Ask about Fernando de Noronha when you're in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and your enquiry will invariably meet with a combination of
wonderment, national pride, jealousy and misinformation. Fernando de Noronha is an island – named after a 16th-century Portuguese nobleman who may never have actually set foot there – that exists in the Brazilian imagination somewhere not far from Shangri-la, Atlantis and paradise. People glaze over when you mention it: eyeballs tend to roll upwards in that universal gesture of delight.
We were told by friends, acquaintances and strangers – none of whom had actually been to Fernando de Noronha – to expect the most spectacular beaches in all of Brazil. Some were certain that jet aircraft are barred from landing there; others warned that there is only one hotel and absolutely no internet. Naomi Campbell, we were reliably informed, goes there to unwind after Sao Paulo Fashion Week, but – far from being just a bolt-hole for the wealthy – it is also a fiercely protected eco-wonderland, favoured by naturalists and marine biologists. The island's luxuriously warm and unsullied emerald waters are, it was widely agreed, teeming with dolphins and turtles. What's more, the consensus assured us that every type of shark common to the area is, in fact, friendly.
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