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Boipeba Island: Saving Grace
Village life
Visitors to Boipeba do run the risk of never making it further than the beach but it’s well worth getting to know the island – and the islanders – a bit better. Taking a stroll round the main village, Velha Boipeba on our first day, we quickly found ourselves getting involved in island life. We sat down to have an ice-cold beer on the edge of the village green, watching local kids playing and admiring the vibrant orange of the flowering trees, and before long found ourselves being invited to share a delicious seafood stew called moqueca that was being prepared by one of the locals, Fausto, in his small bar’s back kitchen. Fausto introduced us to the island capoeira mestre, who invited us to see the his group’s impressive roda once the sun had fallen and the heat of the day had dispersed.
Whilst beach-life is supreme, if you get restless, there’s a host of ways to get closer to nature and burn off some calories at the same time. There’s great snorkelling to be had in the natural pools, which are home to 35 species of tropical fish. We spent a day horse riding along the beach and through the forest, stopping at a remote hill-top place for a well-deserved basket of fresh crabs, served hot and in their shells. Fausto conducted a well-needed lesson on how to smash the crabs to extract the delicious meat – no fast food here. Like all the best things, sometimes you need to put something in to appreciate the rewards.
If it’s hard to get to Boipeba, it’s even harder to leave, and our stay grew ever longer as we discovered more and more of the island’s delights. In the end, it was only the lack of a bank on the island that forced our departure. As we left the island on a boat pushing slowly through untouched mangroves in the early morning light, I hoped that the island would be the same on my next visit. There is definitely reason to be optimistic about Boipeba – particularly if the enthusiasm for a new kind of sustainable tourism which we had encountered there from so many islanders catches on amongst the visitors who are lucky enough to sample this beautiful part of Brasil.
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