Laidback luxuries in Trancoso

Andrew Barker visits the Brazilian town the fashion pack call home from home
Exotic setting: Rio de Barra
Andrew Barker26 November 2014

Picture a grassy square on a shallow clifftop, looking out over the Atlantic. Brightly painted cottages surround a whitewashed church and horses race bicycles to get people from A to B. It sounds like the setting for a magic realist novel, but this is Trancoso in the 21st century; a sleepy beach town that has redefined Brazil’s coastline in the same way Tulum did for the Yucatan or Montauk for Long Island.

At night the football pitch-sized square, El Quadrado, comes alive with twinkling candles as the cottage restaurants spill outdoors. They serve everything from spicy moqueca (a Brazilian fish stew) to Argentine asados (barbecue). You can easily lose a couple of hours wandering around the neighbouring chic boutiques, admiring the hand-woven bags and on-trend jewellery, or watching the Capoeira dancers kick and flip in outdoor rehearsals.

‘The vibe in the Quadrado is unique,’ Daniela Falcão, editor of Vogue Brazil, tells me. She has been visiting since the early Noughties, around the time that Gisele, Mario Testino et al attended a New Year’s Eve party here and then began making an annual pilgrimage. The town is a stomping ground for São Paulo’s elite. ‘You can’t find this kind of rustic charm anywhere else in Brazil,’ says Falcão. ‘You can find better beaches but not the combination of good service and good taste that has found its way into the next generation of trendsetters — a lot of the original crowd have moved here to set up shops and restaurants.’ What has changed is Trancoso is now as popular with Cariocas (people from Rio), Argentinians and a smattering of Europeans as well as all the Paulistas.

Dive in: the pool at Casa Uxua

One such European is Dutchman Wilbert Das, formerly head of design at Diesel, who noticed the lack of hotels as everyone was renting houses, bringing their own chefs and moving in for months on end. After a lifetime in fashion he became disillusioned with the obsession for all things ‘new’ and wanted to create an upmarket place to stay with a timeless feel. The result is Casa Uxua: ten ‘casas’, each with its own private porch, dotted around a 17-acre walled garden filled with fruit trees and wild monkeys. Our casa, Seu Pedrinho, was a former fisherman’s cottage that looked straight on to the Quadrado. Every morning we’d open the front door and greet the owners of the café next door while we had coffee on our porch; in the evening we’d do the same over a G&T and a plate of palmitos (palm hearts). The house was bougainvillea pink, but fitted right in on the Quadrado where every few years the cottages are repainted in shades of celestial blue, earthy orange or whichever new colour finds its way in from the cities.

Uxua has an indoor-outdoor restaurant built from reclaimed wood, which serves the best food in town, but it’s worth experiencing a maracujá caipirinha at one of the town’s restaurants such as Capim Santo, or Jacaré do Brasil, which has a sea view. The hotel also boasts a pool made of aventurine quartz — so the water appears a beautiful shade of emerald — but you won’t find a lobby, or any logos on the staff’s white cotton T-shirts. The vibe is one of laidback, stealth luxury — very Trancoso.

Home sweet home: fisherman's houses in Trancoso

This feeling continues at the local beach, a ten-minute walk away, where Uxua has its own bar and lounge built from an old fishing boat. Hotel guests are offered cushioned wooden couches and canvas pergolas, and there’s couch-side service for afternoon ceviche and an energising glass of acai juice. A couple of times a day, locals take their horses for a canter through the shallows, offering visitors a prime photo op. As do the helicopters — this is the type of place where you arrive by helicopter (you just don’t show off about it), because Trancoso is not easy to get to — a short, internal flight to Port Seguro in Bahia, from Rio, São Paulo or Salvador, followed by an hour’s drive, half of which is along a dirt road.

You could easily spend a week trundling between the hotel pool and the beach, but on our final day we decided on an adventure. Eighteen kilometres down the coast is Praia do Espelho, or ‘mirror beach’, named for its pristine shoreline. The Uxua team arranged a speedboat to whizz us there, stopping at a few deserted crescents of golden sand along the way. Espelho’s red crumbling cliffs and the river that runs through them have been home to a single restaurant for decades owned by a woman called Silvinha. Now her daughter Mel has increased the competition with a sushi shack with four tables on a terrace. At Sushi da Mel, we ate the catch of the day — mullet and local xaréu — sliced and diced by her husband Léo, and tempura squid, accompanied by a cold beer, secretly hoping we’d miss our speedboat lift back to real life. ES

TAP Portugal offers 17 flights weekly to Rio de Janeiro, and seven flights weekly to Salvador, via Lisbon. Fares start from £590, including taxes (flytap.com). Rooms at Casa Uxua cost from £303 per night (uxua.com)

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