Not even a tractor in sight … Boipeba Island, Brazil. Photograph: Karen Robinson
'The whole village fits into three tractors," says Tony Fitzsimmons, the English owner of Pousada Mangueira in Moreré, on the island of Boipeba in tropical north-east Brazil. It strikes me as an odd unit of population to use, but since tractors are the only form of motorised transport here, it is probably fair enough.
It also strikes me as an odd thing for a Lancashireman to be doing with his life, but Tony explains that he and his wife Susana tired of the rat race (he as a sports adviser on disability, she as deputy head of a special school), typed "Pousadas for sale, Brazil" into Google and found their remote B&B.
The reason there are no vehicles here is because there are no roads, just sandy tracks criss-crossing this 8km x 12km island where the major tourist attractions are a flour mill, a palm-oil mill and an offshore raft serving oysters. Tractors are used to collect rubbish, ferry children to school or rush (and I use the word advisedly) sick or injured villagers to Boipeba's's only health centre.
"We've a one-third share in a donkey," says Tony, when I ask how they get around. "It's a nice way to travel if we want to go to Velha Boipeba [the largest village: population 1,600] to buy watermelons. It's the big metropolis for us."
Once a year, he and Susana "have a bottle of wine" at the French-owned Alizées-Moreré, the only serious hotel in the village. Guests come by charter plane from Salvador, the state capital of Bahia, and land on the next island (Tinharé) at an airstrip owned by an Italian billionaire.
"They don't know what's hit them," Tony says, walking me down to a shack on the beach where he referees the odd village football game or goes windsurfing. "To be frank, there's not a lot to do round here."
As we settle down at a rickety, sun-bleached table, that seems like no bad thing. The tide is low, and I gaze out across the gleaming, rippled sand to where Miguel, our boatman, has anchored his speedboat just beyond the surf. Behind him is turquoise water streaked with white where it kicks up over a sand bar, and above it is an improbably cornflower-blue sky.
Tanned Brazilian boys wander past with surfboards, a spearfisherman stands up unexpectedly on a submerged reef and a mounted tour guide accompanies a small group of Spanish and Italian riders along the beach. The next headland is crowned by another millionaire's house with its own helipad, and beyond it I can make out the third of Moreré's three beaches – a deserted stretch of pristine sand ruined by the odd coconut husk and backed by palms.
Close to where I am sitting, João, the owner of the shack – is doing something with a blowtorch on his fishing boat and can't quite summon up the ambition to serve me. Instead, he gestures to his son, Jean-Paul, who in turn delegates the job to a group of 10-year-old girls cleaning mangrove crabs.
"Lambreta!" he says, meaning clams (not Italian scooters), and a few minutes later one of the girls arrives, delivering a dozen meaty, golden nuggets of bivalve, slightly gritty and served with lime slices, a khaki home-made sauce like glutinous Tabasco, a small glass of hot, salty clam juice and a broad smile.
After paying the R$5 (£1.70) bill, I make my way to Miguel's boat to be ferried to the next course in my locally caught lunch. As I stand knee-deep in the shallows, an Italian family is disembarking from a bigger speedboat weighed down with Gucci luggage. They step off the bow into the clear, balmy water, getting their capri pants slightly wet.
It's a weird mix, Moreré, because well-heeled people do come here, staying at the Alizées or in rented properties, yet the village is backpacker-grungey and the infrastructure is basic to say the least. Use the facilities at João's shack and you will find yourself contemplating a sand floor strewn with toilet paper. The typical clientele, Susana says, are backpackers who book a pousada for three or four days at the end of six months' travelling, then end up staying 11 or 12 days. "Their bodies have packed in, basically," Tony says. "All they want to do is sway in a hammock and do their washing."
What we and the Gucci set demonstrate is that, on Boipeba, fast boats are the only way to get around. The tractors, a municipal resource, are not for the use of tourists. You can walk to Moreré from Velha Boipeba, where we are staying – but it will take you two hours. In a speedboat like Miguel's, it takes 20 minutes and you can easily circumnavigate the island in a day, stopping off for clams in Moreré, a spot of snorkelling, an hour on the beach, a swim at Ponta dos Catelhanos (from an offshore sandbank that you will probably have entirely to yourself), lunch at Cova da Onça (where Orlando's is the only restaurant) and then bomb around until sunset.
This will set you back R$350 (about £115) for a day, which seems quite decadent, given the price of a portion of clams. However, most people share a boat with three or four others, so it's more like £30 each. You can hire boats for half a day, or ask to be taken to a specific beach. As someone who doesn't own a car, I can't help rejoicing in the freedom of the boat culture of this part of Brazil. There are no jams, you don't have to follow roads and if you miss a ferry (as we did, underestimating the four-hour drive from Salvador to the port of Valença, on the mainland), you just hire a private boat. It's usually a canopied skiff with an outboard engine and a skipper aged about 20.
Now, with the veteran Miguel at the controls, there is no stopping us. We are out in open water, bouncing across the waves and literally flying as we hit the odd tidal rip over a reef. It's thrilling, and more so when we near Cova da Onça and Miguel seems intent on driving us at 28 knots straight up the beach. He cuts his engines, and the boat subsides in the surf just before impact.
This is where I have my Let's Emigrate moment, sitting under Orlando's blue awning, sipping a cold Antarctica beer and devouring a moqueca (Bahia's African-influenced seafood stew) for two, containing no fewer than four lobsters. It's up there in my top 10 food experiences – the chunky discs of lobster; the dende (palm) oil with its mellow, yellow richness; the little bowl of pirão (like a starchy fish gravy) to spoon next to it; the crunchy, toasted manioc flour fried in butter known as farofa, eaten instead of bread.
The food is a little bit different at Santa Clara, the dreamily tropical lodge in Velha Boipeba where we are staying. There, Mark, co-owner with his brother Charles, likes to give his food an Asian twist: squid pakora (in a crispy batter) with an Indian-inspired chutney that is big on tamarind; local fish caramelised and served with coconut rice, paper-thin slices of cucumber, ginger, lemongrass, soy, red peppers and a thimble of sweet-and-sour sauce.
"People come from all the other pousadas to eat at this restaurant," Charles tells me proudly. "It's somewhere special for them to bring people if they want to show off."
Santa Clara, with its 11 rooms – some like treehouses – linked by walkways and surrounded by tropical gardens, is impeccably tasteful all round. It's a two-minute walk from the hotel to the nearest beach bar with its thatched umbrellas, sunloungers and beautiful people doing not very much on one of Brazil's most out-of-the-way and least commercialised beaches.
Of these there is no shortage on Boipeba – and in my experience, they are wilder, more deserted and more beautiful than any along the 1,000km stretch of beach fringing Bahia's coast, which incorporates three national parks. November and December – just before the January rush (peak season in the southern hemisphere) – is the time to go, to escape the dreary British winter.
This seemingly endless ribbon of beach, the longest in Brazil, begins in Praia do Forte to the north of Salvador. From the city, you drive along a freeway lined with car dealerships, estate agents and places selling fibreglass swimming pools. There are hoardings, billboards, neon and more visual pollution than Miami. Leaving it all behind, it's hard to believe you will cruise round a bend and discover Praia do Forte, a hybrid of working fishing village and twee eco-resort. It's popular with Brazilian families who come here for the beach, staying in condominiums of pousadas and rental properties.
It's touristy, for sure (think a tasteful, tropical St Ives, rather than Blackpool) but the German man who created the Praia do Forte resort had an inspiring vision: to safeguard, and indeed create, jobs through tourism without destroying the village's essential character. You can wander the pedestrianised main drag with its restaurants, bars and souvenir shops selling surf gear, jewellery and Athena-style T-shirts, then turn round to see old men playing dominoes under the trees, boys playing football after school and their younger siblings tearing around the mini play parks created at intervals along the street. There is a very cute colonial church – in the square, right on the beach, where locals gather at sunset – but the main attraction is the Tamar turtle conservation project (part theme park, part zoo) that has put the resort on the map.
Praia do Forte is worth a detour – but not for the beaches. My advice, if you're killing a few days in Salvador, is to escape the well-trodden 16th-century colonial town centre, Pelourinho, and head for the urban beaches. The best are on the Atlantic side of the city, near the airport. Take the bus to Itapuã, where the beach shacks run unbroken for miles, serving frosty bottles of Brahma beer to sun-worshippers sitting at plastic tables. Heading south, check out the residential district of Rio Vermelho, in particular Rua da Paciência, popular with locals and the place to go for bars, restaurants and nightlife. During the day, hollering vendors sell fresh fish from cabañas on the beach, elderly couples with mahogany tans sit under parasols, and bikini-clad girls sun themselves with their boyfriends on the rocks. It's not as slick or chic as Rio, and the body beautiful ethos is less extreme, but it's beach life nonetheless.
Closer to the centre of Salvador, the beaches are more disappointing. Middle-class Porto da Barra beach, near the marina, port and lighthouse, tends to get crowded – and the water quality is poor. In Ondina, the hotel district, the beaches are good for surfing but rocky outcrops make swimming dangerous.
From there, as you head south out of Salvador, the Costa do Dende (Palm-Oil Coast) opens up with its verdant, almost south-east Asian landscape and easy access to the islands – not just Boipeba, but Tinharé, where the resort of Morro de São Paulo, with its legendary four beaches, has become too popular and developed for its own good, a Brazilian Koh Samui or Goa.
Further south still, and a world away from Boipeba, are buzzy Porto Seguro, the birthplace of the lambada and a mecca for backpackers and energetic clubbers. My advice would be to stop right there at Valença (or any small port where there's a man with a speedboat) and head for Boipeba, to swing in a hammock and do your washing.
