Praia da Pipa

The bay is small, seven hundred metres end to end, cliffs around it and a fishing weir at one edge, and the dolphins that come in to feed here know exactly what they are doing. Researchers watching from the clifftop have written down twenty-one separate ways they hunt: eleven kinds of chase, strikes with and without a leap, coordinated group drives, and the moment a fish gets thrown. Above all of it, a piece of the Atlantic Forest that once ran the length of this coast is still standing.

Pipa is a village in Tibau do Sul, in Rio Grande do Norte, and four beaches lie within walking distance of it: Praia do Centro, Praia do Amor, Praia do Madeiro and Baía dos Golfinhos. The Chapadão above Praia do Amor drops twenty-five metres to the sand, and the cliffs standing over the dolphin bay run to about thirty. The animals are boto-cinza, Sotalia guianensis, and few bays anywhere have watched them longer; in March 2026 the federal prosecutors signed an agreement with the town and the local nautical tourism association that caps departures at three launches on a high tide and four on a low one, holds boats a hundred metres off, cuts observation to ten minutes an approach and limits speed to five knots. On the clifftop the Santuário Ecológico keeps fourteen marked paths and viewpoints through preserved Atlantic Forest, with iguanas, monkeys and birds in the canopy and zip lines strung through it. The rain comes between April and July.