Responsible Tourism

Reserva Sete Quedas is a working reserve first and a place to stay second. Eight hundred acres of mountain above the Sete Quedas waterfalls, a 300-year-old organic banana farm, three streams and four springs, and a strict ceiling of 25 chalets that will never be exceeded. This page sets out the rules we ask every guest to follow, the reasons behind each one, and the commitments we hold ourselves to in return. None of it is decoration. The code is how a small number of visitors can pay for the protection of a large piece of Atlantic Forest without loving it to death.

The land

800 acres above Paraty, Rio de Janeiro state

Protected forest

500 continuous acres (100 owned + 400 adjoining parkland)

The farm

15 acres, organic bananas, ~300 years old

Water

3 streams and 4 springs feeding the seven waterfalls

The cap

25 chalets maximum, one per two acres, forever

Why a reserve needs a code

Most rules exist because someone, somewhere, learned the hard way. Ours are no different. This mountain sits inside the Mata Atlantica, the Atlantic Forest of the Serra do Mar and Serra da Bocaina, which is one of the richest and most threatened forests on Earth. It is not a robust, endless wilderness that shrugs off whatever you do to it. It is a survivor. Only a fraction of the original Atlantic Forest is still standing, and the pieces that remain are doing an enormous amount of quiet work: holding soil on steep slopes, keeping the streams clean, sheltering animals and plants that live nowhere else. Our 500 acres of continuous protected forest are one of those surviving pieces.

When you come here, you become part of the system for a few days. Where you step, what you touch, how much water you use, whether you feed a bird or leave it alone: all of it adds up, especially multiplied across a season of guests. The code turns good intentions into specific habits. We would rather tell you plainly what helps and what harms than leave you guessing, and we would rather explain the reason than simply issue an order. When you understand why a rule exists, you tend to keep it even when no one is watching, which is exactly when it matters most.

This is also a matter of honesty about what this place is. It is not a resort. It is not mass tourism. It is not a real-estate development dressed up in green language. It is a conservation project funded by a handful of low-impact chalets. You can read more about that model on our conservation and sustainability pages. The short version: the forest comes first, the farm second, and the chalets exist to make both possible.

The guest code

Here is what we ask of everyone who stays, walks, swims, or eats here, whatever your age and whoever you came with. These apply equally to a couple on a quiet week, a family with small children, a solo traveller, and a group of old friends. Read them once, keep them in the back of your mind, and the reserve will take care of the rest.

Stay on the trails

The paths here are old. Many of them were built by donkeys and mules hundreds of years ago, hauling produce down the mountain along routes that followed the gentlest workable grade. They are part of the history of this land, and they are also the safest, driest way through it. We ask you to stay on them for three reasons. The first is the forest floor itself, which is alive in a way that is easy to miss. Under the leaf litter is a thin, fragile layer of roots, fungi, seedlings, and tiny animals that does the slow work of turning fallen leaves back into soil. A single boot print off the path crushes weeks of that work; a hundred boot prints on the same shortcut turn it into bare, eroding ground that never recovers on its own.

The second reason is you. These are steep tropical slopes with hidden drop-offs, loose rock after rain, and streams that rise fast. The marked trails keep you on footing we know and check. The third reason is the animals. Wildlife learns the rhythm of the paths and gives them a wide berth, so keeping to the trail leaves the rest of the forest as genuine refuge. Wander off and you shrink the quiet space the animals depend on, often without ever seeing the creature you disturbed. If a trail is closed or roped off, it is closed for a reason, usually erosion repair or a nesting season, and we will always tell you when it reopens.

Don't pick, and don't feed

The orchids, bromeliads, heliconias, ferns, and wild seedlings you pass are not a garden centre. Many Atlantic Forest plants are slow-growing, and some are found only in this narrow coastal mountain band. A picked orchid is a plant that will not set seed; a dug-up bromeliad is a home lost for the frogs, insects, and tiny crabs that live in the pools of water it holds in its leaves. Take photographs, take your time, take nothing else. The same goes for the farm: the bananas and anything else growing are a working harvest, not a self-serve buffet, and we are glad to share the story and the fruit through your hosts rather than have plants stripped at random.

Feeding wildlife is the harder rule for kind-hearted people to keep, because it feels generous. It is not. A wild animal that learns to associate humans with food stops foraging properly, loses its natural wariness, and often becomes aggressive or sick. Our bread is not a coati's or a capuchin's diet, and human food can make them ill. Worse, a fed animal becomes a nuisance animal, and nuisance animals are the ones that end up hurt, relocated, or killed. The kindest thing you can do for the toucans, the monkeys, the agoutis, and everything else here is to let them stay wild and a little afraid of you. Keep your food packed away, close your chalet when you leave, and never hand-feed anything, however tame it seems.

Pack out what you bring

We are off-grid-minded and a long way up a mountain. There is no municipal rubbish truck grinding up the old roads every morning, and there is no landfill hidden behind the tree line. What comes up here has to go back down, so we ask you to carry out what you carry in, especially on walks and swims. That means your snack wrappers, your bottles, your fruit peels, and anything else, all the way back to the sorting point rather than into a bush or a stream. Even organic scraps matter: an apple core or a banana peel tossed into the forest is not "natural" here, it is a lure that trains animals to scavenge and can introduce seeds and moulds that do not belong. Your hosts will show you how we separate compost, recycling, and the small amount of true waste that leaves the mountain. Leaving a place cleaner than you found it is an old walker's habit, and it is welcome here.

Go easy on water and energy

Everything that comes out of your tap is spring water from this property, gravity-fed and clean, not piped in from a treatment plant with limitless supply. Everything that powers your chalet comes from the sun, stored in batteries that only hold so much through a run of cloudy days. That is the trade for staying somewhere genuinely low-impact: the systems are human-scaled, and they reward a little awareness. Take the shower you need rather than the marathon you might take at home. Turn off lights and chargers when you leave the chalet. If the weather has been grey for days, expect us to ask everyone to lean a little lighter on the batteries, and know that we are not being stingy; we are keeping the lights on for the whole park without firing up a generator. None of this should feel like hardship. It usually just feels like paying attention, which is half of why people come to a place like this in the first place. You can read how the whole system is designed on the ecomix park page.

Keep the quiet hours

The forest gets loud on its own terms at dawn and dusk, and it goes properly dark and still at night. That is not a lack of entertainment; it is the entertainment. We keep quiet hours in the evening so that guests can hear the streams, the frogs, the owls, and the occasional larger animal moving through, and so that wildlife can move through the park under cover of real darkness and real silence. Sound and light both carry a long way up here. A speaker playing music, a bright porch light left blazing, a loud late conversation: each one pushes the animals back and pulls the wildness out of the place for everyone around you. Talk, laugh, share a late meal, of course. Just let the volume drop after dark, keep outdoor lighting low and pointed down, and let the mountain have its night.

Leave the single-use plastic at home

We do not want single-use plastic on the reserve, and there are good, practical reasons beyond the obvious. Plastic that blows off a table or slips out of a bag does not disappear; it snags in the streams that feed the waterfalls, breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, and ends up in the water, the soil, and eventually the animals. Because we haul our own waste down the mountain, every disposable bottle and wrapper is also literally our burden to carry. So bring a refillable bottle: the spring water here is the best you will drink, and there is no reason to buy it bottled. Bring a proper bag for the market in town, a reusable cup, and containers if you plan to pack food for a walk. If you arrive with single-use items, that is fine, just plan to take them back down with you. We would rather help you avoid them in the first place, and your hosts can point you to what you actually need.

Respect the farm, and respect the neighbours

The 15-acre banana farm at the heart of this place is about 300 years old and still working. It is not a museum exhibit or a backdrop for photos; it is a living organic operation with people tending it, seasons that matter, and paths that are working routes. Walk the farm where you are welcome, ask questions, and treat the plants, tools, and terraces as someone's livelihood, because they are. Stay clear of work in progress unless you have been invited to join it.

The same courtesy extends past our boundary. This is a rural mountain community, not an empty stage. Our neighbours farm, keep animals, worship, raise families, and go to sleep early because they get up early. Drive slowly on the shared roads, especially near homes and around the animals and children who use them. Ask before photographing people or private property. Buy from local producers when you can. A reserve like this only survives long-term if the people who live around it see visitors as good news rather than a nuisance, and that reputation is built one respectful guest at a time. When you plan your stay through our booking page, we will fill you in on anything specific to the season you are visiting.

What we commit to in return

A code that only asks things of guests is a lecture, not a partnership. So here is our side of the agreement: the standards we hold ourselves to, whether or not anyone is here to check. These commitments are the reason the guest rules are worth keeping, because they are what your care actually protects and funds.

Protection

Our first job is simply to keep the forest standing. We own and protect 100 acres of forest outright, and our land sits directly against a further 400 acres of protected parkland held as natural Atlantic Forest outside our ownership boundary. Together that makes 500 continuous acres of protected forest, which matters far more than 500 scattered acres would. Wildlife needs connected habitat to move, breed, and survive, and a large unbroken block of forest is worth more than the sum of its parts. We keep the boundaries clear, watch for encroachment, fire, and poaching, and we do not clear, subdivide, or sell off the protected land. The 50-acre ecomix park, where the chalets sit, is deliberately held to one chalet per two acres, which means 25 chalets at absolute most, ever. That cap is the whole point: it is what keeps the rest of the 800 acres as forest instead of frontage.

Restoration

Protection holds the line; restoration wins ground back. Where old clearings, worn paths, or past damage have left gaps, we work to bring native Atlantic Forest species back rather than letting invasive plants take hold. That means favouring native trees, protecting natural regeneration where the forest is already healing itself, and being patient, because this forest rebuilds on its own timescale, not ours. The farm plays a part too: organic, low-impact cultivation on the 15 acres keeps that land productive without poisoning the soil or the water, and leaves the surrounding forest to do what it does best. Healthy edges, clean streams, and a working farm that behaves like part of the ecosystem rather than a wound in it: that is the restoration goal, year after year.

Local employment

Conservation that ignores the people who live around it does not last. We are committed to employing local people, on fair terms, in the running of the farm, the care of the chalets, the maintenance of trails and springs, and the guiding and hosting that make a stay here worth the trip. The knowledge that keeps this place alive, which plant is which, where the water runs, how the old roads were built and how to keep them, how the seasons behave on this particular mountain, lives in this community. Paying for that knowledge, and keeping the income here rather than exporting it, is both the right thing to do and the practical thing. A reserve staffed and supported by its own region has hundreds of guardians instead of a fence.

Sourcing

What we buy is a conservation decision too. We source locally and organically wherever we can, from the food on offer to the materials we build and repair with. Short supply chains mean fewer trucks grinding up the mountain, money that stays in the region, and produce that actually tastes of this place. The banana farm is the clearest example, an organic harvest with a 300-year history, but the principle runs through everything. We favour what is grown, made, and mended nearby over what is shipped in cheaply from far away, even when the nearby option costs a little more, because the cheap option usually has a hidden bill the forest ends up paying.

Transparency

Finally, we commit to being straight with you about all of it. We will not overstate what we do or hide what we get wrong. If a trail is eroding, a restoration effort has failed, or a season has been hard on the water supply, we would rather tell you than paper over it. The claims on this site are meant to be checkable, the numbers are the real ones, and the model, small-scale tourism paying for large-scale protection, is stated plainly because it only works if people trust it. If you ever want to understand how a specific part of the reserve works, ask. You can reach us any time through the contact page, and we will give you a real answer rather than a brochure line.

A large, unbroken block of protected forest is worth far more than the sum of its scattered parts.

How tourism actually funds conservation here

It is fair to ask how a place like this pays for itself without becoming the very thing it claims to oppose. The honest answer is a deliberately awkward one: we keep the number of guests small on purpose, and we let that small number carry the cost of protecting a large amount of land. Twenty-five chalets is not many. It is nowhere near enough to turn this into a resort, and that is the design, not a limitation we are hoping to grow out of. A bigger operation would need more roads, more water, more waste handling, more noise, more light, and more disturbance, and at some point the tourism would start eating the very forest it was supposed to fund.

So the maths runs the other way from most tourism. Instead of maximising heads and minimising cost per head, we keep the footprint tiny and let each stay contribute meaningfully to protection, restoration, wages, and the day-to-day work of keeping 500 acres of forest intact. When you book a chalet, you are not just renting a room with a nice view. You are buying a share of ranger-style vigilance, trail repair, native planting, spring and stream care, and fair local employment, funded by the fact that the land is worth more standing and protected than cleared and sold. That is the trade, and it is why the guest code matters so much: the whole model depends on visitors who tread lightly enough that the forest can absorb them without harm.

It is worth being clear about what this is not. It is not a scheme to sell plots of forest as holiday homes. It is not a loophole for putting a resort inside a protected area. The chalet cap is fixed, the protected land is not for subdivision, and the point of the business is the forest, not the other way around. If you want the full picture of the finances of protection and the philosophy behind it, the conservation and sustainability pages go deeper. This page is about the behaviour that makes the model hold together on the ground.

What you are actually protecting: the Atlantic Forest

It helps to know what all these rules are in service of. The Mata Atlantica, the Atlantic Forest, once ran in a broad green band down the eastern side of Brazil. Today only a fraction of it remains, in fragments scattered along the coast and up into the mountains, and yet even those fragments hold an astonishing concentration of life. Biologists rank it among the world's great biodiversity hotspots precisely because it combines two things: extraordinary richness, with a high share of species found nowhere else on Earth, and extraordinary threat, because so little of it is left. Our stretch of it, high in the Serra do Mar and the Serra da Bocaina, is one of the better-preserved pieces, which is both a privilege and a responsibility.

The layers of the forest

An Atlantic Forest like this one is not a single thing but a stack of habitats, and part of the pleasure of walking it slowly is learning to read the layers. High in the canopy, toucans, tanagers, and countless smaller birds work the flowering and fruiting trees, and troops of monkeys move along the branches. Down where you walk, the understorey is dense with tree ferns, palms, and young trees waiting for a gap in the canopy to shoot upward. Every trunk and branch is a garden in its own right, hung with orchids, bromeliads, mosses, and ferns that live perched on other plants rather than in the soil. And at your feet, the forest floor is a slow, dark engine of decomposition, where fungi and insects turn the constant rain of leaves back into the soil that feeds everything above. Each layer depends on the others, which is why disturbing any one of them, even by trampling the floor or picking an epiphyte, ripples further than it looks.

Water, the quiet backbone

The single most important resource on this property is water, and it is worth understanding how it moves. Three streams and four springs rise within the 800 acres. The springs give clean, cold water year-round, which is what fills your tap and what the whole park runs on. The streams gather and run downhill, and it is these streams that feed the Sete Quedas, the seven waterfalls, in the area below the reserve, about two miles down the mountain from us. That connection is the reason the water rules on this page are not fussy housekeeping but genuine conservation. Everything that happens to the water up here, every drop of soap, every scrap of litter, every eroded bank, flows downstream to the falls and beyond. Keeping the streams clean and the banks stable is how we keep both our own supply and the waterfalls healthy. It is also why a forested, unbroken catchment matters: intact forest holds water, releases it slowly, and filters it, which is a service no engineered system does as well or as cheaply.

The animals we share it with

You may not see the larger wildlife, and that is often a sign the reserve is working: healthy wild animals avoid people. But they are here and in the wider Serra da Bocaina. Primates move through these forests, from noisy troops of monkeys in the canopy to the rare and endangered southern muriqui, one of the largest primates in the Americas, which survives in protected mountain forest of this range. Small mammals like agoutis and coatis work the forest floor, and the streams and damp ground are alive with frogs, especially after rain, when the chorus can be extraordinary. Birdlife is the easiest richness to notice, from toucans and trogons to hummingbirds working the heliconias. The point of the guest code is not to keep you away from any of this. It is to let you into it on terms that leave it intact, so that the animal you are lucky enough to glimpse is a genuinely wild one, living its life, rather than a tamed scavenger waiting by a bin.

The farm and the old roads

Woven through the forest is the human history of this mountain, and it is not a footnote. The 15-acre banana farm has been worked for something like 300 years, which makes it older than a great deal of what people think of as permanent. It is organic today, and it has always been small-scale, shaped to the land rather than imposed on it. Bananas suit this place: they grow well on the slopes and in the warm, wet climate, and an organic banana grove, tended properly, sits far more gently in the landscape than most agriculture. Walking the farm is one of the best ways to understand how people have lived with this forest rather than against it for centuries.

Lacing the whole property are the old donkey and mule roads, hand-built over generations to move produce and people up and down terrain that is steep enough to make you respect whoever laid them out. These roads are engineering of a patient, low-tech kind, following the contours, holding their grade, and lasting for centuries because they were built to work with water and gravity rather than fight them. We maintain them, walk them, and ask you to keep to them, both because they are the safe route and because they are heritage worth protecting. When you follow one of these paths through the banana groves and into the forest, you are walking a route that has carried harvests for many human lifetimes, and will carry them for many more if we look after it.

Being a good traveller beyond the reserve

Most guests who come this far do not spend every hour on the mountain, and they should not have to. This corner of the Costa Verde is one of the most rewarding in Brazil, and the same low-impact instincts that serve you well here serve you well everywhere in the region. A little care from visitors goes a long way in places that are loved hard, and everything within reach of the reserve falls into that category.

Paraty

Paraty, the colonial town and bay you pass through to reach us, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, both for its remarkably preserved 18th-century centre and for the biodiversity of the surrounding land and sea. The historic streets are cobbled with the famous irregular stones that flood on high tides by design, and they reward slow, respectful wandering on foot. Support the town's makers, cooks, and boatmen, keep the noise down in the old centre in the evenings, and treat the buildings and the harbour as the living heritage they are. The Caminho do Ouro, the old gold trail that climbs from Paraty over the Serra, is a reminder that this whole landscape has been a route between coast and highlands for centuries, the same story the mule roads on our own land tell in miniature.

Cunha and the Serra

Over the mountains behind us lies Cunha, a cool highland town in Sao Paulo state known for its wood-fired ceramics studios and its lavender fields. The drive up over the Serra da Bocaina is spectacular, winding through protected forest with long views back toward the coast, and it makes a fine contrast to the warm, wet mountainside of the reserve. Pedra da Macela, on the way, offers one of the great viewpoints of the region on a clear day, taking in the bay and its islands far below. As always, drive the mountain roads with care, especially in mist, and buy directly from the ceramicists and growers when you can.

The coast and the islands

To the north and out to sea, the options open up. Angra dos Reis and its bay are scattered with hundreds of islands, and Ilha Grande, the largest, is a car-free island of forest trails and beaches, including the long, famous sweep of Lopes Mendes. South along the coast, the village of Trindade and the calm inlet of Saco do Mamangua, sometimes called Brazil's only tropical fjord, reward travellers who like their beauty a little wilder and a little quieter. Further down into Sao Paulo state, Ubatuba is a surf coast of dozens of beaches and is home to a Projeto Tamar sea-turtle station, part of the national effort to protect Brazil's marine turtles. Everywhere out here the rules are the same as ours in spirit: take your rubbish with you, give wildlife room, respect the people who live and work there year-round, and leave each beach and trail fit for the next person to fall in love with.

Getting around responsibly

How you move through the region matters as much as where you go. The roads near the reserve are narrow, shared, and often steep, so drive slowly and expect the unexpected around blind bends: a dog, a child, a cyclist, an oncoming truck. Where boats are the way to reach islands and remote beaches, use the local operators who know the waters. Group your trips rather than making constant short drives up and down the mountain, both to save the road and to save yourself the effort. And build in slow days. The reserve is at its best when you are not rushing, and so, honestly, is the whole coast.

A short version to carry with you

If you remember nothing else from this page, remember this handful of habits. They are the whole code, boiled down.

• Stay on the trails. The forest floor is alive, the slopes are steep, and the animals need the space off-path.
• Look, don't take, and don't feed. Photograph the plants and wildlife, and let both stay exactly where and how you found them.
• Carry out what you carry in. Everything comes down the mountain, including your rubbish and your scraps.
• Use water and power like they are finite, because here they are. Spring water, solar power, human scale.
• Keep the nights quiet and dark. Low voices, low lights, and let the forest have its evening.
• Ditch single-use plastic. Refill your bottle, bring your bag, and keep plastic out of the streams and the falls.
• Respect the farm and the neighbours. This is a working farm in a real community, not a stage set.

Keep those, and you will be exactly the kind of guest this place was built for. You will also have a better time, because nearly every rule here is really an invitation to slow down and pay attention, which is the only way a forest like this ever reveals itself.

Come, and help keep it standing

None of this is meant to make a stay here feel like an exam. It is meant to make it mean something. When you book a chalet and follow the code, you become part of the reason 500 acres of Atlantic Forest stays forest, three streams and four springs stay clean, seven waterfalls keep running below, and a 300-year-old farm keeps working. That is a genuinely good thing to be part of, whether you come as a couple, a family, a group of friends, or on your own. We would love to have you.

When you are ready, you can plan a stay, read the deeper background on our conservation and sustainability pages, or just get in touch with a question. Come for the waterfalls, the forest, the birdsong, and the quiet. Leave it exactly as you found it, or a little better, and it will still be here, wild and working, for whoever comes after you.