, some of them hundreds of feet high.

Though it is occasionally possible to do it yourself, it's more exciting to hire a driver. Among the stunts the drivers will treat you to are the Wall of Death, the Roller Coaster, and the Vertical Descent. True, none of this is exactly ecologically correct (though there is an informal arrangement whereby bugeiros use only the beaches closest to Natal; farther north the coast remains dune-bug free). On the other hand, it is outrageously fun.