Caraíva is a fishing village at the mouth of the Rio Caraíva in southern Bahia, and one of the few places on this coast that has kept its end-of-the-road character. There are no cars, the streets are sand, and until recently there was no mains electricity at all; even now the lanes are lit at night mostly by the moon and the bars.
You reach it by a dirt road from Trancoso or Porto Seguro that ends at the far bank of the river, where canoes ferry you across to the village. On one side is the river, warm and brackish, good for floating down on the current; on the other is a long beach running south toward the Pataxó indigenous village of Barra Velha and the Monte Pascoal national park.
In the evenings there is forró — the accordion-led dance music of the northeast — in the village's bars, and in high season Caraíva gets crowded and more expensive than its simplicity suggests. In the quieter months it is exactly what people come looking for: a sand village with nothing to do.