But then the hippies arrived. Georgina Wilson-Powell reports. The originally hippie heavens of Goa, Thailand and Bali are overrun with smoothie-slurping yoga nuts or digital nomads trying to launch an IPO-worthy company. Trancoso feels like discovering Goa in the s β a secret to be whispered round a fire and drawn on an old-school map.
In one of the poshest restaurants in town, neither the outfit nor his cultured chat about art collections in Italy merits a second glance. Most tourists to Brazil blindly head for Rio, forgetting this enormous country has over 4, miles of coastline. Porto Seguro an hour away and the nearest airport is where the earliest Portuguese explorers first set foot on Brazilian soil in Backed by thick jungle on three sides, ocean on the fourth, Trancoso has developed separately from the rest of the world.
Time β and, to some extent money β counts for little, here. The brightly coloured shops and restaurants that line the two long sides of the square open up for business at the end of the afternoon, and as darkness falls, the only illumination comes from the lights strung between the trees like a festival in a far-flung field. After a couple of days, even the other side of the quadrado seems too far to stagger for a caipirinha.
In Trancoso, people earnestly discuss concepts like their soul and the ever after. Cynicism seems to evaporate in the warm air β within days your shoulders drop, your heart rate slows and you start planning a permanent move. Where it also differs from other parts of Brazil is that Trancoso is a town untouched by the gaudy ritual of Carnival. A blend of Catholic and African influences, the ritual includes mass in the white church at the end of the quadrado, sacrifices in the sea to appease the sea goddess Iemanja, and a village party complete with rock band and food stands.
This embrace of differing traditions is what makes Trancoso so special. When the hippies discovered the town in the s, it was off the beaten track, literally β there were no roads here, and no electricity. They arrived, bringing macrobiotic cafes, yoga and free love; and the Bahian locals simply shrugged and welcomed them in.
