World Traveller November 2019

BRAZIL
‘
SALVADOR — WOW! NEVER
MIND HAVANA, THIS IS THE
LIVELIEST, MOST SULTRY
COLONIAL CITY IN THE AMERICAS
’
Credit: The Sunday Times Travel Magazine / News Licensing
Banda Didá, an all-female percussion band
led by a woman with a huge pink Afro
burst into the street below me, playing
right below my table. A local couple at
the next table looked across and smiled.
‘Vamos, amigo!’ they said. I had no choice.
Salvador had taken me. So I joined them
on the streets, to parade and dance behind
Banda Didá, drink more Caipirinhas and
finish the night goodness knows when.
Sunday morning woke me with
church bells and more percussion.
I’d only had a few hours’ sleep, but I
couldn’t resist Salvador’s drums.
Later, as I cooled in the hotel pool
with an açai-berry smoothie, I could
feel myself coming dangerously close to
giving in to Salvador’s seductive pull —
there were all those markets to revisit,
piquant food to sample, more glittering
churches, more drum parades...
‘Stay,’ sang Salvador. Boipeba, I
reminded myself. I needed to get there
before Salvador sucked me in. So I
skipped the overland route south via
sugarcane fields and chocolate plantations
and splashed out on an air taxi.
The flight was spectacular — over
the terracotta and high-rise sprawl of
Salvador, the glittering Bay of All Saints,
specked with white yachts and tiny beachfringed
islands. Then rainforest: ribbons
of brown river snaking through the green
into swathes of spidery mangroves, white
egrets floating above them like winddrifting
petals. An eagle... The mangroves
became beaches and beaches and beaches.
Then we dropped over a river-mouth
harbour with a few wooden fishing boats,
a tiny hamlet of cottages, a cocoa tree
plantation, a gash of grass cut from the
coconut palms... This was Boipeba.
I’d decided to stay in Boipeba village.
There were options further south that
looked wilder, but I wanted a bit of
local life. The island, friends had told
me, is cut with trails running through
the rainforest, sweeping along the
beaches. Don’t just flop on the beach,
they said. Boipeba is a place to walk.
My hotel, Pousada Santa Clara, was
a delight, shaded by tall branches and
set in its own butterfly-filled tropical
garden near the village beach. I allowed
myself one afternoon to laze in the
hammock outside my room, thumbing
a paperback and watching as marmoset
monkeys played in the trees, and little
agoutis — like guinea pigs on stilts —
rummaged underneath. In the evening
I wandered along the beach into the
village, a strip of sand lined with a few
thatched bars, and watched the sun
sink watermelon-red behind the palms.
The moqueca I ordered — a fish stew
similar to Jamaican rundown, but with
twice the flavour — came in a huge
terracotta pot, simmering in coconut and
dendê oil, garnished with coriander.
But the locals at the adjacent table
— three young men with dreadlocks
and tiny Speedos and a woman in an
equally tiny bikini — wouldn’t let me eat
alone. ‘This is Bahia,’ they laughed. And
I was pulled over to join them at their
table. Glasses clinked in introduction
— ‘Pedro, Chico, João e Andressa.’
‘Meet us on the beach tomorrow,’ they
said after dinner. ‘We’ll play capoeira,
then show you the way to Moreré. It’s the
most beautiful beach on the island.’ Like
Salvador, Boipeba had taken hold of me.
The next day I woke early, when the
sun was still twinkling low over the sea,
its first rays as gentle as the lapping
water on Boipeba village’s white beach.
Capoeira is tough — a whirligig martialart
dance with intricate steps. I’d never
even managed the most basic of them.
But then my new friends appeared, all
smiles and high-fives, and the capoeira
began — João with the berimbau, me
awkwardly bashing out rhythms on a
hand drum. And Andressa and Chico
began to dance — spinning and swirling
at effortless speed. I was dragged in. And
with all the rhythm and positive energy
of the morning I somehow managed a
capoeira ginga — the simplest three-way
step that lies behind all capoeira moves.
It was the first time I’d mastered it, and I
sat down, sweaty, panting and grinning
with boyish pleasure at my achievement.
After a cool beach-bar passionfruit
juice we set off to Moreré, my toes
sinking into the sand as I walked, sending
ghost crabs scurrying into their burrows.
The path left the sand and cut up into
rainforest. An iridescent blue morpho
butterfly as big as a handkerchief floated
along before us like a spirit guide. Birds
chirruped welcomes overhead and a
cicada soundwave washed through the
trees, hissing like water on a shingly
shore. We passed beach after beach,
all gorgeous enough to fill a whole day.
There was palm-shaded Tassimirim,
empty but for a couple of feral horses.
(‘You can hire a horse for a beach ride,’
Andressa told me.) Then the long,
broad crescent of white-pepper-fine
sand at Cueira — which took half an
hour to walk across. (‘This is where we
come to body-surf,’ said João.) And
then Moreré.
Moreré is that beach everyone
dreams of — squeaky white sand,
turquoise sea, towering coconut palms
and a single bamboo kiosk, painted
in bright colours, with wooden tables
in the sand under a thatch roof. The
Caribbean had nothing on this.
We ordered fresh fish straight from
the reef and a chilled green coconut. The
bartender — like a young Grace Jones
— opened it with two swift hacks of a
machete. Later we snorkelled over the
turtle-filled reef and lazed in tidal pools
as big as tennis courts. It was bliss.
And I had a week ahead of me to
snorkel, to body-surf, to horse-ride
and to wander the forest trails.
Salvador had seduced me. But on
Boipeba I had fallen in love.
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