FORTALEZA, Brazil - If life is a beach, as bumper stickers claim, then this is definitely the place to live it up.

Fortaleza is the capital, largest city, and chief port of the state of Ceara (pronounced Say-AH-Rah) in the northeast corner of Brazil, a region where bright sunshine is the rule and rain a rarity. Ceara's 350-mile-long coastline is a necklace of more than 120 beaches, most backed by dramatic sand dunes or towering rock formations and each seemingly more beautiful than the next.

One of Brazil's most thinly populated states - much of the vast interior is grazing land with lots of cattle but very few people - Ceara was virtually a tourist-free zone until fairly recently. No longer.

In the '90s, Brazilians - who savor beaches the way the French do wine - began flocking here from the overcrowded and problem-plagued cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. They were drawn by the terrific beaches and consistently great weather (temperatures average in the mid-80s year round) but also the easygoing and hassle-free lifestyle.

The state is now the number one vacation destination for Brazilians and also attracts about a million foreign visitors a year, mostly other Latin Americans and Europeans. North Americans have been slow to discover Ceara but that appears about to change.

Varig, the Brazilian national air carrier, now offers weekly nonstop service to Fortaleza from Miami, a six-hour flight away. And, construction of a $100 million cruise ship terminal designed specifically to accommodate the new generation of megaships will begin in a year or so. When the terminal is completed, in mid-2003, Fortaleza seems certain to become an important cruise port.

In anticipation of major destination status, Fortaleza, which has a population of about 2 million, has been given a civic makeover. Major new additions include a convention center, international airport, and an impressive cultural center.

Several deluxe hotels have also opened, most like the five-star Caesar Park and Othon Palace along Avenida Kennedy, the beachside boulevard that functions as a sort of al fresco living room for the city. The boulevard is about three miles long and a promenade for much of its length. There are wide sidewalks for strolling, as well as seafood restaurants, playgrounds, performance spaces, and facilities for exercise, from weight lifting to soccer all spaced along it.

The western end of the avenue is the scene of a nightly crafts fair, with more than 100 stalls selling such local specialties as lace, woodcarving, cashews nuts (the state's main cash crop), and the potent local sugar cane rum. There is also a distinctive Ceara handicraft: small bottles filled with colored sand worked into artful pictures and designs.

At the other end of the avenue, however, the action is in early morning. That's when fishermen start unloading their catch and the city's beachside fish market opens for business.

The fish market is a colorful scene with dozens of vendors setting up their stalls under the trees rimming the beach, which also shelter fishermen mending nets and working on their boats. Most of the boats are "jangadas," flat-bottomed and square-prowed wooden craft that look like glorified rafts and are powered only by a large triangular sail.

Unique to Ceara, the primitive but colorfully painted and remarkably seaworthy jangada is a beloved local symbol. So also is the city's most notable landmark building, Theatro Jose de Alanca, a wonderfully ornate old theater built during a boom period at the turn of the century and flaunting an impressive cast-iron facade imported from Scotland, of all unlikely places.

Fortaleza is an old city, founded in the early 17th century, and retains the neat grid street pattern of an old Portuguese town. However, the city has few colonial relics other than the remains of the fort for which it's named. But examples of local arts and handicrafts, which reflect both Portuguese colonial and native Indian influences, can be seen in shops and museums.

In an engaging bit of recycling, the old city jail, a bastille dating from the 1820s, has been turned into a crafts center where you can buy lace, pottery, twig furniture, hand-woven hammocks, and the like. The building also houses the Museum of Popular Culture, which has a first-rate arts and crafts collection, particularly of religious sculptures. There is a similar but even more extensive collection on display in the art gallery of the new cultural center, a complex of buildings that include several theaters and a planetarium.

Cultural life requires buildings, but in Fortaleza social life is very much an outdoor activity - and for that a beach will do just fine.

The two beaches along Avenida Kennedy, Mucuripe and Meireles, are in the heart of the city and get more use than probably any others in the state. As everywhere in Ceara, the sand here is like talcum powder and the water incredibly warm. Fortaleza is on the Atlantic but just below the equator and blessed with average ocean temperatures that New Englanders, anyway, generally associate with bathtubs rather than beaches.

Mucuripe and Meireles are good beaches by international standards but considered only so-so by finicky Brazilians. Praia do Futurio (Future Beach) is generally ranked Fortaleza's best beach, not only for its three miles of scrumptious sand but also for its seafood restaurants, many selling fresh shrimp and crabs.

The happy custom in Fortaleza is for restaurants and clubs in a different part of the city to organize and host an event of some sort every night of the week. Here, life is also a party. On Thursdays the scene is at Future Beach where oceanfront restaurants all offer fresh cooked crabs at bargain prices, along with free entertainment that usually includes terrific local musicians and terrible local comedians.

Monday night belongs to Iracema Beach and more specifically to LaPirata, a large open-air disco that stages what it boasts is the wildest rave on the planet. There are no closing hours in Brazil and dancing to the pulsing rhythms of the Samba and Ceara's own regional dance, the Forro (a fusion of traditional Brazilian and American popular music), goes on until dawn. Contributing to the high energy level is "caipirinha," the punch-packing Brazilian national drink, made of distilled white rum mixed with lime juice, sugar, and crushed ice.

Other interesting beaches are just outside town. Porto das Dunas, 12 miles east of the city, is the home of Beach Park, the largest aqua theme park in Latin America. The park also boasts the world's tallest waterslide, the appropriately named "Insanity," a terrifying 134-foot drop that ends in a very large splash.

Cambuco, 26 miles west of Fortaleza, is a long stretch of golden sand watched over by dunes up to 40 feet high that have been sculpted by the winds into fantasical shapes. In between the dunes are fresh-water lagoons, some big enough for water skiing. Dune buggy rides are a popular recreation at Cambuco and so is dune surfing: sliding down steep dunes on surfboards.

Morro Branco, some 50 miles east of the capital, is one of the beaches that craftspeople go to for the colored sands used in bottle paintings. It is surrounded by high, multicolored cliffs - there are 12 shades of reds and browns - that are pierced by caves and canyons. But whether you go east from Fortaleza along the Sunrise Coast or west on the highway paralleling the Sunset Coast, the route will take you by one splendid and distinctive beach after another. Some are ideal for windsurfing or surfboarding, others perfect for chilling out and working on that tan. And others are just great to look at.

The farther you get from Fortaleza in either direction the longer and lonelier the beaches seem to get. Scattered along both coasts, however, are little fishing villages, most untouched by tourism but some with pleasant little bed-and-breakfast inns called "pousadas," which attract an international clientele.

Best known of these out-of-the-way havens for sophisticated beach bums are Canoa Quebrada, about 100 miles east of the capital, and Jericoacoara (known as Jeri), more than 200 miles and a day's drive down the Sunset Coast. Both still have unpaved streets and are accessed only by dune buggy or over dirt roads. But as far as some beach purists are concerned, there are alarming signs of encroaching civilization, among them the fact that (gasp!) a power line was run into Jeri this year.