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A worker spreads salted meat which will be dried and then packed at a plant of JBS S.A, the world's largest beef producer, in Santana de Parnaiba, Brazil December 19, 2017.

I’m on the northeast coast of Brazil in October 2018, about to attempt a kitesurf crossing of the chaotic waters where the Parnaiba River pours into the Atlantic Ocean — the centerpiece of one of the largest river deltas in the Americas.

I should add that I'm here voluntarily, on a week-long, late-October guided trip attempting to kitesurf more than 120 miles, from the city of Parnaiba to the town of Atins, along a coast lifted from prehistoric times.

The morning had started innocuously, with a poolside breakfast at the charming Hotel San Antonio in Parnaiba, a colonial city about 10 miles from the coast.

We drive a half-hour past tile-roofed houses and patchy forest to Pedra do Sal, a beach at the eastern edge of the 1,211 square-mile Delta do Parnaiba Environmental Protection Area.