Ilhabela

For at least 2,000 years before the Portuguese arrived, the archipelago was home to shell-mound peoples, followed by ceramic-making groups and then by Tupi-Guarani and Jê peoples, who knew the main island as Maembipe. An expedition including Amerigo Vespucci reached it on 20 January 1502; the main island is officially named Ilha de São Sebastião. Through the 16th and 17th centuries English, French and Dutch pirates sheltered in its bays; Thomas Cavendish came in the late 16th century, and the raids left legends of buried treasure.

Land grants began in 1603, and sugar cane spread over the slopes facing the mainland. Slave ships used the channel, and some enslaved Africans escaped to found quilombos in the forest. In the 18th century the first whaling station of the captaincy of São Paulo operated on the island until the whales grew scarce around 1850. In 1805 the island became the village of Vila Bela da Princesa. Coffee replaced sugar in the 19th century: in 1854 the island had about 10,800 inhabitants and 225 farms worked by more than 1,700 enslaved people. After abolition the island turned to distilling cane spirit, shipped to Santos in vogas, large sailing canoes built from its forest trees.

Japanese immigrants arrived in the 1920s and modernised fishing. The economic crisis of the 1930s hit hard; the municipality was briefly abolished and then renamed, taking the name Ilhabela in 1945. Tourism grew from the 1960s, bringing real-estate pressure on the forest, and in 1977 most of the archipelago became a state park.

The caiçara tradition is the island's backbone. Fishing families of mixed Indigenous, African and Portuguese descent built the vogas and canoes, fished the channel and the open sea, and still live in small communities on the ocean side — at Castelhanos, Bonete and on the outlying islands of Búzios and Vitória, which in recent counts had 142 and 50 inhabitants. Handicrafts and fishing remain part of local life alongside tourism.

The sea defines the island's identity in other ways too. Ilhabela is known as the capital of sailing: the calm water and steady winds of the channel suit yachts, windsurfers and kitesurfers, and several regattas are held off the coast. More than fifty wrecks lie around the archipelago, among them the liner Príncipe de Asturias, lost in 1916, and six of them are open to divers.

Island life also has its religious and community rhythm, centred on the old chapel in the Vila. In 2016 São Paulo's samba school Unidos de Vila Maria paid tribute to the island in its Carnival parade. Residents' concerns are environmental: the forest, water quality, sewage in small communities, and how many visitors the road to Castelhanos and the trails can bear.

Ilhabela had 34,934 inhabitants in the 2022 census, spread mostly along the western shore of the main island facing the mainland, with the Vila and Perequê as the main centres; the municipality also includes the districts of Cambaquara and Paranabi. In the holiday months the population can swell to around a hundred thousand.

The economy is based on tourism, commerce and construction, with fishing, handicrafts and public services as secondary activities. Holiday homes for São Paulo families line much of the shore, and many residents work in building, maintaining and serving them. Life depends on the ferry: everything from supermarket stock to building materials crosses the channel, and the summer queues are a constant complaint.

Daily rhythm follows the seasons. In summer and on long weekends the beaches, restaurants and roads are full and nights are lively in the Vila; in the quieter months the island slows down and belongs to its residents. Pressure on the state park from tourism and building, the port and Petrobras terminal across the channel, and water quality on the beaches are the main local debates, and the 2023 storms on the neighbouring coast were a reminder of the risks of heavy rain on steep slopes.

Seafood dominates Ilhabela's menus. Fish, prawns and squid are grilled, fried or stewed, and moqueca — fish or seafood cooked in a clay pot with tomato, onion and coriander — and bobó de camarão, prawns in a creamy sauce of cassava, coconut milk and palm oil, are the standard dinners in the restaurants of the Vila and Perequê.

The caiçara kitchen of the north coast is simpler and older. One of its dishes is azul-marinho, fish served with a pirão of cassava flour and green bananas. Fish is often served with pirão, a thick porridge of cassava flour, and with rice, beans and salad. In the remote villages, fried fish straight from the boats is served in beach kitchens to walkers and boat passengers.

Everyday eating follows the rest of the state: per-kilo buffets at lunch, pastéis and other fried snacks, fresh juices and coconut water on the beach. The island's history of cane spirit lives on in the caipirinha, made with cachaça, lime and sugar, the drink of choice at sunset over the channel.