Fernando de Noronha

Fernando is an island about 200 miles off the northeast coast of Brazil near Recife and Natal.

It has been intentionally preserved in it’s current state and there are limitations on the numbers of visitors and an environmental tax per day that escalates based on the number of days you stay (and presumably the environmental impact you have) We are staying 4 days and the tax is about $95 each.

There are no large hotels only small pousadas, which are basically guesthouses, and we discovered there are huge variations in what is available and what you pay. Suffice it to say that most everything is expensive and there are few bargains. Also let me say that in general it is worth it.

We flew up from Rio on a Brazilian built Embraer 175, which is a 70+-seat twin-engine airplane built in Brazil. We stopped in a couple of places and arrived in Fernando in the afternoon. There are three flights a day and there is also a ferry service. 

Rio and Sao Paulo are already 3 hours ahead of the eastern US, and that goes to one hour when we change later in the year (confused yet?)

Fernanho airport

Fernando boasts a primary road that is 7km long (about 4.5 miles) and then secondary roads that are generally dirt roads.

Our pousada was booked from Rio with little information on the location and price prior to calling. It is about $150 a night and certainly at the low end of the price range but very suitable and not in the $1500 range of some places! 

Our pousada

King size bed, air conditioning and a small bathroom will be our home for the next few days.

We did a little walking later in the afternoon and found a small rocky beach where we tested the water. 

Not quite sure why I took this!

Overall it is much cooler than Rio (which hit 42C the day before we left!) at around 30 to 32C. We ate at a good local restaurant (as in one you can walk to) and had a good dinner and a bottle of very mediocre Argentinean wine for about $80 for both.  

We had intended to rent a dune buggy the next day but discovered that a cruise ship was due in that morning for a 24+-hour stay and they were all booked. 

Dune buggies

Not to worry we started out on the local bus for about $2.50 anywhere on the island. There are bus stops but if you just signal the driver he will stop. When we got on the driver asked Candida “where do you want to go?” She said that we did not know and he promptly replied “then you have the right bus!”. We rode down to the southeast beach in about 20 minutes and got off. We walked on the beach and watched some people on an organized snorkeling trip and bathed a little although there was lots of seaweed around.

We looked at the map and decided to walk up a smaller road that eventually met back up with the main road. It is little more than a track but strangely enough has streetlights! We walked about 1.5 miles and reconnected with the road by the airport.

Beer can fence!!

Most things on Fernando are expensive and what we had not expected is that it is very difficult to access ATM machines that work with foreign cards. This was complicated by many places not taking cards or saying that their machines were broken. It looks like Internet access is sporadic at best and the phones are not hugely reliable. We arrived on Friday and it is now Sunday afternoon and I have yet to have access to email. Lots of places are closed on Sunday until 5pm so we will see.

We went again on the bus to the port and saw all the cruise ship folks coming ashore and found a little bar that served a reasonably priced lunch and a couple of cold cervejas or geladinios as they are called. Very welcome.

Kitty relaxing after lunch

In our wanderings close to the pousada we also found a small restaurant that was well hidden but served simple home cooked food and reasonably priced cervejas so we decided to try it for the evening. It was about half of what anywhere else charged and was very tasty. We were delayed in going by a huge rainstorm that lasted more than an hour and gave everything a thorough soaking. It did manage to cool things down a little.

Our room is very comfortable and we have a hammock outside. The pousada provides a typical Brazilian breakfast of fresh fruit, bread, ham, cheese, and of course excellent coffee. It can be taken black or especially in the morning with hot milk. It is very strong by American standards but very good. There are significant variations in pousadas and ours was one of the more basic at around $150 per night but there are several that can cost up to $1500 per night, particularly one owned by one of the Brazilian television personalities. Seems like a brand name extracts a significant premium everywhere!

We are off for a boat tour this afternoon, and have a dune buggy booked for tomorrow.

There is a surfing competition that starts tomorrow that attracts international competitors so we may go check that out. There is also a place called “Air France” which I understand was where AF used to land their flying boats way back. It was probably the first logical landing place after launching from west Africa when planes only had 6-8 hours endurance. I had originally thought it might be connected to the AF A330 that crashed a couple of years ago probably not far from here. 

View from Air France

We took a boat tour on Sunday down the “inner sea” i.e.The western side of the archipelago closer to the mainland. It was rainy and windy for the first part but improved later. The water is very clear and on a sunny day you can see down at least 10 meters. There were some beautiful fish and they seemed unconcerned about our presence.

I would be interested to know what the environmental tax money is spent on and I am critical that it clearly is not spent on roads and sidewalks that would benefit locals as well as visitors. The basic infrastructure is good but phones, roads, sidewalks and Internet access are all well below par and expectations.

We are meant to have been renting the dune buggy today but it has not showed up so far, but we have had showers on and off so we are not too concerned. We may not bother and just walk down to another of the beaches.  We actually ended up walking to the Southeast beach, which was probably 5km from the pousada. Rain showers on and off and some muddy roads but we had fun anyway. It has also given me some much needed time to try and get caught up with the blog, which has been difficult to do.

On our last morning we decided to walk to an old fort we had seen on the coast, and then up to Air France. We had actually walked past the entrance to the fort on the day we arrived but there was a chain across the trail and we assumed it was closed… 

View from the fort

Looking from the fort to the settlement with the church and admin office

View up the coast to the port and Air France

Candida hold up the flags

Wrong, it was and is intended to keep people from driving up to the fort. Oh well. It had a great view and is about 45m up on a headland and you can see back to the old church and the old island administration building used by whoever was in charge at the time. It seemed to have changed between Dutch, French and eventually Brazilian.

Air France was about a 2 mile walk from there on past the port. What a disappointment! It claimed to be a center for local artists and artisans but was basically a run down poorly maintained building in a beautiful setting by the ocean and a causeway to some small islands. Some of the islands look like Shetland but with sunshine and warmth!

A quick bus ride back to the pousada and we were packing for the next part of the trip.

Fernando was fun but expensive and I guess that we agreed that it did not live up to it’s billing or our expectations. We would not have known if we had not come!