The South Atlantic’s Best-Kept Secret by Mark Jolly

Saturday, 2 am. A huge pregnant moon lights up Lion's Beach like an abandoned movie set. The tide has receded so far that soon we'll be able to wade out toward Morro da Viuva – one of the 21 secondary islands off the coast of Fernando de Noronha, the main island in the Brazilian archipelago of the same name. But tonight we have another mission. We are waiting for the turtles. Spawning green turtles, to be precise, who've traversed untold oceans to waddle onto these remote shores and lay their eggs under cover of night.

The mother of hard-shelled marine turtles - the average adult weighs in at 550 pounds - the green is also the world's most prized reptile, sought after for its skin, shell, meat, eggs, and calipee (the gelatinous edible goodies under the lower shell). If they come to nest tonight - and it's 90 percent certain they will, according to my guide, Matteus Baronio, who patrols the sands every hour from dusk to dawn, scouring for reptilian visits - then each turtle will drop about 120 eggs. Seven weeks later, the hatchlings will begin to make the long journey into adulthood. Only one or two in a thousand will survive; the rest will drown, starve, or be devoured by crabs, birds, and fish. And if it weren't for TAMAR (short for Projeto Tartaruga Marinha, or Sea Turtle Project), the conservation agency for which Matteus works, those slim odds would be even slimmer.

My own odds, it turns out, aren't much better: the turtles do not come. I'm consigned to the 10 percenters. No matter. Five hours later, I'm up to catch the early-morning surf. To be strictly accurate, I'm up to catch those more athletically gifted than myself catch the early-morning surf. You see, the Hang Loose international surf championship is in full swing at the main island's north end, where a southeast wind meets a northeast swell. Although I do not know it yet, I have, less than one full day after landing here, already tasted the twin flavours of Fernando de Noronha: discovery and adventure.

As the aquatic acrobats negotiate the 14-foot waves, I begin to meet some of my fellow spectators -- including George, a self-described mad Scotsman who was neither born in, nor has ever lived in Scotland. "It doesn't matter which way you're sailing, all the winds will push you toward Noronha," says George, who sailed in from Venezuela 13 years ago and set up the first tour-boat operation. "South Africa to the Caribbean. Canaries to Argentina. All the winds eventually blow you here."

For five centuries, this isolated archipelago of volcanic rock, covering just ten square miles and located 250 miles off the coast of Brazil, has found itself at the center of the country's preoccupations. Conquistadors and conservationists, surfers and seafarers, divers and discoverers, prisoners and honeymooners - they've all gravitated to these shores at one time or another.

Declared a national marine park in 1988, the island of Fernando de Noronha is one of the great ecological jewels of the South Atlantic. Rising 13,000 feet from the ocean floor, the archipelago has the world's biggest reproductive colony of seabirds (including two species that are not found anywhere else on earth), 230 species of fish, 14 types of shark, five of the world's seven sea turtle species, and the largest school of spinner dolphins ever recorded. The latter, of course, is the stuff of soaring violins and slow-mo picture frames.

As are the beaches - beaches of elemental beauty and surreal tranquility, lapped by a clean, crystalline sea so far from the South American continent as to be spared every contaminant brought by rain or river. "If you rounded up the ten most beautiful beaches from the whole length of Brazil's coastline," says oceanographer Claudio Bellini, who heads TAMAR's regional operation, "and then put them against those of Fernando de Noronha, Noronha would win every time." We are, by the way, talking about some 4,600 miles of coastline compared with forty.

Little wonder, then, that this fantasy island, which Brazilians call the Emerald of the Atlantic, has cemented its reputation as their number-one dream getaway. Yet beyond Latin America, Fernando de Noronha is almost unheard of. Naturally, many of the 2,200 residents would prefer to keep it that way, lest it become another Copacabana.

For the moment, at least, they can relax. Opened to tourists in 1986 (before which it was a restricted military base), the archipelago remains refreshingly free of high-rise structures (though there's talk of the first low-rise resort rearing its head) and has almost zero crime (which in Brazil is freakish). Up until the late 1990s, you would have flown in on a 12-seater - not the Fokkers that now ferry a grand total of 50 passengers per flight. You would have arrived to find no hot water, no air-conditioning, and as much chance of getting a phone connection as a fishing permit -- which is to say none.

Noronha even now - amid the growing presence of Paulistas in Prada heels click-clacking their way down the cobblestoned streets of Vila dos Remédios, the only village on this, the only populated island - seems intent on keeping mass tourism at bay: just 420 visitors are allowed at any one time, and all are required to pay a daily "environmental tax" that starts at US$6 and increases incrementally the longer you stay. What does that mean?

It means that a family of four has to shell out nearly US$1,000 in order to be here for three weeks, not counting flights and hotels. It means please come visit this magnificent oasis, but don't even think about lingering. Beyond all, it means something almost mythical in the minds of most Brazilians, for whom a trip here is so absurdly expensive that it's a lifelong impossibility. Mention to any mainlander that you've spent a week on Fernando de Noronha and it's like you've just announced you're the Man from Atlantis.

Yet the archipelago is more than a postcard-perfect chimera. A lot more. The violent majesty of the waves that batter these shores from November through March has caused the islands to be dubbed the Brazilian Hawaii. This is not just a tourist bureau slogan - of which there are plenty (the state of Pernambuco, which governs Noronha, has recently tried the moronic approach, brandishing posters and T-shirts with teasers such as Pernambuco: Because you deserve it). No. Like Hawaii, the water that comes rolling in from immense depths suddenly hits a sharp incline in the middle of the seabed, producing the perfect wave.

In addition, Fernando de Noronha is fast becoming recognized as one of the best dive destinations in South America - perhaps the very best outside the Galapagos - particularly between September and February, when visibility in the pristine waters reaches an astonishing 140 feet. This, quite simply, is the biggest draw here.

I'm sinking, slowly, into the South Atlantic void. The surface slips away from me. But not the light. The light streams down as I descend alongside the coral wall and float into the mottled cavern. Now the sunlight's dancing to a gothic tune, seeping through the crags, illuminating the multicolored denizens of the sea. This is where I want to be: among the nurse sharks (lurking lazily at the bottom), the barracudas (the wild dogs of the water world; you would never think, to look at those svelte silver tykes), and the spotted spiny lobsters (the Willy Wonka showstoppers, speckled with red-and-gold antennae and banded with candy-colored legs of lipstick-red and white). Me looking at them, them looking at me. Close, calm, quiet.

Sinking. Not a word serious divers are particularly fond of. Suggests a certain loss of control. But I like the ominous feel of the word and I'm sticking to it - even though there's little to be afraid of here at Pedras Secas, a beguiling reef a mile northeast of the main island. For one thing, there's a reassuring clarity to all I see. The visibility, I later learn, is less than average today, yet it's still a whopping 80 feet. This is thanks to Noronha's sun-soaked latitude -- three degrees south of the equator -- and the fact that these waters, driven by the South Equatorial Current, have lost their suspended nutrients on the long journey from Africa. The conditions are good even when it rains, since there are no natural rivers running from the island to cloud up the sea -- plus you get to see all the sardines racing to the surface under the delusion that the pelting droplets are food.

But there's something else that makes this place special for scuba - something beyond the absence of crowds, for this as far as it gets from the populous underwater playgrounds of Belize, Cozumel, and the Caymans (Noronha permits only three dive companies, each with three small vessels). And something beyond the mere presence of its dizzyingly rich marine life. Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, just an hour and twenty minutes away by plane, has now eclipsed the danger zones of Australia and South Africa for highest number of annual shark attacks in the world. But here, within the sanctuary of Brazil's most secluded marine park, where fishing and spearfishing are banned and the animals are content, not a single shark attack has yet been recorded.

"The behavior of the fish is completely different from any other place I've dived," says Lola Fritzsche, my instructor, who has notched close to 10,000 dives all over South America and was one of the first women to teach scuba in Brazil. "I used to live in Cabo Frio" - Brazil's southern water sports mecca, where spearfishing is popular - "but you could never really get close to the fish because they were so used to operating out of fear. Here, you feel welcome underwater. The fish swim right up to you - you feel like you're one of them."

Amerigo Vespucci must have felt something of that same sense of wonder in 1503, when he sighted land after wrecking his vessel at this very spot, Pedras Secas. "Paradise is here," the Florentine explorer wrote to the king of Portugal. "There are no inhabitants on this island, but there are a myriad of fresh running waters, endless trees, and innumerable sea and land birds, so gentle they can be picked up with one's hands."

While maps of the archipelago had already surfaced by 1500, Vespucci is generally cited as Fernando de Noronha's first visitor. Fact is, he didn't lead the expedition. It was bankrolled by the Portuguese aristocrat Fernando de Loronha (sic), who never even set foot here, and captained by a fellow named Goncalo Coelho, who has long been forgotten. No, Amerigo Vespucci just happened to be the first to write about the unchartered territory -- as he was two years earlier, when he landed in Venezuela and wound up having two whole continents named after him.

Vespucci's rousing descriptions made the rounds through Europe - even Thomas Moore's Utopia, published 13 years later, was infused with doses of the letter. And from that moment on, the P-word was out. Travel writing has never quite been the same since. Almost every island on the planet with a climate more favorable than Finland's has been described as a paradise.

I promised myself that I would not use the word paradise at any point in this story. Nor Eden, nor heaven on earth, nor any of those other travelogue handrails for the crippled mind. A place touched by such singular loveliness, I thought, deserves to be rescued from the dustbin of literary superlatives. And besides, history has cast some long, dark shadows upon this para - oops!

While no one can be sure of Noronha's body count over the years, we can safely assume it must have been substantial, considering how vital this place was as a strategic gateway to the continent - which is why the Portuguese, the French and the Dutch battled it out for control over this tiny dot in the ocean. Here they found firewood, fresh running water, and plenty of food - we're talking turtles, which visiting fleets would tie to the back of the boats and kill one by one as fresh catch.

By the 18th century, Portugal had established itself here and built Brazil's biggest defense system - composed of 10 forts - to protect shipping routes to and from the mainland. But for more than two centuries, Fernando de Noronha was also a penal colony for society's most hardened convicts - many of whose ancestors still populate the island. Brazil's answer to Alcatraz was notorious for torture, even of "criminals" who'd been sent here just for practicing capoeira, the martial art-cum-dance that was introduced by Angolan slaves.

To this day, there are those who are haunted by the past - like Cris, a marine biologist who doubles as my translator for the week. "Since I was six years old - that's the age at which I started diving - I dreamed of coming here," she says, as we walk through the village square one night, passing the ruins of the former prison. "But then when I finally came here, at twenty-one, I was paralyzed by these feelings."

What feelings?

"Bad feelings," Cris replies. "There are certain places I just can't be around. I have visions of blood, visions of dead people." She leads me hastily to Dog's Beach, site of the only bar in the village, opposite the only church. Heaven and hell, face-to-face, fusing together Brazil's dreams and nightmares. Her discomfort is something I hear echoed by others during my stay. But more troubling than superstitious heritage is the environmental rape of the island during its penal period: to prevent prisoners from building boats and escaping to the mainland, the government hacked down every tree in sight.

Nowadays, Brazil's environmental police, IBAMA (the Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, with which TAMAR is affiliated), has swayed to the other extreme, enforcing a set of strict regulations to protect Noronha's fragile ecosystem - regulations that most residents concede are baffling even to them. At certain beaches, for example, and at certain times, surfing is prohibited. Ditto snorkeling. Ditto being there, lest you inadvertently bulldoze over turtle nests.

Accessing Atalaia Beach - where at low tide, the water pools between the reefs to form a natural aquarium - feels akin to getting into an exclusive nightclub. First, you must sign up early each day to be considered for inclusion among the one hundred people who are permitted at any one time (consider this the velvet rope); then you have to drive on an abominably rocky road for 15 minutes before descending, on foot, a sloping cliff that leads to the sand, where an IBAMA staffer wields a sign-up sheet that limits the number of snorkelers to 25 at a time (the VIP room). And only those wearing no sunblock of any description (the ultimate dress code) can be among the chosen, as one's SPF might create an imbalance in the marine world.

Fair enough, I suppose. Such measures certainly do wonders to boost the island's exclusivity factor. They also help make up for a litany of environmental blights that continue to plague the archipelago - like diesel fuel, a leftover from the military days that still constitutes ninety-five percent of Noronha's energy supply. And then there's the invasion of foreign species. Take jitirana, for example. Brought in to feed cattle, this climbing vine is strangling precious indigenous trees and bushes. And say hello to the teju lizard, introduced to eat the growing rat population. But, funny thing, rats are nocturnal and the lizards come out only during the day, so they prey on native birds and turtle eggs instead.

Another pesky arriviste is the sapo frog, a harmless species whose numbers are now out of control, and sufficient to wreak havoc with my driving. Having been hammered by rain one night after a very fine barracuda barbecue at mad Scotsman George's, I return to my dune buggy to find the floor flooded. Like all the buggies available for hire, it has no roof and no door, just an open, windowless hatch to be entered Dukes of Hazzard-style. It's also lacking a horn, a speedometer, a gas gauge, and windshield wipers that work. Oh, and the seat doesn't lock, so it slides back and forth. I should also mention that the lights are jammed in the high-beam position, which helps me blind oncoming traffic on the roads - all of which are unlit. Compounding these problems are my sapo friends, who come bounding toward my headlights. The four-mile route that loops through the northern half of Noronha is officially the shortest highway in Brazil, but tonight's drive back to my pousada seems interminable as I slalom my way around both the carnage of dead frogs and the army of live ones coating the road.

Preparing to retire, I am midway through my bathroom ablutions when I begin to notice a noise - more a wood-scraping sound than a croak. And then the eyes: two hooded beads staring at me from the toilet paper dispenser. During a cursory survey of the bedroom and bathroom, I count three associates, all juveniles. But what to do with them? Having embraced Noronha's code of kinship with all living things, I'm loath to even swat a mosquito. And so I spend the next hour and a half trying to cup and release them outside, with semi-success. Later, I learn that (a) I need to keep the sink plugged at all times to prevent the buggers from crawling up the drainpipe, and (b) the Portuguese word for baby frog - perereca - corresponds with a Brazilian slang term for the female genitalia. So at least I can say that I got plenty of perereca on Fernando de Noronha.

But still no turtles - and no dolphins, either. All that may change, however, since George has agreed to take me out on his afternoon boat run around the periphery of the marine park - his tourist vessel is one of only 13 allowed. This is where we'll spot the spinners, whom a French sailor by the name of Gonoville called sea pigs (he was the first to describe them here - I guess in 1505 you concocted your own names for animals you'd never heard of, much less seen).

George, who's been diving with dolphins for 23 years, reels off tale after tale about dolphins that have changed people's lives - children with disabilities, uptight pensioners - and about his own extraordinary odysseys around Noronha. "I've had courtship with dolphins," he tells me with a straight face. "There was this one lady who swam up beside me" - he's referring to a dolphin, remember - "and from then on, every time I was in the water, she'd come right up to me. So I'd start talking to her. I'd nod my head, then she'd nod hers. Then I'd do a bit of what I call "Circus George" - you know, silly underwater acrobatic stuff - and she'd copy my every move. We understood each other." Wistfully, he adds: "I haven't seen her for more than a year now."

As we circle the north shore, we pass Noronha's greatest landscape hits - including a pair of conical isles called the Two Brothers, and Morro de Pico, a priapic 1,053-foot mountain. Local legend tells of an illicit encounter between two giants who were punished by having their respective breasts and penis cast in rock. But local legend doesn't help summon the dolphins today.

At five o'clock the next morning, I find myself stumbling along a trail in the dark, trying my best to take things in stride. (By "things," I mean the tiny mabuya lizards slithering around my feet.) Spinner Dolphin Project honcho José Martins and his very attractive assistant are leading the way to the cliffside observation point that overlooks the Bay of Dolphins - in which swimming and diving are now banned - and my squirming is not scoring me any points with said assistant, who keeps turning around and shining her flashlight in my face.

As we reach our destination, the dawn begins to break. Every morning, between sunrise and eight o'clock, the world's highest concentration of spinner dolphins - up to 1,200 per pod - swim into the protected cove to rest, play and mate before heading back out to sea to feed. And every morning, José or one of his assistants comes to count these show-offs and to monitor their activity, as they vault impossibly high into the air.

Though the bay is among Noronha's most beautiful spectacles, it's really not my scene. By six o'clock, the tourists have arrived, and we've officially entered the realm of aqua-safari - which is great if you like that sort of thing. I prefer nature shrouded in unexpected magic, or to somehow be a part of it, not a passive spectator.

Down in the bay, the dolphins eventually arrive. Amid the clicking of multiple telephoto-equipped cameras, José delivers a barrage of technical information about the dolphins - when they breed, the numbers that arrive from one hour to the next, the percentage of sightings in the dry season compared with the rainy season. I begin to switch off. In fact, I fancy a stroll; something to wake me up. So I make my excuses and take the trail leading toward Sancho Bay.

Everyone who comes to Fernando de Noronha has his favorite beach, whether for sunbathing, swimming, surfing, snorkeling, or enjoying the sheer beauty. After a half-hour hike through the brambles, I find mine. The sun is blazing now, the soft breeze masking the intensity of the equatorial rays. From a clearing, I gaze down on the gentle white arc of Sancho, enclosed by steep rock walls - one of the most perfect coastal vistas I can recall, even compared to the Caribbean and the South Pacific.

But then something else completes the tableau: a crisp, dark shadow darting through the shallow turquoise waters - the silhouette of a lone lemon shark that has the entire stretch of waterfront to himself. Nothing else is in sight. No animals, no people, nothing. That is, until I follow a fissure in the rocks to where a stepladder leads down through the narrowest of ravines to the sands below. And for one morning, the loveliest beach in Latin America is mine.

Fabulous stuff, huh? The romantic notion of the Travel Writer conjures up visions of a five-star wayfarer hopscotching the globe's cultural, gastronomic, and topographical riches. The reality of travel writing, the dirty little secret, is that despite the air miles and the dream spas and the trips to the light fantastic, there's a component of the job -- and it is a job - that's lonely: tables for one, single cabanas, and nights on the town where you can't feel the beat for fear of isolation.

Not so in Noronha, where you're unceasingly invited on boat trips and to beach parties and to barracuda barbecues. Whatever your agenda, if you don't wind up befriending half the islanders just by reason of being here - and I do mean befriending - then something is very, very wrong. It's not just the trademark gregariousness that welcomes you all over Brazil but a particular tenderness you find with almost everybody here, an implicit invitation to step into the everyday samba of this solitary archipelago.

There's also a sense of purpose that's shared by residents and visitors alike, united in a common eco-vision. That vision is harnessed at the TAMAR visitors center, Noronha's natural nexus, where, seven nights a week, tourists come to hang out and hear the local experts talk about sharks and lizards and turtles and the like -- before they head over to Dog's Bar to dance the very frisky-looking forro (which requires keeping a right thigh tightly pressed between your partner's legs).

If the whole thing sounds a bit precious, consider this: before TAMAR's creation in 1980, there was no marine park, no protected coastline anywhere in Brazil, no concept of environmental tourism. Today Fernando de Noronha successfully melds - like no other place I know of, and among travelers of every stripe - a sense of escape and a genuine sense of discovery, satisfying the dual desires to flee old worlds and to enter new ones.

It's the morning of my departure and I'm snorkeling at Sueste Beach with TAMAR's Claudio Bellini, searching for hawksbill turtles - the most beautiful of all sea turtles, hunted for their exquisitely patterned shells, which are used for jewelry. This, Noronha's most serene bay, is effectively Claudio's office, where he monitors the progress of the earth's second most endangered sea turtle.

Underwater the hawksbill is fast, but Claudio is faster. Each time he signals a sighting, I'm nowhere near. Even so, soon enough we're back onshore together with a flailing juvenile, and Claudio is weighing and measuring it. And then he hands it to me, this strange and beautiful thing, and I feel the way I felt when I first held a baby in my arms: I'm afraid I'm going to drop it.

I'm only half-listening as Claudio tells me how turtles are important because they're a flagship species, because they're a fundamental part of biodiversity. But then he says something that transcends all of Noronha's facts and figures and rules and regulations: "Because turtles are soulful creatures."

And in the midst of our zoological venture - as I'm about to release the young hawksbill back into the blue beyond-- it all comes together: Claudio has concluded his checkup; a honeymoon couple who wandered over have shared a Kodak moment; a local youngster has appeared and offered his unsolicited portering services; and I have my story.