When you're designing lighthouses, even if their architecture is extremely varied, you sometimes end up recognizing a lighthouse's nationality by its style. You look for the exceptional lighthouses, the ones you can classify as "plus". I stopped off at Cabo Branco because it falls into the latter category: at 800 metres, it's the most easterly cape in Brazil and the Americas, so they say. Although it is said to be one of the most visited sites in the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraiba, João Pessoa, the building is more of a bitter than a lighthouse.
But apart from telling you that this construction is the work of Pedro Abraão Dieb, a professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Federal University of Paraiba who died in 2007. And that this 18-metre-high triangular turret was commissioned in 1972. Apart from telling you that it has a very special and almost unique style, with its three triangular concrete spikes 3.50 metres from its base. Nothing more to know, or maybe two shipwrecks off this cape: a Spanish brigantine, the Gulezon in 1640 and the Ceres in 1903 (a ship whose name I only know).
There are, however, more monumental lighthouses in the vicinity, such as the Calcanhar lighthouse at "Esquina do Brasil", or "Brazil's Corner" in other words, the "corner of Brazil". In other words, at the extreme north-eastern tip of the country. At 63 metres high, this tower ranks among the top twenty tallest lighthouses in the world, and is the second tallest in Brazil.
In any case, this will very probably be the last lighthouse on the Brazilian coast that the Vendée Globe competitors will pass as they hook onto the trade winds that should carry them all the way to Europe.
