Itacare, Brazil, Is One of the Most Underrated Beach Escapes in Brazil

I surfed for the first time 15 years ago, aware of the fanaticism it stirs in many but unprepared for how my own life, already nearing its statistical midpoint and oriented around more urban pursuits, would be altered by chasing a few seconds of hard-earned ecstasy on a wave. Surfing soon dominated my Internet searches, hijacked my REM cycles, inspired a move to California, and spurred a new approach to travel. Paddle out in any ocean where surfers congregate and you will overhear someone waxing quixotic about a spot they just returned from—invariably some far-flung, vibe-heavy, tricky-to-pronounce paradise that you had never heard of but feel a sudden compulsion to visit. You end up, in short, heading to a place like Itacaré.

My stay in the Brazilian town began in a giddy daze. At first, I chalked this up to the delirium of the journey: a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles to Rio de Janeiro, another two-hour hop to the harbor city of Ilhéus, and then an hour’s drive to Itacaré, which sits on the coast in the state of Bahia. My new surroundings, no doubt, amplified the psychosomatic jolt. As salt-laced air blew in through the car’s open windows on the drive in, I stared out at the riotous greens of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest colliding with the azure churn of the Atlantic Ocean. There were seemingly infinite stretches of golden-white sand. Beaches were carved into jungle-backed coves, which had served as pirates’ lairs during the onset of Portuguese colonization. The setting sun painted the sky a surreal lavender, and then—sunsets being brief affairs this close to the equator—it went inky black and a full moon crested the waterline like an alien spacecraft. There was so little in the way of development that, had a stegosaurus sauntered into the road, I probably would have just shrugged.

From left: Hibiscus and agave plants in town; getting ready for a surf day at Barracuda.

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But the high I was experiencing in those early moments—blood pressure lowering, serotonin swirling—turned out to be the first flush of a sensation that only intensified over the course of my six days in Itacaré. A charmingly ragtag village of cobblestoned streets and weathered buildings, many dating back to the 19th century, when the place served as a hub for exporting cocoa, it shares much of the unapologetic grit and seductive patina of surf towns the world over. 

As salt-laced air blew in through the car’s open windows, I stared out at the riotous greens of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest colliding with the azure churn of the Atlantic Ocean.

Walking around on my first evening, winding past scruffy dogs, scruffier motorbikes, and vendors pushing carts that overflowed with tropical fruits, I passed bars and restaurants united in a policy of no shoes, no shirt, no problem. The dimly lit streets, fanning out from a harbor dotted in hand-painted wooden fishing boats, teemed with santal-scented clusters of impossibly fit people conversing in a variety of tongues: Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, but very little American-accented English. Collectively, everyone emitted the infectious aura of being in search of something beyond the conventions of a traditional vacation. Waves, of course. But also new friends, an epiphany of some kind, or some other off-piste strand of spiritual realignment. 

From left: Tia Deth outside her namesake Afro-Brazilian restaurant; moqueca, a fish stew, at Tia Deth.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

Particularly refreshing was what I did not experience: the sense of having arrived too late to the party—an itch familiar to anyone who, like me, took to surfing in an era when it’s become more associated with wellness culture than with its original spirit of rebellion. Yet what distinguishes Itacaré isn’t just that it has yet to attract the type of crowds that have transformed other surf-centric hideaways in places like Costa Rica and Southeast Asia into destinations that can feel like Endless Summer simulacra for social media feeds. So much of Brazil’s identity was born out of the Afro-Brazilian culture that defines Bahia, a state where about 40 percent of the 15 million inhabitants trace their roots back to Africa. This heritage percolates throughout Itacaré, from the food you eat to the music you hear—often in beguiling ways. 

Later that evening, for instance, after indulging in what would become a nightly ritual of nursing a caipirinha made from fresh kiwi at a bar called Favela Coffee Shop, I stumbled upon a capoeira circle breaking out in front of a tattoo parlor: dreadlocks, drums, a feverish blur of sweat and sinew. Later still, I caught a samba trio playing silky numbers to an audience clad primarily in bikinis and board shorts. From there I moseyed to a beachfront restaurant-bar called Soul, where a DJ was spinning LPs of vintage funk and mellow electronica. As some people danced and others went night swimming, the prospect of leaving already began to feel vaguely criminal. 

From left: Sunset over the harbor; waterside at Ponta do Xaréu.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

“That’s basically my story,” Juliana Ghiotto told me the following morning. “I came here 20 years ago and was in love within 24 hours.” 

With her sun-kissed hair and air of celestial calm, Ghiotto meant this in more ways than one. Raised in the cosmopolitan cradle of São Paulo, where she studied graphic design, she first traveled to Itacaré for what was meant to be a quick tropical escape with a side dose of Bahian culture. A day after arriving, however, she met a local surfer, Daniel Lima, and her life since has been an extension of their whirlwind romance. “I ended up with a husband, two daughters, a new home, and this,” Ghiotto said of the Barracuda Hotel & Villas, the Small Luxury Hotels property where I spent my first three nights.

From left: Hibiscus flowers in Itacaré; sunset views on the Ponta do Xaréu.

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We were in a golf cart, touring its 64 acres of grounds: a forest, rowdy with birdsong and marmoset calls, that sprawls across a rocky bluff that overlooks the coastline. Unveiled in 2020 as a marriage of Bahian and Scandinavian sensibilities—Ghiotto owns it with partners from Sweden—the hotel expands on an aesthetic template she created with an earlier project, the Barracuda Boutique, which opened more than a decade ago on the busy street bordering the harbor. The 17 suites of the new hotel are similarly minimalist sanctums made of polished concrete and dark wood, tucked away in a wilderness fantasia and connected to a main building where guests congregate around an infinity pool and elegant restaurant. There are also seven private villas—airy, palatial, ideal for families or James Bond aspirants—along with an expansion set to be unveiled in 2026. “Over the past 15 years this has become my life project,” Ghiotto said, pointing out where work was under way that would add 19 more accommodations, a gym, and a sauna. 

The scope of her ambitions, however, is perhaps better understood from another angle. “After all that, we’ll be finished,” Ghiotto said, “and 90 percent of this land will still be untouched.”

From left: Colonial architecture in the town; the samba band Zalela playing at Maré Alta bar.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

The level of luxury she’s introduced with Barracuda is a stark contrast to the humbler quarters generally associated with backpackers and itinerant surf bums, which still make up the majority of Itacaré’s lodging options. But if the hotel has made the town enticing to a new kind of visitor—say, one who appreciates the convenience of its helipad—the property has none of the hermetic insularity of a traditional resort. The only way to access the nearest beaches, a quartet of successive coves, is to leave the grounds. The bartenders, in addition to mixing thrilling cocktails involving ingredients I wasn’t aware existed, like cashew fruit, doubled as informal advisors who tuned me into various bars and parties. And there is a reason Barracuda’s signature offering for guests—a boat ride down a river that culminates in a fish cookout—feels a whole lot like hanging with Ghiotto and her family. Lima was at the helm during my voyage; he’s typically the one who catches the fish. 

“The idea here is not to turn Itacaré into Trancoso,” Ghiotto told me, referencing the Bahian town, 250 miles south, that has evolved from a hippie stronghold into an enclave for the international jet set. “I want to be a portal for people to discover a different lifestyle.” 

From left: A private pool at Barracuda Hotel & Villas; a surfer on the path to the beach.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

My education into Barracuda’s personalized but unfussy approach to hospitality began in earnest later that morning, when I was greeted by Max Roosli, an affable thirtysomething from the area, who was serving as my “guest experience manager.” When I told him I was interested in a no-frills day of unstructured surfing, a sly grin came across his face. “My kind of day,”
he said. Nodding to the collection of boards leaning by the entry to Barracuda’s restaurant, he added: “Grab one you like and come with me.”

Our day unspooled as a variation of how most everyone, from hardcore surfers to idle sunbathers, spends their time in Itacaré: hopping around some of the nearly 20 beaches that define a town and region where the average temperature alternates between hot and very hot. 

From left: Guest prepare to board a fishing boat for an excursion set up by Barracuda; a terrace at the Barracuda Boutique hotel.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

The first, a 20-minute drive south, was Itacarezinho. Nearly empty save for a handful of people, the two-mile expanse of bone-white sand contained a single business, Itacarezinho Restaurante Lounge, made up of a grassy lawn peppered with shaded cabanas that can be rented for the day. We dropped our things at one and waded into the water, where the first shock was its warmth. The second was being the only two people on boards—a taste of what initially drew surfers back in the 1970s and 80s, when Itacaré was accessible only by dirt road and largely cut off from the rest of Brazil. 

After an hour or so, we hit the restaurant’s outdoor showers and settled into our cabana for a lunch that showcased the bounty found in the waters we’d just been in—along with the piquant flavors of Bahian cuisine. “Caught just this morning,” the waiter said as he dropped off a spread of prawns sautéed with hearts of palm, a salmon tartare flecked with mango and mustard seeds, and rice tossed with richly seasoned stewed octopus. Fully sated, Roosli and I picked up our boards and set off on a dirt trail that wound into the jungle, linking the beach to several others along the coast. 

From left: A Barracuda pool deck; one of Itacaré’s brightly painted heritage buildings.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

“What makes Itacaré so special is that most of the beaches, and certainly the best ones, are only reachable like this,” he noted as we navigated a thicket of açaí trees. “So while you don’t need to be a surfer to love it here, you do have to have that spirit of adventure.” 

Every few minutes the jungle deposited us onto an astonishing beach. Some, like Gamboa, were devoid of any infrastructure: just the deserted-island ideal of swooping palms, craggy rocks, the spray of whitewater. Others, like Havaizinho, were sprinkled with rustic beach huts selling sugarcane juice and beer, along with vendors renting umbrellas and chairs. Eventually we arrived at Engenhoca, a majestic cove framed by steep, Technicolor-green hills where people volleyed soccer balls with effortless flair and hung out around two ad hoc bars. It was there that, as Roosli had correctly predicted, we found the day’s best waves, staying in the water until the sky began to darken, at which point we hiked 15 minutes up a dirt path to the main road, where, following a rinse in a waterfall, we met the car Roosli had arranged for us.

Along the trail I’d noticed several Brutalist monoliths of concrete and steel choked by the forest’s vegetation—ruins, it turned out, of a hotel that never came to be. “It was supposed to be Brazil’s first six-star resort, whatever that means,” Roosli said. The project, as he understood it, collapsed in part because the developers intended to privatize the trail we’d taken, making it even harder to reach and off-limits to the dirt bikes used to supply the beach’s bars with beers and food. Its current form—a dream of ultra-luxury now reclaimed by the jungle, having lost out to a community of beach huts—struck me as an apt metaphor for Itacaré. Don’t try to change it too dramatically. Let it change you instead.

From left: Juliana Ghiotto and Daniel Lima, the couple behind Barracuda Boutique and Barracuda Hotel & Villas; décor at Barracuda Boutique.

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The surfers who first arrived in Itacaré showed up in a region that was on the cusp of an unforeseen disaster. For more than a century, Bahia’s lifeblood was cocoa; with the forest surrounding Itacaré being home to so many farms, it became known as the Cacao Coast. At one point it was the largest producer in the Americas, but in 1989 an insidious fungus known as witches’-broom swept through the area, decimating the state’s cocoa farms. Production plummeted 75 percent. Some 200,000 jobs were lost. The surfers, initially viewed by some as welcome curiosities and by others as nuisances, became harbingers of economic salvation through tourism, now the dominant industry, though still a relatively new one. It was only in 1998 that the road I took into town was completed. 

Today, however, cocoa is again thriving in the area—if on a smaller, more artisanal scale—as farmers have learned to manage the fungus. On my third day in town, I visited one such plantation, Fazenda Taboquinhas, with Roosli and some staff from the Yandê Itacaré Institute, an organization founded by Ghiotto that uses Barracuda’s profits to spearhead several social, cultural, and environmental initiatives. Driving inland over twisting roads that eventually led us to a humble riverside village, we left the car and crossed the water via a hand-pulled ferry. On the other side was a small driveway bursting with star fruit and hibiscus flowers.

The dining area at Barracuda Hotel & Villas.

Kristin Bethge/Travel + Leisure

“Ola! Boa tarde!” bellowed Osvaldo de Brito, Fazenda Taboquinhas’s owner, a silver-bearded man of boundless enthusiasm who embodies an expression you hear a lot in the area: “Sorria, você está na Bahia!” Smile, you’re in Bahia! As chickens scurried underfoot and pigs interrupted him with snorts and oinks, he led me through a farm that was so fully integrated with the natural environment I wouldn’t have known it was a farm. 

“You plant cocoa in the shadow of the trees—no need to deforest,” he explained as he used his machete to cut down numerous cocoa pods, some bright yellow, others a rich mahogany, opening each with quick, surgical slices so I could taste the sweet nectar inside. After harvest, the seeds—what becomes the basis of chocolate—are taken from the pods, sorted by quality, sun-dried, and sold to manufacturers, with Osvaldo keeping the best ones for his own small-batch line. Using an ancient press of gnarled wood, he juiced a portion of what we’d harvested into a drinkable cocoa honey—among the most delicious substances I’ve ever consumed. “It’s better with ice and some gin,” he said with a rakish grin.

We returned to the plantation’s modest farmhouse, where Osvaldo’s wife, Dona Laura, had prepared a feast: a salad of hearts of palm, beets, and mango; another of marinated chickpeas; and a platter of tender spiced chicken. The meal ended with homemade cocoa liquor, along with a plate of chocolates Osvaldo had made, after which I took a stab at making chocolate myself: tipsily pounding roasted seeds into a paste with an enormous wooden pestle, shaping it into a bar, and pressing it in a folded banana leaf. “A treat for later,” Osvaldo said as we left the grounds.

Havaizinho Beach, a surf spot outside Itacaré.

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Back in Itacaré, I transferred to the Barracuda Boutique, where a recent renovation had added a new level and a superb restaurant, Oiti. Being in the heart of town, where after only a few days I had become familiar with many faces, offered a set of pleasures different from those enjoyed in the more subdued cocoon of the forest. Just down the street was Maré Alta, a bar with a lively samba night, and two restaurants where I had some of the most memorable meals of my trip: Tia Deth, an old-school Afro-Brazilian haunt specializing in moqueca, a coconut-based stew of seafood simmered in a buffet of spices, and Saravá, a casual, eclectic café where I lingered over a crudo of salmon brightened with passion fruit. The expertly made negroni was the perfect capstone to a day the hotel had arranged for me: touring various beaches on a small fishing boat, hopping into the water to surf wherever the waves looked promising.

That evening, my last in town, I made my way to Ponta do Xaréu, a point jutting off the harbor where seemingly everyone in Itacaré congregates nightly for sunset. Various musicians took turns at a makeshift stage: a samba act, a Bahian rapper, a Frenchwoman with an acoustic guitar and an otherworldly voice. Everyone danced and swayed, lazy smiles on their faces. Between songs you could hear the chorus of parrots perched in the trees above. I grabbed a caipirinha from a bar someone had set up. Again, there was that lavender sky. Again, there was that feeling, the drowsy buzz that came over me the moment I’d arrived. And again there was the question that had gnawed at me often during my stay. 

What if I simply forgot to leave? 

Journey Brazil can plan a custom trip to southern Bahia that includes the beaches of Itacaré. From $500 per person per day. 

A version of this story first appeared in the December 2025 / January 2026 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Catching A Wave.”