Trindade is a fishing village that was lucky enough to stay a fishing village. It sits at the southern edge of Rio de Janeiro state, in the municipality of Paraty, where the Serra da Bocaina comes right down to the Atlantic and the forest, still real Mata Atlântica, runs almost to the sand. The beaches are small bays divided by granite headlands, and some of them have natural rock pools that fill and drain with the tide.
The road to it leaves the BR-101, the Rio-Santos highway, and drops about twenty kilometres through jungle-draped hills. It is narrow and steep in places, with tight bends, a surface that varies from fine to patched, and the occasional section where the rains have bitten the edges. Local buses and pickups share it, and they drive it faster than visitors do, so keep to your side. After a storm there can be mud and fallen branches, and in the middle of the day there is a lot of shade, which means damp tarmac in the corners. The reward is the last descent, when the bay opens up below you and you can smell the sea before you see it.
The people here, the caiçaras, descend from Indigenous Brazilians, Portuguese settlers and enslaved Africans, and they have fished this coast for centuries. Paraty itself was a gold port in the eighteenth century, when mule trains brought gold down from Minas Gerais along the Caminho do Ouro and ships carried it away, and the cobbled colonial centre, now protected, is worth a day of its own. Trindade has a more relaxed history, and a more relaxed present: hostels, beachside kitchens that serve grilled fish and cold beer, and a good deal of hammock life.
Do not count on fuel in the village. Paraty, nineteen kilometres away, is the place to fill up before you come down, and the tank you leave with should carry you comfortably along the coast. If you are on the coast road in the dry months, May to September, the water is clear and the forest is quieter. In summer the village is crowded, and the road jammed at weekends.