Is Itacaré safe? An honest answer

Every guide to Brazil dodges this question, either by insisting everything is fine or by implying nowhere is. Neither is useful when you are deciding whether to book. So, plainly: Itacaré is a small coastal town that is about as safe as a small coastal town anywhere, and safer than the Brazilian cities most people picture when they worry about Brazil. It is not Rio and it is not Salvador. It is a place of a few thousand people where the economy runs on visitors coming back.

That is not the same as saying nothing happens. Below is what actually goes wrong here, in the order it goes wrong, which is not the order people expect.

The sea is the real risk

The thing most likely to hurt you in Itacaré is the water, not a person. These are open Atlantic beaches with real currents, and outside the sheltered bay at Praia da Concha the sea has proper movement in it. There are no lifeguards on the beaches south of town. A beach that looks calm from the sand tells you almost nothing about what is happening thirty metres out.

• Swim where other people are swimming, and not where nobody is.
• If you get pulled out, go along the shore rather than straight back in. Fighting a current is how people exhaust themselves.
• Be more careful on an empty beach in low season, not less. There is nobody to notice.
• Ask locally about a beach before you swim at it for the first time. People will tell you honestly.

Theft, and the version of it you might meet

The crime a visitor is realistically exposed to here is opportunist: a bag left on the sand while you swim, a phone on a table facing the street, a window left open. Violent robbery is not a normal part of life in this town and most people who come and go for years never see any of it.

The single most effective habit is simply not leaving things unattended on a beach. Take turns swimming, or take nothing you would mind losing. That one rule removes most of the risk that exists.

Walking around at night

The centre and Rua Pedro Longo are busy and lit well into the night, and walking there is unremarkable. Further out the streets get dark and the pavements get patchy, and the sensible advice is the same as it would be in any small town: stick to the routes with people on them, and take a taxi rather than walk a long unlit stretch alone late. Between the areas the walk home is often the part worth thinking about when you pick where to sleep.

Money, cards and cash

Card acceptance is good in town and patchy outside it, and card readers fail often enough that arriving with no cash at all is a mistake. Draw money inside a bank or a supermarket rather than at a street machine after dark, keep the day's cash separate from the rest, and do not carry your passport around. There is more on the practical side of arriving in how to get to Itacaré.

The road, and getting around

The BA-001 is a good road and the drive from Ilhéus is straightforward. What catches people out is the same thing that catches them out across Brazil: driving it at night, when unlit stretches, animals and potholes stop being theoretical. If you are going to drive the coast, drive it in daylight.

Motorbike taxis are everywhere and are how a lot of the town moves. They are quick and cheap and they are also the way most visitors here end up in a clinic. If you take one, wear the helmet.

Sun, mosquitoes and the small stuff

You are fourteen degrees south of the equator and the sun does not care that it is cloudy. The most common thing to actually ruin a trip here is a first day spent unprotected on an exposed beach. Mosquitoes are seasonal and worse near still water at dusk. Tap water is generally not what people drink; filtered water is normal and easy to find.

Travelling alone, and travelling as a woman

Plenty of people travel here alone and it is an easy town to do it in: small, walkable, and full of other travellers. The advice does not change from anywhere else. Be less predictable about routines, keep somebody informed of a long day out on the trails, and treat the walk home as the part that needs a plan.

What this page is not

This is general advice about a place, not a live security assessment, and no page can tell you what a given street is like on a given night. What it can do is stop you worrying about the wrong thing. Most people arrive braced for crime and get caught out by the sun, the sea or a motorbike. Read when to come for how the season changes how busy and how empty things are, because an empty beach and a crowded one ask different things of you.