Faro Airport is closer to the beach than it is to the city. That surprises people. The runway sits on the edge of the Ria Formosa lagoon, and Praia de Faro, the long sandbar beach on the other side of the water, is under 4 km away by road. You can land, collect a bag and be standing on sand in about twenty minutes.
Getting there with a surfboard is a different question, and it is the one nobody answers properly. Here is the honest version.
The bus
Route 16, run by Proximo, is the one you want. It runs between the Faro bus terminal in town and Praia de Faro, and the airport sits in the middle of that route, so the same line serves both directions.
Watch the destination board on the front. If it says Praia de Faro it is going to the beach. If it says T. Rodoviario it is going into town. People get this wrong constantly and end up doing a full loop.
The fare is a couple of euros, paid in cash to the driver, and the ride from the airport to the beach takes about five minutes. Frequency is roughly every fifteen minutes through the summer day and every half hour at weekends and in the low season. Check the current timetable before you rely on it, because the winter schedule thins out considerably.
Taxi, Uber and Bolt
There is a taxi rank directly outside arrivals. The beach run is short, so expect something in the region of ten euros, with a small luggage supplement and higher rates at night and at weekends.
Uber and Bolt both operate at Faro Airport and are usually a few euros cheaper. You need mobile data to book, and in July and August prices surge because there are more arrivals than drivers.
Walking and cycling
You can walk it. It is roughly 45 minutes, along the road and over the bridge onto the sandbar. It is flat and it is not unpleasant early in the morning, but there is no shade and the road is narrow in places. Fine with a backpack, unrealistic in August at midday.
Cycling is quicker and locals do it, but the bridge section is tight and there is no separated cycle lane the whole way.
Now the actual problem
Every option above falls apart the moment you are carrying a 7 or 8 foot board.
A local bus will not take it, and even if a driver waved you on you would be that person, blocking the aisle on a fifteen minute service in high season. A standard taxi cannot fit it, and Uber and Bolt drivers arriving in a saloon will cancel when they see what you are holding. Walking 45 minutes with a board under one arm in Algarve heat is a bad afternoon.
So with a board there are really two workable answers.
A hire car with a roof rack or straps. Most rental cars in Faro come with bare roof bars or nothing at all, so you need soft roof straps, which sit on the roof through the door frames and hold the board flat. They cost very little to rent and they are the difference between a trip that works and one that does not.
Or do not bring a board at all. If the board is the only reason you need a bigger car, the maths often stops making sense. Airlines charge sixty euros and up each way to carry one, and we cover that in detail in what the airlines charge for a surfboard.
What Praia de Faro is actually like
Worth being straight about this. Praia de Faro is a long, open, sandy beach on a barrier island, with the ocean on one side and the lagoon on the other. It is a lovely place to swim, paddle and spend a day, and it is where you go if you have a few hours between flights.
It is not a reliable surf beach. It faces south, so it is shielded from the Atlantic swell that hits the west coast, and for most of the summer it is flat. It does pick up on a big southerly winter swell, and when that happens it is one of the friendliest waves in the region. But if surfing is the point of your trip, the waves are on the west coast, an hour and a half away. We wrote about which coast works in which season here.
Where Praia de Faro genuinely shines is the lagoon side. Flat, shallow, warm water, straight off the sand, ideal for a paddleboard. That is the reason most of our SUP hires start here.
The short answer
Without a board: take route 16, five minutes, a couple of euros.
With a board: hire car plus roof straps, or collect your gear here instead. We are 1.5 km from the airport, on the way to the beach, so you can pick up a surfboard or a paddleboard on the way out of arrivals and be in the water the same morning. Roof straps are available to rent if your car has no rack.
Photo credits
Praia de Faro photo by Vitor Oliveira, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page.
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