Qualla: Ponta do Seixas

Ponta do Seixas: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cristiane Tavares, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ponta de Pedras, up the coast in Pernambuco, had a reasonable claim on the title. In 1941 Brazilian naval officers ended the argument the way such arguments end — with instruments and arithmetic. Measured properly, a low spit of pale sand southeast of João Pessoa pushed farther into the Atlantic than any other point on the mainland of the Americas, and it did so by roughly 1,683 metres. That spit is Ponta do Seixas. The corner of a double continent turns out to be a wide, bright beach with vendors working the sand.

Read more: Ponta do Seixas on Qualla

Image: Cristiane Tavares | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ponta do Seixas: The Margin Was 1,683 Metres

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rafael Vianna Croffi from São Paulo, Brazil, CC BY 2.0. Continental extremes are usually decided by geology. This one was decided by surveying. At roughly 7°09' south and 34°48' west, Ponta do Seixas lies about eight kilometres southeast of João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba, on the coastal highway that runs north toward the port of ...

Read more: Ponta do Seixas on Qualla

Image: Rafael Vianna Croffi from São Paulo, Brazil | CC BY 2.0

Ponta do Seixas: The Fine Print on "Easternmost"

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ridiculopathy, CC0. The claim needs its qualifier, because three different superlatives get tangled here. Count the islands, and the easternmost point of the Americas is Nordostrundingen, on the northeastern shoulder of Greenland at 11°29' west — a frozen headland above 81 degrees north, more than t...

Read more: Ponta do Seixas on Qualla

Image: Ridiculopathy | CC0

Ponta do Seixas: Behind the Sand, the Tabuleiros

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0. The land steps up abruptly behind the beach. These flat-topped tables of sedimentary rock are called tabuleiros, and they shape the whole Paraíba coast — a green shelf ending in a bright wall above the sand. Rain is generous on this eastern edge, which is why the tabuleiros stay ...

Read more: Ponta do Seixas on Qualla

Image: Matti Blume | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ponta do Seixas: The Lighthouse Beside the Point

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit André Pimentel de Araujo, CC BY-SA 4.0. About 800 metres north stands the structure everyone photographs instead. The Cabo Branco lighthouse, opened in 1972, is a triangular concrete tower eighteen metres tall, painted white with a horizontal black band, its three winglike projections spreading 3.5 metres above the flo...

Read more: Ponta do Seixas on Qualla

Image: André Pimentel de Araujo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ponta do Seixas: Two Places, One Postcard

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marinelson Almeida - Traveling through Brazil, CC BY 2.0. Visitors routinely collapse Cabo Branco and Ponta do Seixas into a single destination, and foreigners do it almost every time. They are separate beaches in separate official neighbourhoods, and only one of them is the continental corner — the sandy one, to the south, without the ...

Read more: Ponta do Seixas on Qualla

Image: Marinelson Almeida - Traveling through Brazil | CC BY 2.0