Guarapari

Guarapari is a coastal town of Espírito Santo, Brazil. It is a part of Greater Vitoria, 47 km south of the state capital Vitória. Its population is 116,278 (2013) and its area is 592 km².

It is a well-known tourist destination, known for its curving white sand beaches backed by commercial development. With its heavily built-up coastline like Vila Velha and Vitória, it caters heavily to seasonal tourists, and consequently has quite a dramatic seasonal population fluctuation.

Within the municipality there is the Setiba nature reserve, a pristine example of a coastal ecosystem and important for local turtle and bird populations.

History

The municipality has had European presence since 1585 when Jesuit missionaries built a small chapel and dug a well. Guarapari beach has an extremely high level of background radiation. Some spots on the beach have readings of 175 mSv per year (20μSv/h). In the city radiation levels are far lower, a study among 320 inhabitants showed an average received dose of 0.6 µSv/h, corresponding to 5.2 mSv per year. Along a roughly 500-mile portion of Brazil's Atlantic coast that runs from north of Rio de Janeiro up to the region south of Bahia, the sands of old beaches are naturally radioactive. Sea waves pound coastal mountains rich in monazite, a phosphate of rare earth metals containing uranium and thorium.