🇧🇷 Brazil · Southeast
Ubatuba is the surf capital of São Paulo state and one of the best-loved beach destinations on its northern coast. With more than a hundred beaches spread along a shoreline where the Serra do Mar plunges into the ocean, it offers everything from long town beaches to hidden coves reachable only by trail or boat, all framed by lush Mata Atlântica.
The municipality mixes sea and mountain: beaches with waves for surfing, calm water for families, islands, waterfalls in the forest and trails in the Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar. It also has the Aquário de Ubatuba and a base of Projeto Tamar, which works on sea turtle conservation. It's a versatile destination, as good for surfers and families as it is for nature lovers.
This guide covers the essentials of Ubatuba: the best beaches for each kind of traveller (surf, family, quiet), the waterfalls and trails of the Mata Atlântica, the aquarium and Projeto Tamar, the boat trips and how to get there from São Paulo or Rio along the Rio-Santos. It's a perfect break for combining beach, surf and rainforest.
The Ubatuba region was home to the Tupinambá people and was the setting, in the 16th century, for episodes in the struggle between the Portuguese and the French over the coast (it is associated with the so-called 'peace of Iperoig'). A colonial town and an export port through the sugar and coffee cycles, it went through a long isolation that helped preserve its natural surroundings. The opening of the Rio-Santos highway in the 20th century connected it to the rest of the country and turned it into one of the main beach and surf destinations on the São Paulo coast.
Read the full history ↓Brazil's locomotive: founded by Jesuits in 1554, cradle of the bandeirantes who pushed out the country's borders and of the coffee that made it the richest province. Industrial and financial heart, land of the 1932 Revolution and of the largest Japanese community outside Japan, with the biggest metropolis in the southern hemisphere and a coastline of islands and beaches from Ubatuba to Ilhabela.
Read the history of São Paulo →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Ubatuba was the surf capital of São Paulo state, a young Spanish Jesuit spent months on these same beaches as a hostage of the Indigenous people, writing religious poems in the sand because he had no paper. That man was José de Anchieta, now canonized as a saint, and the episode he lived through here — the so-called 'peace of Iperoig' — is one of the founding moments of Brazilian history. This town of waves and bikinis holds, in its old name, one of the tensest pages of the clash between Europeans and Indigenous peoples.
Before the Europeans arrived, the region was inhabited by the Tupinambá, a Tupi-speaking Indigenous people who controlled much of the southeastern coast and lived from fishing, hunting and farming deep in the Mata Atlântica. The name Ubatuba itself has Tupi roots, linked in the most widely repeated readings to the abundance of reeds or canes in the area (something like 'place of many ubás').
In the 16th century the coast was the stage for the struggle between the Portuguese and the French over control of Brazil, in which the various Indigenous groups allied with one side or the other: the Tupinambá in particular moved closer to the French in the conflict known as the Tamoio Confederation. Ubatuba — then Iperoig — became associated with a celebrated episode: around 1563, the Jesuit missionaries Manuel da Nóbrega and José de Anchieta negotiated a truce with the Tupinambá to halt the war. Through those long and dangerous negotiations, Anchieta stayed on as a hostage among the Indigenous people, guaranteeing the pact with his own life.
This founding episode ties Ubatuba to the beginnings of the European presence and of Jesuit activity in Brazil. Beyond the heroic telling, the peace of Iperoig reflects the strategic importance of this stretch of coast in the fight over the territory, and the central — often forgotten — role that Indigenous peoples played in that violent collision of worlds.
Through the colonial era, Ubatuba developed as a town and port on the northern coast of São Paulo. Its economy was tied to the region's production cycles: at different moments it exported farm produce, and during the sugar boom and, above all, the coffee boom in the interior, the ports of the northern coast played a part in shipping the harvest to foreign markets.
The natural barrier of the Serra do Mar, however, with its steep forested slopes, made overland links with the interior and the big cities enormously difficult. That plunged Ubatuba into a long period of isolation and relative economic decline once the coffee routes shifted towards other ports and railways.
That isolation, which for a long time meant poverty and stagnation, had a fortunate flip side: it kept the Ubatuba coastline largely preserved, with its Mata Atlântica, its dozens of beaches and its caiçara culture — that of the traditional coastal communities, a blend of Indigenous, African and Portuguese heritage — broadly intact. The region was left as a natural and cultural treasure waiting for better connections.
The great turning point came in the 20th century with the building of the Rio-Santos highway (BR-101), which runs along the coast linking Rio de Janeiro with Santos by way of the northern São Paulo shoreline, Ubatuba included. For centuries the green wall of the Serra do Mar had left the region almost cut off overland; the opening of this road in the second half of the century finally brought that barrier down and put the beaches of Ubatuba within a few hours' drive of the great cities of southeastern Brazil.
With overland access, Ubatuba quickly became a tourist destination. Its hundred-plus beaches, its preserved nature and, above all, the quality of its waves drew holidaymakers and a new generation of surfers. Surf culture took root hard from the 1970s and 1980s: beaches such as Itamambuca, with its river, its vegetation and its barrels, became the venue for national and international competitions, and the town earned its nickname as the 'surf capital' of the São Paulo coast. Schools, shapers, shops and a whole young economy grew up around the boards.
That growth lived alongside the caiçara heritage, the culture of the traditional coastal communities — a mix of Indigenous, African and Portuguese roots — who through the centuries of isolation had lived from small-scale fishing, cassava, the canoe hollowed from a single trunk and an intimate relationship with the sea and the forest. That culture survives in the cooking, the music, the festivals and the know-how of many communities in the municipality, and today it is part of what makes Ubatuba appealing.
Tourism became the town's economic engine, and it has managed to combine development with the protection of much of its surroundings: around 80% of Ubatuba's territory lies inside protected areas, above all the vast Parque Estadual da Serra do Mar. Attractions such as the Aquário de Ubatuba and the Projeto Tamar base, dedicated to sea turtle conservation, reinforced its profile as a destination for nature and environmental education. Today Ubatuba is a balance always under tension between its caiçara heritage, the lush Mata Atlântica and a vibrant beach and surf culture that draws crowds every summer from São Paulo, Rio and the whole country.
Off the coast of Ubatuba rises Ilha Anchieta, today a state park of transparent beaches and trails through the Mata Atlântica, but with a far darker past. In the early 20th century the island housed a correctional colony and, from 1908, a prison that came to hold hundreds of ordinary and political prisoners, in the harsh conditions of an island cut off by the sea.
The most remembered episode came in 1952, when a violent prisoners' revolt broke out at the Presídio da Ilha Anchieta. The mutiny was put down harshly and left many dead among prisoners and guards; after the uprising the prison was shut down and the island was left abandoned for years. Its ruins — cell blocks, walls and old installations — can still be walked through and are one of the historical draws of the trip.
In 1977 the island was turned into the Parque Estadual da Ilha Anchieta, folding it into the São Paulo state system of protected areas. Today it combines the memory of that prison with the conservation of the Mata Atlântica and its wildlife, and it has become one of the most popular boat trips out of Ubatuba, where prison history sits alongside idyllic beaches and ecological trilhas.