While in Brazil, we spent the majority of our time based in the fishing village of Lagoa Azeda. Lagoa Azeda is very, very far off the tourist track which is just what we wanted.

It is first and foremost a fishing village:

I walked around the village when we first arrived to give you a sense of what it is like…

This is the beach, and the cottage we stayed in is the one on the extreme left with the white car in front:

No beach resorts here… You can literally walk for miles down the beach in either direction without encountering another person or any sign of civilization. It’s great.

Scenes of Lagoa Azeda:

As I indicated, it is primarily a fishing village. The fishing boats are anchored just offshore and then the fishermen surf/paddle in on these crude rafts:

Here a group of fishermen is preparing to go out to sea:

And here is a group making their way out to a boat:

During the season we were in Lagoa Azeda, most of the fish were brought in at night.

In the pictures below, a catch has just been brought in and is being weighed and sorted:

These are the two fish we bought for dinner:

Life in Lagoa Azeda revolves around fishing and so even if you wander around the back of the village, you’ll still see evidence of the importance of fishing to this community everywhere. Below you can see fishing nets stretched out on racks to be repaired:

And below you can see a fishing boat in “drydock” for repairs:

To enter Lagoa Azeda, one crosses a rickety bridge (they know it is time to repair the bridge when it collapses every few years) leading through this salt marsh:

The marshes stretch around the hill behind Lagoa Azeda and it is here that the poorest inhabitants of the village live in a manner little different than one would have lived here five hundred years ago:

This area also happens to be the best way to access the top of the hill behind the village. The undergrowth is quite thick up here, but one can find a number of abandoned graves of fishermen that died at sea and one can get some great views:

This area is also where the monkeys live. Periodically, they’ll make their way out of the jungle and down the hill to check out the goings on in the village. I don’t use the word “cute” very often, but these little guys are awfully damn cute.

Below, you can see one being fed a piece of a banana after they came to visit us at the house: