The Best Boutique Hotels to Book in Trancoso, Bahia
This gorgeous hippie-chic beach town in Brazil has some fine stays – book yours with Culture Trip, and you’ll be on to a winner.
Tiny Trancoso – with its little colonial cottages gathered around the grassy Quadrado square – is where Brazilian supermodels, football stars and glitterati go for their beach holidays. The boutique hotels, restaurants and fashion shops exemplify Brazilian beach-cool, which is as effortlessly sophisticated as Bossa Nova and as easy-going as a billionaire on a slow yacht cruise through a bay of coral islands.
1. Etnia
Boutique Hotel
This is an effortlessly eco-chic pousada (Portuguese for inn or hostel): it’s a scattering of simple but elegant bungalows around a lush pavilion and pool in a tropical forest garden trilling with birds and tree frogs. Interiors are best described as mock-Greek island meets tropical beach bungalow: picture soft whites and cerulean cushions under warm timber-and-wattle roofs and floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto expansive decks. It’s a stroll from the Quadrado, where you’ll find the best restaurants and bars in Trancoso – bring a flashlight for walking back after dark.
2. Casas da Vila
Independent Hotel, Bed and Breakfast, Villa
Surrounded by trees on the edge of the village, Casas da Vila is serene – and just a 10-minute walk from the Quadrado as well as the beach. A handful of shorefront-shack cabins occupy a lawned garden with beautiful orchids wrapped around shady tropical trees. There are visits daily from tiny marmoset monkeys. Interiors are rustic-chic – with unmanicured woods and rattans, Greek colours and exposed terracotta. Shutters and curtains made from dried palms and vines separate spaces. Which just leaves you to recline on your four-posters swathed in quality high-thread-count linens and diaphanous drapes. There’s ample lounge space.
4. Jacarandá
Hotel
Budget hotels in Trancoso are few and far between – especially ones with a pool. Standard villas at the Jacarandá are barely bigger than the beds, but the beds are four-posters, and the spaces are light and airy, round as a fairy ring and painted in bright Greek-island whites, offset with dashes of bright colour from art and bric-a-brac. They’re bunched in a leafy garden with pink orchids, where butterflies and nesting toucans flutter about. All this and the busy restaurant- and bar-packed Quadrado are only minutes away.
5. Perainda
Boutique Hotel, Independent Hotel
Perainda feels like it belongs in a Portuguese hamlet – check out those whitewashed villas with hand-crafted terracotta tile roofs and blue-shuttered windows. Cosy kitchens have chunky wood furniture, and there are large open-sided patios roofed in rough woods and set over polished concrete and azulejo tiles. When night falls, the cicadas and tree frogs sing in the surrounding jungle – much of it replanted, using rare native Atlantic Coast trees, by the owners. At this time, the hotel feels like an island in some forest Eden – but the temptations of food and drink on the Quadrado are just minutes away.
6. Bahia Bonita
Villa
Mere seconds away from the long, golden sweep of Praia do Rio Verde, Bahia Bonita is all about sun, sea and salty air. Villas – in dark woods and creams – are fronted with shutter-like screens or very tall french windows, allowing in the sea air and sun through diaphanous drapes. Large decks overlook the ocean or the flower-filled garden, and you could leave the hotel and walk for hours along the beaches stretching south beyond Trancoso, barely seeing a soul.
7. Bahia Bonita Boutique
Boutique Hotel
This boutique beauty basks in well-groomed tropical gardens 15 minutes from the beach, on the edge of the fashionable Quadrado square. This is where the beautiful gather to dine and be seen and sip cocktails in barefoot-chic bars. Behind the high-thread-count linens and four-posters, this Trancoso hotel is pleasingly simple, with Cycladean-white villa rooms. Go for an oceanview room or a villa with a private pool and laze the day away in a hammock or on the huge sundeck, until evening descends and it’s time to down caipirinhas on the Quadrado.
8. SoleLuna Casa Pousada
Boutique Hotel
Classy boutique stays near the Quadrado that won’t bankrupt you? Yes, they exist. Most of the chic-shack villas at the SoleLuna even have private plunge pools. The resort is spread over a low hill in tropical gardens abuzz with hummingbirds. All are open to nature – with floor-to-ceiling french windows leading to large patios and the garden, screened off by bamboo shuttering. They range from intimate villas for two to a large family apartment with a big living area, two suites and acres of lounging space. This is a place to fully chill out in.
This is a rewrite of an article originally by Georgia Grimond.
Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in.
Culture Trip launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful — and this is still in our DNA today. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes certain places and communities so special.
Increasingly we believe the world needs more meaningful, real-life connections between curious travellers keen to explore the world in a more responsible way. That is why we have intensively curated a collection of premium small-group trips as an invitation to meet and connect with new, like-minded people for once-in-a-lifetime experiences in three categories: Culture Trips, Rail Trips and Private Trips. Our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.
Culture Trips are deeply immersive 5 to 16 days itineraries, that combine authentic local experiences, exciting activities and 4-5* accommodation to look forward to at the end of each day. Our Rail Trips are our most planet-friendly itineraries that invite you to take the scenic route, relax whilst getting under the skin of a destination. Our Private Trips are fully tailored itineraries, curated by our Travel Experts specifically for you, your friends or your family.
We know that many of you worry about the environmental impact of travel and are looking for ways of expanding horizons in ways that do minimal harm - and may even bring benefits. We are committed to go as far as possible in curating our trips with care for the planet. That is why all of our trips are flightless in destination, fully carbon offset - and we have ambitious plans to be net zero in the very near future.
- Post ID: 1453926
- Sponsored? No
- View Payload