Itacaré, Brazil
Written on March 7th, 2026 by Dr Hobo
This is part of a series on my favourite places visited whilst backpacking.
Itacaré, Bahia, Brazil
Last visit: July 2014
Vibe: Barefoot surf town with a side of jungle magic
Brazil in July 2014 was a country in the grip of a very particular kind of madness. The World Cup had turned the whole nation into a theatre of extremes — euphoria, protest, and somewhere in the middle, a gringo working in a hostel in Vitória, doing his best to serve caipirinhas fast enough to keep pace with the goals. When England crashed out early and the circus moved on, I headed south to decompress somewhere the football couldn’t find me.
Itacaré found me instead.
A small town on the southern Bahia coast, wedged between the Atlantic rainforest and the Atlantic Ocean, Itacaré runs at a pace that makes you reconsider everything you thought was urgent. There are no traffic lights. The main street is a lazy curve of surf shops, juice bars, and restaurant terraces where hammocks double as furniture. The rhythm here is set by the tides, and if you can’t adjust to that within 24 hours, the town will quietly wait you out.
The surf culture is real, and it brings with it the universal currency of surf towns worldwide: a mild but unmistakable arrogance. The local surfers are genuinely good — Itacaré’s beach breaks and point breaks have been drawing serious wave hunters for decades — and they know it. As a non-surfer you are tolerated warmly, perhaps even welcomed, as long as you understand your place in the food chain. I understood my place immediately and settled into it with no complaints.
The beaches themselves don’t compete for your attention — they simply reveal themselves, one after another, each requiring a short trek through Atlantic rainforest to reach. Prainha, Engenhoca, Havaizinho. You earn each one with a sweaty twenty-minute walk, which means that by the time you arrive, you’ve usually got the place almost to yourself. That trade-off — mild effort for near-total solitude — never gets old.
The Cleandro Waterfalls
The highlight, though, came not from the ocean but from the river.
Having picked up a fellow traveller at the hostel — the kind of easy friendship that forms within about twenty minutes when you’re both killing time in a hammock — we rented canoes from the beach and set off up the Rio das Contas under our own steam. Nobody guided us. Nobody particularly warned us. We just went.
Paddling against the current on the way out is a workout you don’t fully appreciate until you stop, at which point the river immediately begins returning you to where you started. The reward for persistence is a tunnel of mangroves so dense and low that you find yourself ducking instinctively, watching the roots dip into the dark water on either side — other-worldly in a way that reminds you that Brazil’s ecological diversity is not a tourism slogan, it is simply a fact.
At the end of it, the Cleandro Waterfalls — properly known as the Cachoeira do Rio do Engenho — reveal themselves in a series of cascades dropping into natural pools cool enough to make you gasp. After the heat of Bahia in July, swimming beneath them while the canoe bobs nearby in the mangrove shade is about as close to perfection as a Tuesday afternoon can get.
The paddle back, with the current doing most of the work, felt like a reward well earned.
In sum: Essential if you want Brazil without the infrastructure — raw beaches, proper jungle, and a pace of life that will recalibrate your sense of urgency within about forty-eight hours. Not ideal if you need WiFi that works or a menu in English. Perfectly ideal if you don’t.
Diary Extract — Goodbye Vitória
Written on the train from Vitória to Belo Horizonte, July 2014
What a great send-off I had from Vitória and my hostel ‘Onça da Praia’. Not only did I play one of my best ever games of football that evening — doing my part to save the face of English football after a disastrous World Cup — but to have all my friends party with me at Onça da Praia afterwards was amazing. I really will miss everyone here and I promise one day I will be back.
In fact it was almost too good of a party. I missed my alarm and was fortunate enough that my friend woke me up at 6am. It was manic. Instead of a relaxing shower, a little trip to the bakery for breakfast and snacks, and a leisurely bus ride to the train station, I was forced to run around like a headless chicken. I threw my shit together, praying I hadn’t left anything, and ran around Camburi looking for a taxi. I was still slightly drunk, I think, because I was convinced I had dropped something (I hadn’t) and told the taxi driver to drive in a circle around the hostel before going to the train station.
I made it though — indeed, I’m writing this from the train right now. It’s great, the best way to travel for sure. Comfy seats, a carriage as a canteen, a mini computer lab for your laptops and best of all — stunning scenery: misty mountains, bubbling rivers, horse ranches and untouched forests. And that’s the bits I did see through my dazed hungover state. If you get the chance I thoroughly recommend the Belo Horizonte–Vitória train link. The train is more akin to those you imagine as a child — not those sanitised, boring ones from home — more like something from an Indiana Jones film or an old Bond movie.
Anyway, with no firm plans yet for tonight’s accommodation, or any knowledge of how to get from Belo Horizonte station to Ouro Preto at 10pm, I leave you all in Vitória whilst clinging on a wing and a prayer.
