Baía Formosa
Day trip to the home of a surf world champion
Charlie spent an entire month in Pipa and the surfing there was amazing. There was really no need to drive anywhere else to surf, unless… it’s a world-famous break that is also the homebreak of a surf world champion. Baía Formosa, or short BF, offers a perfect right-hander, barrelling of course, and you surf next to the statue of no other than Italo Ferreira.
How to get to Baía Formosa (BF)
Baía Formosa, or as the locals call it “BF”, is about an hour South of Pipa and there are two different routes. Both take about the same time but are an entirely different experience. The easy, and one could almost say “boring” route is via Tibau do Sul and goes for quite a long time along the highway. Comfortable!
The scenic route is a little more exciting. It passes by some beautiful beaches, involves the crossing of at least one river and also contains a significant number of potholes. Yes, the road is bad, but if the car you have can take it, it is worth the little discomfort.
You drive along the coast to Barra do Cunhaú, pass by a stunning beach that is popular amongst kite surfers, and cross a river on a very different type of car ferry, if you even want to call it that. It is more a raft that can take one car at the time and is operated by hand. The captain uses a long stick to push off the ground and cross over to the other side. They charge BRL 20 for that service. Driving onto the raft can be tricky as the ground is very sandy. The tiny car that Charlie and her friend had borrowed for the day got almost stuck in the sand. You should think about that before you decide to take that route. To get there, you simply follow the sign along the road that says “Balsa”.
There is another car ferry nearby to cross the larger river at high tide too. It can hold up to 4 cars. Charlie and her friend took the road a bit further inland though as they did not want risk getting stuck in the sand again to get onto the boat.
Overall, the drive to BF from Pipa takes about 1.5 hours.
Surfing in BF
As you enter the town of Baía Formosa, you can see immediately that this is a surf town. The sign states that clearly. The town was bigger than what Charlie had expected, and all the roads are laid out on a grid. It’s not difficult to find your way to the beach.
There are two surf beaches, Praia da Cacimba and Praia do Porto. Charlie and her friend drove immediately to the one by the statue of Italo Ferreira, Praia da Cacimba. It was pumping and they were amazed by the quality of the surf. They got changed quickly and joined the other surfers in the water. It is a fast wave and not easy to catch, but once you’re on the wave, you can enjoy a very nice long ride towards the right. You should be aware though of the rocks near the beach. Keep that in mind when you get off the wave to paddle out again. If you want to save some paddling power, you can also walk along the beach and access the water through the rocks near the Italo statue.
BF vibes
After the surf session, they drove along the harbour and into the city centre to get lunch which seemed surprisingly difficult that Sunday afternoon. Most of the restaurants were closed. They eventually found one.
After lunch, they returned to the beach. Charlie’s friend had been chatting with some of the locals in the water and they had planned a little BBQ for later. It was a proper vibe that Sunday afternoon. They gathered by the beach with a perfect view of the waves – some of them went in the water again – played some tunes and they stayed until just after sunset. The barbecue was tiny and at all times taken up by all kinds of seafood.
The only thing Charlie regretted that day was not having brought her camera to take some proper photos of the surf.
