São Sebastião

For most travellers, São Sebastião exists as a single fact: it is where you catch the ferry to Ilhabela. I did the same thing on my first trip, treating the town as a queue to sit in rather than a destination, and it was only on a second visit, delayed by a mechanical problem with the ferry, that I actually walked its historic centre and realized I had been skipping something worthwhile.

The old town is genuinely colonial — a compact grid of streets a few blocks back from the ferry terminal, whitewashed churches from the 1600s, a small but well-kept historic core that gets a fraction of the visitors Paraty does despite being just as old. I wandered it for an afternoon while waiting out the ferry delay, ducking into a church that dated to 1636 and finding it completely empty, no other tourists, just a caretaker sweeping the floor.

The town’s real appeal, though, is the coastline south of the centre. São Sebastião stretches along a long strip of mainland coast with dozens of its own beaches, distinct from Ilhabela’s across the channel but just as good — Maresias and Boiçucanga in particular have become surf and nightlife hubs in their own right, drawing a younger São Paulo crowd that treats the town as a destination rather than a stopover. Maresias in particular has a genuine beach-town energy in high season, bars spilling onto the sand, a surf scene that takes itself seriously.

I ate one of the better simple meals of that trip at a family-run spot near the port — grilled fish just off the boat, rice, farofa, a cold beer — the kind of unpretentious meal that exists in every Brazilian coastal town but somehow tastes better in the ones tourists overlook.

If I were doing the trip again, I would build in a full day in São Sebastião before or after Ilhabela rather than treating it purely as ferry logistics — the historic centre deserves the couple of hours, and Maresias deserves an afternoon on its own merits.

When to go: Anytime the coast is good, but shoulder seasons (April to June, September to November) avoid both the ferry queues and the Maresias nightlife crowds if you want the calmer version of the town.