It took us a while to warm up to Porto de Galinhas, and so I decided not to do my traditional “We’re Home” post halfway through like a normally do for long stays. Although we warmed up to it over time and were even a (very) little bit sad to leave at the end of our stay, it never really felt like home. But, we have fond memories of our four weeks there.
Porto de Galinhas means chicken port and it actually has a pretty dark history associated with slavery. But they’ve really braced the chicken name and there were chicken statues everywhere. Most local businesses even had their own chicken statues, including the McDonalds.
We chose Porto de Galinhas because we wanted a beach town with opportunities to snorkel off the shore. It definitely gave us that! But it was challenging to reach from the U.S. (see my last post on our arrival in the nearby city of Recife) and much more of a holiday destination than the other beach towns we’ve enjoyed. Ultimately the trade-offs weren’t worth it, but we were glad we gave it a try and we learned a lot about the state of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil.
The Not So Good
Porto de Galinhas is the epitome of a beach tourist town and very crowded, even though we weren’t there in the high season. In fact, during high tide, it was sometimes difficult to navigate a walk on the beach in the main part of town because there were so many restaurant tables on the sand. And, all the restaurants have touts trying to get you to choose their place, which all have pretty much the same overpriced menu. We never tried one, but the Google reviews tell a bleak story.
After a week or so, we got used to running the gauntlet past all the restaurants to find a little patch of sand for our beach blanket. But if you’re only in town for a couple of days and don’t want to one of those places for your time at the beach, I can definitely see the experience leaving a bad taste.
The Okay
We liked our Airbnb for the most part (review below). It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an okay kitchen, and the wifi worked reasonably consistently. The main bedroom was too small for our liking, but having air conditioning in the the bedrooms was helpful for sleeping. There was also a big fan in the living/dining room that kept Chad cool while working. We ended up needing to buy a couple of kitchen things to make our meals work there, including a lightweight wok that we’re still carrying with us.
The location is in a gated facility with three large buildings that boasted the largest pool in Porto de Galinhas. The pool was a decent size and nice, though we only managed to get to it once. We were kept pretty busy with work responsibilities throughout our four weeks. We also had a solid grocery store just a few blocks away and I was able to set up weekly water delivery, which is always handy. And it was only a couple of blocks from the beach, the closest we’ve been in a beach town. This was especially handy for taking a drink out some evenings, usually before a date night, the way we liked to do in Zihua.
Overall, we were quite comfortable in the apartment. And one time we saw monkeys playing on the powerlines out front!
The Pretty Good
We generally enjoyed dining out in Porto de Galinhas, especially the two times we went out to dinner at Restaurante Farofa Fina, which had live forro music (traditional folk music with accordion, drum, and triangle) and a kitschy rural Pernambuco theme with the waitstaff in traditional costume. An interesting Japanese-Brazilian fusion meal at Nirá was another highlight, as were the espetinhos (meat on a skewer cooked on a grill) at Ó Point, a local corner restaurant away from the main tourist area. We visited a caldinhos specialty restaurant twice (see below for more on caldinhos) and also had a couple of fun lunches.
We also had a couple of nice excursions. For the first one we just walked down to Maracaipe, the town to the south of Porto de Galinhas. Just beyond it is an estuary that is supposed to have seahorses in it, but we didn’t see any. But it was a very nice, though long, walk each way. On the way back, we stopped for a refreshing coconut and then later lunch at a snack bar called Laricão where we got tapiocas and acai.
Later in our stay, we booked a private tour to take us to Ilha de Santo Aleixo, a small relatively undeveloped island that was fun to see. It was helpful to have our own guide to explain things through Google translate on the car- and boat-rides to get there. Everyone goes by speedboat and because the island is protected, each person can spend only up to 5 hours there. You wouldn’t want to spend longer because there are no bathrooms on the island! The guide checked in with us via WhatsApp periodically during out time on the island, but we mostly did our own thing.
We started with a hike to circumnavigate the island, which was beautiful. There is one side with a beach that has been developed into the umbrella-table restaurants like all Brazilian beaches seem to have (so we did actually eat at one after all), but the back side is completely wild and peaceful. After our hike, we snorkeled in the back bay where there were tons and tons of fish. Also tons of people, but you don’t really notice when your mask is in the water. After snorkeling, it was starting to rain so we hurried to beat the crowd back to the restaurant where we’d left our stuff on arrival and ordered lunch. The umbrella did a great job protecting us from the rain. We had shrimp stew in a pineapple for two and it was actually pretty good. I’m sure it was made in an actual kitchen on the mainland and just warmed up, but it worked out well. After lunch, we had time for another short walk and a cocktail before getting back on the speedboat. It was raining a little as we took the boat back, but it wasn’t too bad. We picked a good day overall with the tides for snorkeling on the back beach.
Our guide told us that the town just north of PdG, Cupe, also had good snorkeling, so a week or so later we took an Uber up there. It also had tons of fish and tons of people but we had a nice time. And it was a very different vibe from Porto de Galinhas or Santo Aleixo.
All of those excursions were good, not great, but definitely were enjoyable day trips to break up the stay.
The Very Good
We actually grew very fond of the beach, though it took some figuring out. The beachfront near our apartment, while quieter, was better for surfing than swimming (and there were a lot of surf schools there). And the whole of the Porto de Galinas beachfront was variable based on the tides. Low tide was very pleasant and offered great snorkeling on the other end of town by the reef. High tide could be a challenge. But overall, the snorkeling was very nice and made it worthwhile, though we didn’t have time to go as much as we liked. The beach was also long and open on our end of town, which was great for walks in the morning or late afternoon.
The other great thing about the beach was the carts that sell their traditional Brazilian beach foods: queijo cualho (the same cheese in my Recife tapioca, but grilled by itself and served with honey and oregano), fresh corn, espetinhos (grilled meat skewers), acai bowels (frozen like ice cream with all sorts of toppings), and of course, caldinho (though we weren’t always able to find a caldinho cart when we wanted one).
Caldinhos were the other great thing about Porto de Galinhas and I fell completely in love with the idea of getting little cups of soup at the beach (once) and as our starter during most of our meals out. There were lots of varieties. The most traditional was black bean with ham or bacon in it. There were tons of seafood options – fish, shrimp, sururu (little clams), mariscos (assorted shellfish). Plus cream soups like cassava, which was a lot like potato soup. I loved the caldinhos so much that I made Chad take my photo almost every time we got them. We always got one for each of us and when possible chose two different flavors to compare.
Chad fell in love with their coconut ice cream served in a coconut. It was not too sweet but very sticky and served with crushed toasted coconut and cashews on top and ribbons of coconut meat on the bottom. So tasty we had to try it a couple of times, though we also had a good gelateria there that he also really enjoyed called Brandt Gelateria. Acai was another tasty occasional dessert, though Chad felt like it was more of a breakfast thing even though most acai places didn’t open until afternoon and tended to be open very late. But following a casual lunch it was very tasty.
Summary
While Porto de Galinhas isn’t our favorite place, it was an interesting experience and we had a good four weeks there over all. We didn’t really participate in the main tourist activities – being rowed out past the reef to stand and see the fish, buggy tour to all the beaches, catamaran tour, etc. We just wanted a quiet beachtown experience and this wasn’t really it. Porto de Galinhas is not a place I’d recommend to most people unless something draws you to northern Brazil, but I’m glad we experienced it.
A few more memories:
Airbnb Review – My husband and I had a great four weeks in this apartment. Secure and clean condo complex with a very nice pool. The location is great, less than five minutes to walk to the beach and less than 10 minutes to walk to the main part of town. There’s also an excellent grocery store just a couple blocks away. The kitchen had everything we needed for cooking basic meals. The AC in the bedroom worked great. Wifi was fast enough for streaming and video calls and very consistent. We didn’t get the view from the balcony/bedroom from the listing photos because of the trees, but the balcony was still very nice to have. We were glad we chose this apartment for our long stay.