Ilha do Goio, Bahia de Todos os Santos — 4 July 2019
A few miles south of the previous day's village bar, the shoreline hides a remarkable secret: a freshwater spring that erupts from a fractured sandstone cliff right at the water's edge. The Bahia de Todos os Santos sits over vast artesian aquifers; pressure from the inland plateau forces fresh water up through cracks in the rock, and here at Ilha do Goio the result is a cool cascade flowing directly onto the beach. In colonial times, ships would stop here to replenish their water barrels before the open-ocean passages north to Portugal or east to Africa.
We landed the dinghy and Yuka immediately claimed the spring as her personal shower. The red-and-ochre sandstone is smoothed by centuries of flowing water, its surface covered with the scratched initials of everyone who has found this place before us. We were not the first, but we may have been the happiest to discover it.
The date was the Fourth of July. The combination of a hidden freshwater spring in the Brazilian wilderness and a national holiday called for a celebration. We decked the dinghy with small Stars and Stripes, anchored Oroboro off the island's beach, and toasted with caipirinhas from the cockpit looking out across the bay. Two catamarans anchored side by side in front of a white-sand beach under dramatic cumulus clouds: not a bad way to celebrate American independence.
Yuka at the freshwater spring — an artesian olho d'água that bursts from the sandstone cliff at the waterline
Oroboro and a friend's catamaran at anchor off Ilha do Goio — a perfect Fourth of July anchorage
Celebrating American independence in the middle of Brazil — Stars and Stripes flying from the dinghy