The Brazilian Boipeba Island

The Brazilian island hideaway

With no cars and nothing to do but eat seafood and swing in a hammock, Boipeba is the perfect escape from the British winter

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.