Sao Francisco Mouth

The São Francisco reaches the Atlantic between Alagoas and Sergipe, after a long course through the Brazilian interior. Its estuary meets a coastal plain of dunes, wetlands, mangroves and sandy ridges. The river carries fresh water and sediment toward the sea, where shoals mark the meeting of river and ocean. Known to the Portuguese as the São Francisco from the early sixteenth century, it became a route into the interior of northeastern Brazil.