If you are a snorkeler or a SCUBA diver I recommend you
consider putting the Ilha de Fernando de Nohoria, 300 miles off the coast of
mainland Brazil, on your life list. The island and its waters are a protected
marine park. No fishing is allowed and the use of boats is strictly controlled.
It has relaxed friendly inhabitants, beautiful beaches, and amazing sea life. Also,
everyone drives dune buggies everywhere and so hitchhiking from one place to
another is easy and fun!
Sohpie and Adelheid and I were a tad disappointed, to put it
mildly, to learn that we were only going to be stopping here for one night so
we decided to put the time to the best use possible. First we visited ‘turtle
bay’ and snorkeled with dozens of giant sea turtles, then we went and explored
the only town, next we went to the museum. In the evening we had a picnic on
‘the most beautiful beach in the world’, went back to the museum for a park
movie about the local sea life at 9 pm, out to a pub where salsa band was performing
starting at 11 pm, and, finally walked to the lookout over ‘dolphin cove’
arriving there at 3 am! We slept on the benches and got up a mere three hours
later to marvel at the 100 dolphins that gather in the bay at sunrise before
heading out to sea – the dolphins that is not us.
At this point we stopped, ate a leisurely breakfast, and spent
quite a bit of time leaning over the railing looking down at the cove. You
could see, in the crystal clear water, a group of about 12 large sharks
swimming in the shallows at one end of the cove, and at the other, a group of
sea turtles. In the middle of the bay, quite far off shore but still near
enough to swim to, there was a large lump of coral just below the surface of
the water and in the middle, just out from where the breakers were crashing, a
huge swarm of small fish. Occasionally one of the sharks would venture into
this school and you could see it parting, avoiding him, or a bird would dive
from the height of the cliff tops with the same effect.
The beach in the cove stretched, pristine sand, below a cliff between
rocky headlands, and the only access was down through a vertical tunnel with a
series of ladders in it. I thought, perhaps, we had experienced the cove enough
by looking down on it but Sophie wanted to go down, so we did, 200 steps
exactly – I counted, and, when we were there, we snorkeled, of course.
Holy Freaking National Geographic!! I have never had a better
snorkelling experience in my life. The water, a crystal clear swimming pool turquoise,
was host to more marine life than I have seen before outside of an aquarium:
huge turtles, yes, we knew that, and sharks too, of course, but also fish and
fish and more fish in all the amazing colours of the rainbow and a few extra
iridescent shades to boot. Small fish and larger ones, clumps and groups and
schools of them, vivid blue spotted with brilliant yellow, or black with silver
stripes, or or or… go get a book on coral reef fishes and flip through it, they
were ALL there! And the best bit of all, surprisingly, was the large school of
what turned out to be sardines in the shallows. You could swim in amongst their
millions and have birds diving mere feet from you, the WHUMP of their arrival
in the water a physical shake, the sardines scattering, another bird arriving
and trying to steal the sardine that the first bird had caught. It was amazing.
Just amazing. Just totally amazing.
Eventually we stopped, dried off, and spent several hours
hiking back to the boat, walking endless perfect beaches and hiking up up and
over the rocky points that separated them. We stopped to chat with young boys
who were catching crabs that they would then hold up for the gulls to take out
of their hands, to older ones who were surfing on the ever building waves of an
approaching storm, to young men who had moved here to this idyllic island,
population 2000, from great crowded cities on the mainland, to other tourists
who were as in awe as we were at our mutual luck to have happened here…
We arrived back at the dingy dock at 6 pm just as HS came to
pick us up and we went back on board very ready for a shower, a snack, and a
nap. We would have loved a week there but felt that we had experienced the best
the island had to offer in the time that we had been allotted. Sohpie woke me
at 2 am for my night shift, the boat was sailing well, the island was receding
behind us, the moon had set, the sky was awash with a million stars, and, as I
stood out on deck with the wind in my hair, the only question on my mind was
should I have stopped there, bought a house, and just stayed forever…
