Praia da Pipa – 6 days in my favorite Brazil beach town!

Man, do I love Praia da Pipa. Like love. Like I apologize in advance if it gets awkward because I gush over my love for this Brazil beach town too hard in this post.

To give you a little background, Praia da Pipa is a little beach town located about 85km south of Natal. It took us about an hour and a half to reach there, and the excitement already started when we checked into our pousada, Oka da Mata.

Before I go any further, let me just say how much I loved staying at Oka da Mata. It reminded me a bit of where we stayed in Jericoacoara, in that it was super clean and decorated beautifully, with a big room for us and nice common areas. I definitely could have lived here! And, I mean the sunsets from the pool / cabana area? Swoon.

Anyway, we originally had intended to stay in Praia da Pipa only for two nights, both because we thought we’d be spending some time in Canoa Quebrada before and we thought we wanted to spend more time in Olinda and Recife after. But, as we extended our two-day reservation into four, and then six, we realized it is because we are more in love with beaches than cities. We could go swim in the ocean every single day for weeks or months and not get bored of it.

While what we had read of Olinda and Recife was nice, it wasn’t very beach-focused and the cities were nice cities, but not with many major defining feature about them. So, we thought that 48 hours in Olinda would be enough (more on that to come later) and that we’d rather spend more time in Praia da Pipa. Which was totally the right call.

Praia da Pipa – an overview

The town itself is actually called Pipa, which means ‘kite’ in Portuguese. The town got the name because at the end of one of the beaches there is a giant rock that (supposedly) looked like a kite to early settlers. When we saw the rock it didn’t really look like a kite to us, but hey, to each their own!  I’ll be calling the whole area “Praia da Pipa” throughout this post because that’s what I think of it as!

Praia da Pipa, for us, basically boils down to a stretch of beaches, each with their own unique personality and then a really cute center town. It is clean, with minimal bugs, animal poop and flies, which already started as a win for me. And then, there is a nice mix of people ranging from locals to ex-pats (lots of Argentines), all who love the beach and beach-life.

Instead of going through what we did chronologically, as I do in other posts, for this one I’m going to walk through the beaches and then the town. And then in a separate post I’ll write in more detail about the wild dolphins that just swim and hang out with folks at some of the beaches, it is nuts!

Praia da Pipa’s beaches

Depending on how far you believe Pipa’s jurisdiction goes there are anywhere from four to nine beaches in its boundaries. Below is the map we used to guide us around and to help orient you (I know it’s all crumply and withered, but our used maps are actually my favorite souvenir; I try to save them all to put into our photobooks later, they are a great way to remember where we went and what we did).

Praia do Centro – Central beach

This is the main beach that is right off the center of town. You can park for free on the streets (though usually there are people there who “offer” to watch your car for 5 reais. For the $1.50 you just pay them and let them do it). This beach is super cute, even for a main city beach, which we often try to avoid. There’s a lot of little food places to eat, where if you order you can also use their chairs and umbrellas for free, and the fisherman all dock their boats at this beach, making an extra beautiful scene!

Praia do Porto – the in-between beach

This is the beach between Praia do Centro and Baia dos Golfinhos (coming up next). This beach is quite rocky and is also where some of the fisherman dock their boats. The fun part about this beach is that it is backed by cliffs (as are many other beaches), but is completely unpassable during high-tide. And the only access to Baia dos Golfinhos (one of the most coveted beaches) is by foot, through Praia do Porto, so all the hotels give you tide time tables to prevent you from getting stuck and not being able to pass!

Baia dos Golfinhos – The Bay of Dolphins

Ah, this was a fun one! As mentioned above, you have to walk through Praia do Porto during low tide to get to Baia dos Golfinhos. And, the big draw of Baia dos Golfinhos is that you can (supposedly) see dolphins in the water in the wild, and swim / kayak / SUP right next to them. We were so excited about this that as soon as we got into town on Monday afternoon we dropped our stuff off and went out to Baia dos Golfinhos during low tide (supposedly the best dolphin time).

Unfortunately we didn’t see any dolphins this day, but we loved the beach itself. It was beautiful with clean, fine, white sand and was backed by stunning cliffs. The water is a gorgeous green-blue and because it is harder to get to and from there are fewer people there. Damian also spent another morning doing a swim at Baia dos Golfinhos, while I stayed in, and it was just as enjoyable.

Praia do Madeiro – Wood Beach

Now this, this was our moneymaker beach! Not only did we go here four out of our six days in Pipa, but it is also the place where you can see dolphins swimming most often, and we saw those dolphins every. single. day. Yay!!

To get to this beach you can drive up to the entry point and then, because the beach is cliffside, you have to walk down (and yes, eventually back up) 152 steps (we counted). I hate steps, like hate, even when I’m in tip top shape, but it was so worth it that I would do it everyday for this beach.

What did we love about this beach? Well, it basically has everything you could want. The same clean, fine, white sand that is backed by stunning cliffs and gorgeous green-blue water, but with a little more services than Baia dos Golfinhos. On one of the days at Madeiro we took surf lessons and we both got up! I required a little more help than that former-gynmast-but-still-super-fit Damian, but I’m pretty sure I won the style game! As an fyi, a one-hour surfing lesson for the two of us, including boards for the rest of the day and the following day was 120 reais, or about $36.

On two other days we rented kayaks so we could go out and get closer to the dolphins. We got to rent the kayak for 40 reais, or $12, for two hours, and honestly I would have paid way more for the experience. As I mentioned on Instagram, kayaking next to these amazing creatures was just pure joy and I can’t wait to write a whole separate post about it so I can share all the pictures!

Finally, what I loved about this beach was just the amazing views. It was so fun and relaxing to sit under an umbrella and read a book and look out into a slice of the beauty that nature has to offer. And there were days when the waves were super big and fun, so just like Praia de Baleia, we had lots of fun playing in them. We tried to get some pics to show how big the waves were but I’m not sure we did it justice!

Praia do Amor – Beach of Love

The final beach we went to in Pipa is called Praia do Amor, aka the beach of love. It got this name because the shoreline looks like the top of a heart, but my 7-year-old brain thinks it looks more like a butt. If it was named my way it would be called Praia da Bunda, hahahaha.

This beach faces more out into the ocean and so the water is a little colder and the waves are a little bigger. There are more kitesurfers and regular surfers here to take advantage of the waves. I wasn’t in the mood to go swimming the afternoon that we went to this beach, especially because the water was chilly and the sun was setting, but it looked nice and fun!

We also walked the length of this beach and back, and especially at the far end it felt more “local,” with more long-term Pipa-residents having set up shop as lunch outposts. I mean, check out how cute this sign is advertising lunch for two (for only $12, including meat and sides!).

Other beaches that we didn’t make it to

There were other beaches we didn’t make it to, mostly those that are further out – Praia das Minas, Praia de Sibaúma, Praia de Cacimbinha, Praia do Giz and Praia de Tibau. There’s also a beautiful lagoon called Lagoa de Guaraíras that we skipped. Once we had a beach we loved and once we knew we would see dolphins there, it was kind of hard to do anything else.

The town of Pipa

The town of Pipa is so cute. Like super duper cute. We stayed a couple kilometers out of town and each night would drive the five minutes into the central area, find street parking, pay someone five reais to “watch” our car and then wander around. This was an especially cute alley way filled with shopping and eats. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Greece!

I think the reason I liked this town better than some of the other beach towns we’ve been to is because it felt cleaner. While there are dogs on the streets, many of them are owned vs. strays so there is less animal poop, and thus, less flies.

Additionally, the vibe of Pipa is just me. If I could, I’d live in a relaxed, warm place and wear beach-y clothes all year round. There were so many cute shops to pop in and out of, and even though I didn’t end up buying anything (how many beach-y dresses does a New York City girl need?) it was fun to browse.

There was also a more diverse food scene vs. some of the other places we had been to. While some of the places were a miss (thai, for example), we really enjoyed eating at Tapas and also having more crepes.

And finally, I found another street artist to love, Rafa Santos. He is more of a lettering artist and has done the signs for most of the beaches that we saw in the area. However, just like my man Eduardo Kobra, he is also about social change. We saw so many of these trash cans for cigarette butts on them around town, that he painted (they say “your cigarette is trash” on them) and he even had painted little donation boxes that were in some stores to collect money to spay / neuter the local town cats. I love his distinct, bold style of work, but even more that he gives his time and talents to good, local causes.

And that’s a wrap on our time in Praia da Pipa!

I wish I could live closer to Praia da Pipa and be there all the time. But, given it is only an hour and a half from Natal, which does have international flights, I guess I have to live with just returning there sooner rather than later. I’m glad we were there in the shoulder season / off-season, because even though some things were closed I like the quiet and calm more than the party-hard atmosphere, and I’d probably pick similar timing again.

I love the atmosphere, the people and the beaches of this little town, and it was the perfect place to start wrapping up our time in Brasil. Pipa, thanks for the memories!

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Read more about our time in Brazil using the links below:

• Brazil Country Recap – What we loved (and didn’t love) in our six weeks there
• Iguazu Falls
• Exploring São Paulo
• Exploring Bonito
• Touring in Bonito (river snorkeling and waterfall hiking)
• Rio de Janeiro: Our first three days in Rio
• Rio de Janeiro: “Professor-ial” thoughts on attending a game at Maracana
• Rio de Janeiro: Volunteering with Project Favela
• Three days in the beach paradies of Ubatuba!
• Rio de Janeiro: Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain
• The amazing landscape of Lençóis Maranhenses
• Three days in the hippie beach town of Jericoacoara
• Why we had to skip Canoa Quebrada and go to Natal instead
• Six days in Praia da Pipa (my favorite beach town) (you are here!)
• 24 hours in Olinda