Bafatá rewards an hour or two of walking and not much more. The faded Portuguese colonial old town along the bluff above the Geba River — a handful of two-storey administrative buildings, a small market arcade, the old Praça (square), and the modest Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace — holds what remains of the town's 19th-century identity as a regional trading centre. The market is the most active part of town, busiest in the morning.
A small statue and birth house mark Bafatá's most famous son, the independence leader Amílcar Cabral, who was born here in 1924. The Geba River itself is wide, slow, and pleasant to look at from the bluff at sunset, though the bridge across it can be closed when river levels are high.