You travel to

Archive for the ‘Brazil’ Category

Little has changed in the Sierra do Mar since the first Europeans arrived in Brazil.    The land and water merge as if the world were just forming.
The village of Picinguaba, tucked away on a bay in a protected natural park, straddles the Tropic of Capricorn. The road ends abruptly at the beach of this small fishing port, a place out of time, owned by three families. The fishing net is still communal property and no modern conveniences perturb the day, not even the single public telephone booth standing in the midst of the trees – even less so the cell phones. There is no phone reception here. The forest is the heart of Picinguaba, a 47,500 –hectare enclave in the middle of the park. The road disappears into the trees; as the light decreases, the clatter of monkeys and hummingbirds grow louder. Not far from here one can bump into little quilombo – a village originally founded by escaped slaves. Only descendants of former slaves live in natural park of Serra do Mar (315,390 hectares), a sector saved and protected by the government since 1977.
Today, the government has approved a subsistence economy, authorizing these families to farm. People are happy because they finally got electricity for which they have been waiting for 30 years. “Electricity will cost me less than candles” – says one of the farmers.
Everything grows at a dizzying pace in the primary forest: bananas, palm trees, sugarcane, te manioc. The soil, helped by the water and heat, is in constant production. Farmers have only to gather and cut, and within a few days or so, the plant or fruit will have sprouted in the same spot. The cycle of nature seems planned to make life easier for farmers. The energy released by the rising sap in the trees and the flaw of waterfalls, the contrasts between the cool water and hot air, the darkness of the great trees and the tender fluorescent green of young sprouts create a magical feeling of being part of the cosmos.
No one looks back in Brazil; you get over everything, nothing is important, everyone lives totally in the moment. According to local legend, Picinguaba means ‘fish refugee’, and as it may seem odd – this is a paradise for the grouper, red snapper and robalo because the fishermen never take more than they need to eat. The fishing is tremendous; indeed, everything is abundant here. It seems that there may even be more birds in the trees and butterflies in the air than fish in the sea.
Discovering Picinguaba means learning to live with a sense of time that seems to stretch out longer and longer, like shadows on the beach at the day’s end. It is not really true that time does not exist here – it is opposite, there is more of it, as if each minute refuses to move aside to the next.
At night the coast is black; there is no light, the village sleeps. It is no surprise that this spot, which seems unchanged since the beginning of time, is a favorite location for film makers.
On Sundays, children play under the lampposts, while singing and incense float from the open windows and doors of the church. In August, the village celebrates the anniversary of the creation of Santa Cruz, the day the Portuguese took possession of the Brazilian land, in the name of the king and God. It is a fervent event with litanies, applause, blessings, dancing under the moon and firecrackers.
By the next morning, a cacophony of noises. Sounding tenfold louder than usual, has taken over. The sound of motors coming from invisible boat rumbles in the distance. The sky and the sea have merged, and the Pescadores cannot tell if they are sailing or flying. ‘Ma no importa”, they have to go out fishing today as they did yesterday and will do tomorrow. Every day starts at the same time at 6 AM. Time flows on. Even when the rain comes down like a curtain of fat beads falling from the sky to the earth blocking the horizon, fishermen have to go, they have to take their part from the sea nature.
So, if you are really tired of fashionable 5-star hotels with artificial water in pools, noise and traffic, you have an option – visit a paradise on earth. Once you do, you come back for more.