# 53 If You Love Gloomy Villages (and Unspoiled Bays) then This Place Is For You
On drunks, fishermen, awe, and the grim history of Ilha Grande, Brazil
The island is dark as we jump from the boat onto the wooden dock. Wind whips my hair into my face. Is this the right place? Abandoned fishing nets at my feet and no one on shore. The distant village where we’ll stay for ten days looks uninviting.
“Just follow the path,” the young captain yells at us.
He’s already leaving, taking with him our last chance to change our minds.
I’m shaky. The ocean was rougher than I’d anticipated and the refrain in my head is ongoing: Why am I traveling from place to place? Finding myself in precarious situations with captains I don’t know and cannot trust?
Daniel and I walk into the poorly lit village with our rain-wet backpacks. The sun has just set, but it feels like we’re approaching midnight.
“Great place for Halloween,” I say, and he grins. We’re here in the right season at least.
From an open doorway, a stout woman emerges. She’s surprised at the sight of us, mumbles a greeting, and then, as if an afterthought, she points at the small building she just left.
“My restaurant,” she says. “I have fish.”
We smile and say, “Tomorrow.”
In our life of constant travel, we try not to say “no” anymore. “Tomorrow” and “maybe” are much better words.
I hold instructions from our host to locate the village bakery, enter a narrow lane, and find the wooden gate that matches the picture she sent me. The gate will be unlocked and the key to the front door will be hidden under a shell in the flowerpot. But before we can get there, zealous singing makes us halt.
Provetá, a fishermen’s village of some 1,500 inhabitants on Brazil’s Ilha Grande, is dominated by a giant church that looks like a relic from the eighties. A religious service is taking place and high notes are flying from many mouths.
We peek inside the church without going in—my favorite position when I’m unsure where I’ve arrived.
All the benches are full and the singing sounds… evangelical. When I later research the village, I discover that Provetá was once known as a prudish place where locals dipped into the ocean only with their clothes on. Tourism is still new here. There are no beachside restaurants, no cafés or souvenir shops. Just a snack bar across from the church where locals line up to buy fried pasteles and a mini mercado where they get candies and canned beer.
We’re ready to move on when another woman approaches. My understanding of her Portuguese is poor, but instead of telling her I don’t understand, I say, “No, thank you.”
I’m tired, the luggage on my back is heavier than comfortable, and I assume I’m not interested in whatever it is she has to offer. All I want is to be home.
She won’t take “no” for an answer and motions for us to follow her, which we do not.
Rather impatiently, she shoves a piece of paper under my nose, and I squint in the dark to read… my name.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. The host must have sent her to escort us to our place.
You see why trying not to say “no” is a good idea?
Our home is on the second floor of a green stone house set on the yellow sand beach. We have lounge chairs and hammocks on the terrace, a tiny bathroom with lukewarm water, and a large tiled kitchen where an entire family can gather to help cook. During the day, we watch flycatchers, collared plovers, vultures, frigates, cranes, and hawk-like creatures we identify as yellow-headed caracaras. We also work and write. At night, we dream to the sound of crashing waves with our window cracked open. When I lie awake in the predawn hours, which happens often in my perimenopausal years, I feel at peace. I cannot resent my non-sleeping in the presence of such a gorgeous roar.
On my first morning in the village, I meet the drunks. A few are slanting solitarily against mold-streaked walls. Others are hanging out together in front of the only store that sells fresh produce. They sing-dance to a boombox and drink beers. I make it a point to greet them, assessing whether they’re on the side of harmless or seeking trouble. A bit surprised yet joyously, they greet me back.
I buy a half kilo of okra, a bunch of slightly tired looking kale-like leaves, some limes, carrots, zucchinis, onions, bell peppers, bananas, mangos, and yams. I’m genuinely pleased with the variety.
The mini mercado, on the other hand, is a sad affair. We’d expected this and arrived on the island with personal essentials in our packs—chia seeds, nuts, and soy protein. Luckily the general essentials are here: rice, black beans, eggs, and canned sardines.
But where’s the fishermen’s fresh catch?
The clouds hang low in the sky and mist obscures the mountain peaks.
Ilha Grande is a paradise for walkers with plenty of day hikes and multi-day treks across pristine beaches and jungly paths. But the earth is like clay and slippery after the rains: We’re not going anywhere.
We hadn’t counted on so much wet weather. We’re deep into the Southern hemisphere’s spring yet we’re wearing socks and sweaters. The ocean is too cold for swimming and the beach in our bay is less than a mile long; we walk it three times up and down to get enough exercise while the locals regard us as though we’ve lost our minds.
We leave the village only once, hiking two hours to the next unremarkable village and two hours back. We don’t encounter jaguars, which are sometimes still spotted at night in the surrounding national park, but we see a small armadillo—my first in the wild.
Daniel goes out looking for fresh fish and asks anyone who’s willing to listen. Upon his return, he says, “This village is depressed.”
The drunks aren’t the only sign. The zest for life I sensed elsewhere in Brazil is gone here. Melancholy haunts the gray air and moonless sky. In a seaside tearoom where an almost non-existent WiFi signal costs $3 a day, customers slouch on couches and watch their phones. At the bakery, people sit on stools with their elbows on the counter and watch TV.
What happened here?
The three village restaurants are empty every night. Daniel and I haven’t seen other tourists. The woman we met upon our arrival only has fried fish on the menu that we now assume must be frozen tilapia. If the fishermen go out at all, they’re not bringing their catch into Provetá. We may have enjoyed their fish when we poshly lived in Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana for a month.
Also curiously absent are mosquitoes. When our host said there were none in the house, I scoffed. There are always mosquitos in the subtropics, and they always find me, even on the beach. I’m the most delicious human of all time. But I truly don’t see them and stop putting on repellent. I sit in the dusk as bait and sleep with my tasty feet sticking out from beneath the sheets. In the morning, I have zero bites.
“This village is so gloomy,” I say, “it has killed all the mosquitoes.”
And yet… I love it here. Not just the unspoiled bay and the sound of the waves. The village itself is growing on me.
Women in flower dresses bring their morning coffees in colorful mugs to the beach, where they sit on an upturned canoe.
An elderly man massages his wife’s feet in front of their home.
Boys craft two-story boats from styrofoam flotsam and push their creations on the water with sticks.
Fishermen who are mending their nets on the beach talk to me in Portuguese, to which I reply in broken Spanish and Franglais.
One afternoon, just as Daniel and I walk toward the dock, the village boat arrives. All the drunks rush toward it with empty wheelbarrows and pull carts. They receive packages and bags from the crew and load up their carriers. This is, apparently, their job, to meet the boat once a day with a beer can in their hand.
An older man struggles to push his cargo uphill and motions for Daniel and me to help him. We oblige, glad to be of help.
This is why I’m traveling from place to place. I observe what intrigues me, discover small mysteries, bring to light what others are not here to see, and find myself connecting with people, however briefly.
I wonder whether Ilha Grande’s dark history has anything to do with the village’s drunks. The island was a strategic point for pirates, a hub for the slave trade after it was officially outlawed, and a quarantine facility for immigrants arriving with cholera. Until 1993, the whole island was a maximum-security prison where, especially during the harsh years of Vargas’ dictatorship in the thirties and forties, political prisoners were held without trial and tortured.
I also wonder—less seriously—whether the absence of mosquitoes here is linked to the presence of drunks. Maybe, by way of experiment, people sprayed this part of the island heavily with some type of new pesticide whose side-effects are depression and alcoholism in humans.
Then, after days of clouds and rain, the storm arrives. I receive a warning from the host who tells us to charge the emergency lights for when the power goes out. We stock up on what there is to buy.
The wind blows the shingles off the neighbor’s roof. The bay turns into white caps. Waves reach a height of three meters. The beach disappears. Tree branches break off. There are no more birds.
I stand on the terrace, holding onto the low wall.
This is also why I’m traveling from place to place. I feel small in the face of what connects us. I’m in total awe.
I’m Claire Polders, a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Read about my books and more on my website www.clairepolders.com.
End of Year Discount: 30%
I offer 30% off yearly subscriptions to my newsletter until Dec 31st.
For $28 you will have access to my full archive, receive paid-only posts, and can request personalized travel advice on destinations I know. You can also boast you’re supporting independent writers telling stories that might not get published elsewhere.
I hope to reach a 100 paid subscribers by the end of the year. This relatively small milestone will help me grow more on this platform and beyond.
Will you help me get there?
You can also support me by sharing, commenting, and liking my posts—engagement draws more readers to my work, and I genuinely love your feedback.
Related Essays
If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in reading:
Time to Say Goodbye
Daniel and I are currently in picture-pretty Paraty, a colonial town on the coast between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where we are headed next. Our last stop in Brazil will be Foz do Iguaçu, one of the world’s biggest waterfalls. I’m ready to be amazed.
All my best,
Claire
P.S. What has recently left you in awe?
"A day in the life," loved it, Claire. You guys roll with it so well. The photos are fab as always, and the egret! Wow, Daniel Did luck out. It almost sounds like Ilha Grande has generational depression. The big question as you state, what caused it?
This is one of the best posts you’ve written yet.