Porto de Galinhas, or Port of Chickens to us gringos, is a beach town about 60 km south of Recife in Northeastern Brazil. It comes highly recommended by the travel guides, but I found it quite touristy. On the other hand, the little town next to it, Maracaipe, isn’t. I’d recommend it. Maybe not to stay since the accommodation infrastructure is a work in progress and kind of expensive, but definitely to hang out, surf and kitesurf. We actually stayed in a beautiful Pousada in Porto da Galinhas called Pousada Porto Verde. Stay there. I think we paid about 75 Real a night. I don’t recommend the beach at Porto do Galinhas. Crowded and full of tourists. Take a dune buggy, bus or walk the 3 km to Maracaipe where you’ll find quiet beaches, good waves for surfing and flat water for kitesurfing. There’s a kite surf shop which rents kites for 100 Real an hour and has lessons for 500 to 600 Real for the 5 hours. Of course, I picked the week of the Brazilian kite surfing championships so was out of luck on the kite surfing front. So I watched everyone else kitesurf and pretended I was just resting up from a hard day surfing at 5 a.m.