Trancoso

Indigenous peoples lived on this stretch of coast when the Portuguese arrived. According to one historian of the Brazilian navy, the Rio dos Frades at Trancoso is where Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet came ashore on 22 April 1500 and took possession of Brazil for Portugal, though the landing is more often placed near Porto Seguro. The present village grew from a Jesuit mission, São João Batista dos Índios, founded in the 1580s to settle and convert the Indigenous people of the coast; its church and the long green in front of it still shape the village.

For centuries Trancoso was a small and isolated fishing settlement. It was little known in the rest of Brazil until the late 1970s, when hippies found it: a group of houses around a large lawn, with a church at the far end and a wide view of the sea.

Tourism grew from the 1990s as roads and airports were built across the region, and in 1999 a highway linked the village to Porto Seguro. Trancoso drew international attention around 2000; hotel groups and wealthy buyers followed, property values rose, and the village became one of the most exclusive resorts in Brazil, even as its old square kept its original style.

The Quadrado is both the village's landmark and its living room. Its houses are small, single-storey and brightly painted, and the 16th-century church of São João Batista at the eastern end remains the focus of community life. On 20 January the square hosts the festival of Saint Sebastian, when residents sing his hymn to drums and guitars. Each year a film festival projects films under the full moon at venues around the village, using the church as one of its screens.

Solange Ferrarini's crochet bikini, first sold on Trancoso's beaches, was later copied worldwide. In recent years settlers from the rest of Brazil and from abroad — Italians, Portuguese, Dutch, Greeks, Israelis, Canadians and others — have bought houses and opened guest houses, restaurants and shops, and the result is a cosmopolitan population alongside the Bahian families who were here first.

That mix brings friction as well as trade. The pace of development and the arrival of large resorts have raised questions about the village's future, and the Caraíva-Trancoso Environmental Protection Area, which begins at the village, was created to limit tourist and economic growth along the coast to the south.

Trancoso is a district of the municipality of Porto Seguro, not a separate town. At the 2022 census it had about 18,600 people in around 6,700 occupied homes, up from about 11,000 in 2010. Most residents live from the visitors in one way or another, and the population has grown quickly as the village has become better known.

Tourism and real estate are the economy. Guest houses, restaurants, shops, building sites and the households of second-home owners employ much of the population, and incomes rise and fall with the high season.

The rhythm of the day is slow. Beaches fill from mid-morning, the Quadrado is quiet in the heat of the afternoon, and the tables on the grass fill in the evening. Nearby, federal authorities have been enlarging national parks and reserves to protect the remaining Atlantic Forest, and the balance between building and conservation is the defining local issue.

Trancoso eats the food of the southern Bahia coast. Moqueca, fish or shrimp stewed in coconut milk and dendê palm oil with peppers, tomato and coriander, comes with rice and pirão, a thick fish gravy with cassava flour; acarajé, black-eyed pea fritters fried in dendê and filled with vatapá and shrimp, and cocada, a coconut sweet, are sold by vendors across the region.

The beach bars on Praia dos Nativos and Praia dos Coqueiros serve grilled and fried fish, shrimp and cold drinks on the sand. Up on the Quadrado the restaurants reflect the village's international population, serving both Bahian dishes and food from the newcomers' home countries.

Tropical fruits — cajá, graviola, mango, passion fruit — go into juices and caipirinhas, and coconut water is drunk straight from the nut on the beach. As elsewhere on this coast, fish and seafood are the basis of most menus, and the catch of the day sets much of what is served.