| | Overview (Source: Frommers) |
Natal is a city built on sand. It blows across the city streets and piles up in drifts like snow. It lines the city's beaches, lies beneath the city's foundations, landscapes the city's parks, and piles up in towering dunes that form the city's picture-postcard views. Outside Natal, the sand dunes spread in mountainous dune ranges that stretch for miles. Perhaps because sand is not the most fertile of foundations, Natal has been an oft-overlooked sandlot of a city for much of its history, noticed by the powers that be only when some other power tried to take it away. The Portuguese founded a town on the banks of the Potengi River to drive out the French. To hold the territory, the Portuguese built Forte dos Reis Magos in 1599. The fort's foundation was celebrated with a Mass on December 25, 1599, and so the city was named Natal (the Portuguese word for Christmas). After that, the Portuguese pretty much ignored the place. By 1757 there were a whopping 120 buildings in the area, among them a church and a prison. Natal first came to American notice in the early 1940s. The U.S. had just entered the war against the Axis powers and sleepy little Natal -- the closest land base to North Africa -- was suddenly a place of world significance. Franklin Roosevelt paid a visit, meeting with Brazilian President Getulio Vargas to work out the details of Brazil's war effort. There's a famous picture of the two presidents, riding through the streets of Natal in an open limousine
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