Costa Branca
Pink salt pans, red dunes, the RDS Ponta do Tubarão reserve. RN at its wildest.
About this region
The Costa Branca covers the far-western coast, from Macau to the Ceará border at Tibau. It is RN as few people know it: pink salt pans responsible for over 90% of Brazil's salt production, the Dunas do Rosado (one of the Northeast's largest mobile dune fields, with the iron-oxide tones that give it the name), and the Ponta do Tubarão Sustainable Development Reserve, which combines mangroves, salt flats and living fishing communities like Diogo Lopes and Soledade.
It is also the state's windiest stretch — 25–32 kt in October and November — and the stage of Sertões Kitesurf and the KiteFest BR in Areia Branca. Infrastructure is simpler than on the eastern coast, but the reward is a landscape that changes colour with the sun and that few international tourists know exists.
Destinations in this region (5)
Macau
Old salt-mining town on the Costa Branca. Pink salt pans, Bom Jesus dos Navegantes festival and gateway to the RDS Ponta do Tubarão reserve.
Areia Branca
Costa Branca city with salt pans, lighthouse and the October KiteFest BR. Gateway to the western RN coast.
Porto do Mangue
Costa Branca municipality home to the Dunas do Rosado — one of the Northeast's largest mobile dune fields, with the iron-oxide tones that give it the name.
Tibau
RN's westernmost beach, on the Ceará border. Coloured cliffs and calm sea.
Apodi
Western RN municipality home to the Lajedo de Soledade, a Cretaceous limestone outcrop with Pleistocene megafauna fossils.
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