THE BOHO ZONE

Maybe it’s the remote setting on Brazil’s Bahian coast; maybe it’s the community of free spirits that has called it home for generations. But somehow, Trancoso has remained unspoiled and held fast to its hippie roots. Pilar Guzmán pays a visit.

- Pilar Guzmán

 

I WAS CURLED UP on an oversize daybed at Uxua Praia, a beach club in Trancoso—the coastal Brazilian playground that first captured the imagination of the international creative set back in the 1980s. The club is an offshoot of Uxua Casa Hotel & Spa, a quietly upscale property near the Quadrado, as Trancoso’s historic town centre is known, where my family and I were staying. Uxua Praia’s bar, which sits in the hull of a weathered fishing boat under a thatched roof, is tended by a young, cheerful staff, who take their time making cocktails from scratch, juicing fresh fruit for each order.

Though Trancoso is often thought of as a beach town—it shares the same breezy vibes found in places like Canggu, in Bali, or Mexico’s Isla Holbox—its Quadrado is set back from the sea. To reach the shore, and Uxua Praia, my husband, two teenage sons, and I first walked past a series of low-slung traditional stucco storefronts the colour of Skittles. We navigated a thicket of ancient silver lime trees whose limbs—as gnarled as a grandmother’s —seem to defy the laws of gravity with their precarious reach. A few minutes later, at what felt like the end of the earth, we reached a gleaming-white 17th-century Catholic church, São João Batista, and, filling the horizon beyond, the ocean.

We wound our way down past the church, crossing a rickety wooden bridge and passing through one of the longest uninterrupted mangrove forests in Brazil. Once we reached Uxua Praia, the biggest decision of the day was whether to order the grilled shrimp and pineapple skewers or the lime and coconut milk ceviche. Why not both? The food seemed to appear as though by magic from a tiny kitchen hidden in the mangroves.