Recife

After João Pessoa the trip entered a different phase. LeeAnn and I parted ways – she shot straight down to Salvador to meet up with her parents who were visiting Brasil for the holidays, while I continued down to Recife, the next major city along the coast. So my solo travels began and would last for approximately the next two weeks until arriving back in São Paulo. Recife is a major metropolis in the northeast region of Brasil. It is a historically significant city in that it was temporarily ruled by the Dutch leading to ongoing battles for control between Portugal and the Netherlands. A Brazilian friend from the northeast once joked with me that after the Dutch were booted out of Brazil they went north and invested in a tiny island called Manhattan. So if the Dutch never left, New York would be in Brasil. Depending on who you talk to, Recife or Salvador is considered the largest city in the northeast. And more infamously, Recife is known for shark sightings along its shores. However, traveling around the northeast and swimming in warm, tropical waters, I found it hard to believe that most other beaches weren’t as notorious for shark attacks as Recife. Recife means “reef” in Portuguese and is named so because of the many coral reefs that line the city’s shores. Depending on the time of day and water level, you can see the reefs which are only about 20 meters from the beach and even go out to swim and sit on top of them.

Arriving in Recife I was first surprised to see that the city had a substantial and extensive metro system. São Paulo obviously has one, as does Rio though it lacks the reach to many neighborhoods. Belo Horizonte, Brasil’s third largest city, has a meager 2 line metro system at best. So being in a substantially poorer region of the country, I was surprised to see such elaborate transportation infrastructure.

In my hostel I met a cool Norweigen guy named Bjorn and we swapped travel stories. Much to my delight he went on and on about his experience on The Camino de Santiago: the pilgrimage trail from southern France to northwestern Spain. It has long been on my list of things to do with my buddy Eric but given how much he raved about it and how worthwhile an experience it is, it might have just gotten officially promoted as the destination of my very next trip.

Recife is also called the “Venice of Brasil” because of its many channels and rivers cutting through the city. While Recife lacks the gondolas it is a reasonable comparison since the its rivers are probably just as dirty as Venice’s. The downtown part of the city where I staid was called Boa Viagem and was your typical Brazilian city with high rise buildings overlooking the beach, offices, and booming commerce. A safe neighborhood but lacking the amenities for a tourist. Instead, the main draw is the old city with its baroque cathedrals and plazas spread out across three islands. I spent an entire Saturday afternoon walking around the old city snapping photos and sweating up a storm in the mid-day heat. The first island was essentially one huge outdoor flea market. It had about a dozen open air markets each stacked with thousands of people selling everything from fake Christmas trees to literally boatloads of shrimp that they scoop up for you by the cupful, to pirated electronics, and just about everything in between. A new record was set for the cheapest caipirinhas in Brasil. The going price for a caipirinha in your standard restaurant or bar was R$2!!! Folks, that is less than $1. The second island was a lot quieter and had a very historic appeal with its baroque churches and housing an old Portuguese fort. I didn’t think much of Recife’s beaches. In fact, its main beach, Boa Viagem, in the neighborhood where I staid was sort of a turn off. Recife being a big city, the beach had a Rio-type feel to it with the dozens of volleyball courts, umbrella vendors throwing themselves at you to sit in their chairs and buy their shade, and barracas (huts/tiki bars) lining the boardwalk. But the water itself was way too infested with seaweed that you couldn’t enjoy a good swim.

Recife is a good city in that it serves as a springboard for two other popular destinations: Olinda and Porto de Galinhas.

Olinda is the next town over from Recife and is just a 30 minute city bus ride away. Its historic center is very very very charmingly preserved and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Atop the hill overlooking the city you get a stunning view of neighboring Recife. Stick around that same plaza until sunset on a Sunday night as I did and the town comes to life with a huge street fair. It was so typically Brazilian it could have been cheesy, but the fact was I saw no other tourists amongst the crowd of hundreds. In the same town plaza I was rotating between a kick-ass samba drum circle practicing for Carnaval in February and some of the best capoeira dancers I’ve ever seen. These guys were the real deal. If you got thirsty you drank a R$2 caipirinha and if you were hungry you ate the traditional northeaster snack acarajé: a deep fried cornball stuffed with shrimp, onions, and a bean dip. It was a great festival that brought the town to life.

Two full days and three nights in Recife and I bounced down an hour south to a hopping little beach town similar to Ponta Negra called Porto de Galinhas. Translated to English to mean “chickens port” it was named so because after slavery was abolished in Brasil (one of the last countries in the Americas to abolish it by the way) traders continued to smuggle slaves in through this port by hiding them under huge chicken cages. This entry is getting long and any further description of Porto de Galinhas will just get repetitive. But it was one of my favorite beaches in the northeast. It had the perfect stretch of coastline ranging from good waves to crystal clear shallow waters ideal for lazy swimming. Its big draw are its piscinas naturais (natural pools) that are formed during low tide by the water that gets caught in the huge coral reef formations just off the shore. In the pictures below of Porto de Galinhas, most of the boats you see are headed towards the natural pools.

Next stop: Salvador

Porto de Galinhas

Olinda drum circle

Capoeira

View from Olinda

Recife

Loads of shrimp

John People

Travel books such as Lets Go, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, and Frommers have so much power. Every backpacker you run into carries one around as their Bible and the recommendations in the books dictate 85% of travelers’ itineraries, the other 15% I would say is word of mouth from locals. Seriously, if a pousada, tour group, bar, restaurant, or club gets their name in a book then they’re as good as gold with the promise of travelers it is sure to bring. Such was the case with our trip to Ponta Negra instead of Natal, since neither of our books had much to say about Natal, and the decision for our next destination: João Pessoa, capital of the northeastern state of Paraiba. As much as I try to be “Mr. Brasil” to be honest I had never heard of the state of Paraiba and for that matter never knew that such a city as João Pessoa existed. But LeeAnn’s Rough Guides Brazil book had great things to say about João Pessoa and geographically it fit into the schedule since it was a convenient next stop between Ponta Negra and Recife, the next major city further south circled on our route. Check out time is noon so in the mid-day heat of Ponta Negra I sweated my weight in water fully strapped up with both my backpacks trekking over to the bus station. It’s a pleasant physical balancing act here in the northeast: I devour myself with cheap all you can eat bbq, pizza, and sushi, and then sweat all the weight out in the blazing heat whilst working on my tan on the beach or walking around sightseeing.

It was a quick 3 hour bus ride south. João Pessoa is a name in Portuguese which translated into English means John People. But in my entire two days and three nights there I never did get to the bottom of who João Pessoa was and what the significance of why the city was named after him. The city was OK. Honestly, I wasn’t really dazzled by it. It had a nice stretch of diverse beaches spread out along a long but pleasantly walkable boardwalk. An interesting claim to fame of the city is that it is home to the eastern most point of the Americas and the closest point on the North and South American continent to Africa. From the lighthouse at the tip of one of João Pessoa’s beaches to the western most point in Senegal is a shorter distance than to the far reaches of the northwest Brazilian Amazon. But there wasn’t much at that eastern most point. All you really do is go to that point, take a picture, and then write about it in a blog saying that you’ve been to the eastern point of the Americas. Sort of like, in my opinion, going to Stonehenge or the Leaning Tower of Pisa (right Eric???) There was a cool, tucked away exotic beach just south of the eastern most point called Praia das Seixas. It was a remote beach about an hour’s walk from our hostel filled with mainly fishermen and a bunch of bungalow bars serving ice cold beers and an array of fish dishes blasting Brazilian reggae music. I got friendly with the bar staff there and after telling them I live in São Paulo, they kept feeding me with shots of cachaça called São Paulo.

A lot cooler than any eastern most point or exotic beach, I thought, was pier diving on my last day with a group of local Brazilian teenagers. Right in front of our hostel was an abandoned, unfinished pier that now serves essentially as a diving board for the local Brazilian kids. So LeeAnn and I swam about 100 feet out into the water to the end of the pier and climbed up to hang out with the kiddos and join in on the fun. I was too busy swimming out to the pier that I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing the looks on those kids’ faces as two total strangers, a white girl and Japanese looking guy, came on to their turf. I was thinking that they would take offense to the breach of territory and greet us with a “what do you think you’re doing here gringo?” attitude. But quite the opposite. They were helping us up on to the pier and giving us tips on the best places to jump. However, I totally let my rookie pier diving colors show in embarrassing fashion. After jumping off the edge, the safe way to climb back on to the steps of the pier was to swim around a far post and slide on to the base of the steps. It was a longer swim but a safer route since the base of the steps didn’t have sharp clams or barnacles that you can cut yourself on. But me being me, I jumped off the edge and swam to the closer side of the steps to try to climb up from there. Unbeknownst to me, the side of the steps were covered in clams and barnacles and as I tried to lift myself up my feet, fingers, and hips got mildly cut up and I started dripping in blood. The kids could have easily laughed at me and called me out as the foolish foreigner. But it was actually really cute how they all crowded around me, concerned, and asked how they could help. One little kid even came over with a tiny shrimp to serve as a cloth to wipe some blood off my finger. It was a fun experience with the locals and I found myself reminiscing to those days as a kid trying to fit in with a new group. Every city we went to on this trip had a gorgeous beach full of lazy sunbathing and stunning scenery which I could repetitively write about for days. But it’s the unique events like this that really stick out.

In case you didn't believe me that João Pessoa meant John People

If you were to swim from Brasil to Africa, you should start here. Just a tip, take it or leave it.
Praia das Seixas
Inner walls of an old Portuguese Fort
Pier diving with the kiddos
Servers Association of the State Secretary of Health. I wonder if they're hiring.

Ponta Negra

After Jericoacoara LeeAnn and I headed back east to Fortaleza and were kindly chaperoned around the city for a day and a half by friends of some friends. If you really want to know the connection, LeeAnn met a Brazilian guy at a trade show over the summer and he put her in touch with his ex-girlfriend living in São Paulo who gave us contact information for her friend who lives in Fortaleza. So from a professional networking event and very tenuous connection at best emerged a fully guided tour through Fortaleza with initial strangers turned the world’s nicest people for their kind accommodations and services. It’s a testament to the Brazilian open and friendly nature. We walked around the municipal market eyeing all the handmade crafts and textiles, strolled around the old Portuguese fort that helped give rise to the city’s name of FORTaleza, ate a mouth-watering typical northeastern fish stew cuisine called peixada, and took a sunset boat ride along the city’s coast.

Peixada = yummy

Putting the Fort in Fortaleza

Same height, but he's a lot more bad-ass

Fortaleza

Coastal view of Fortaleza

From there it was a midnight 8 hour bus southeast to the city of Natal (means Christmas in Portuguese), capital of the state of Rio Grande do Norte. I had a mild heart attack en route when the bus broke down around 2am just south of the middle of nowhere. The bus broke down about 2 hours after departure from Fortaleza with no major city close by. So I was figuring that by the time they called HQ, knocked on some poor unfortunate bus driver’s door in the middle of the night to tell him that he was the lucky one chosen to drive the rescue bus, and arrival thereafter at the breakdown point, we were looking at a 4 hour layover. But the powers that be came thru and we were back on the road by a little after 4am. Gotta love Brasil and their roll with the punches attitude. Had that been the US, every passenger would be throwing a fit demanding a full refund and a year’s worth of free travel at the least. Rightfully so, you pay for a smooth and efficient ride. But seriously, what can you do in a situation like that when the bus breaks down and how will complaining alleviate the situation? That’s the Brazilian attitude. So instead of any complaints, everyone rolled with the punches, shrugged their shoulders with a patient attitude, and strolled over the dive-bar across the street for some midnight beers and music blasting from the back of a pick-up truck. Jeitinho Brasileiro.

Our travel books didn’t have the raves reviews about Natal so we actually skipped over the city completely and shot right over to a hopping beach town 10km south of the city called Ponta Negra. There is a counter-cloud machine in the skies of the northeast Brasil. Meaning, every single day in Fortaleza, Jericoacoara, and Ponta Negra was clear blue skies and 90+ degrees with only a trace of clouds at most, to the point where I was convinced that any clouds that potentially arose were sucked out of the sky by an immense vacuum-like machine. We stayed in a cute little pousada (bed and breakfast) called Pousada do Alemão (The German Pousada) because the owner was a Brazilian guy who happened to speak German. Random, but I thought it was funny. So yeah, with the beautiful weather and gorgeous beach Ponta Negra was an awesome and relaxing getaway. Lying on your back soaking in the sun all you have to do is raise your hand and then a guy comes over wheeling a portable bar to mix you a caipirinha for R$3 which at the current exchange rate is a little over $1. Ha!! It’s almost criminal!! After the beach the town was chalk full of vendors and boutique shops to do some window shopping. And our dinners were spent in gluttonous fashion taking advantage of the relatively cheap churrascarias (all you can eat bbq buffets) and pizza buffets.

Ponta Negra

Party on wheels

The night life was interesting there. On the beach I met a cool vendor dude who sells alligator and snake skinned belts and bracelets. He told me about the local bars that are hopping every night with forró (more or less Brazilian salsa) and samba and that he would go there with us later at night. So we met up for some beers and he showed us the bars. They were stacked with foreign men and Brazilian women. Admittedly, initial naïveté had me thinking “wow, look at how easy it is for all these guys to talk to Brazilian women.” But then sort of like the awakening I had in the infamous touristy red light district of Bangkok when after realizing that one skimpily dressed Thai woman was a dude 90% of the other “women” were the same, I came to my senses that the bar in Ponta Negra was nothing more than a conglomeration of foreign men and Brazilian prostitutes. LeeAnn and I got a kick out of it and laughed it off as a cultural experience.

We were in Ponta Negra three nights but really only went out one night. And that one night was a few drinks at most. Nothing really heavy on the party scene. Seriously, traveling takes a toll out of you being under the sun all day long and then eating a heavy dinner at night. It sucks the energy out of you to go out partying at night and instead makes you just want to pass out in a hammock for the rest of the night, which is what I ended up doing the other two nights. I LOVE hammocks. I could sleep in one for the rest of my life.

Let the recap begin

Belated happy holidays to everyone! Today is the 12^th day of Christmas/Three Kings Days and officially the end of the holiday season, so technically I am not too far behind in wishing everyone fond season’s greetings. I hope that everyone enjoyed their holidays, however or wherever they were spent, in the company of good friends, family, or as I did, amidst stunning scenery and a lot of personal reflection.

I’m entering the homestretch in Brasil. T-minus 48 hours before heading back home to the US. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or rather, the snow and chilling winds of Manalapan, NJ and Waltham, MA this time of year. As earlier written, I got back into São Paulo last night (Monday January 5) after a 34 hour bus-ride from Salvador da Bahia in the northeast of the country. All the flights were either booked or too expensive and my only option to get back to São Paulo with reasonable time to close up shop and recharge my batteries before heading home was a bus ride that door-to-door was longer than any trip I have taken halfway around the world to the Philippines! Last year I embarked on a 31 hour adventure through the center-west of Brasil, but that was through default. The bus broke down four times and 17 hours quickly transformed into 31. This trip, without any mishaps, was scheduled for 32+ hours. Endless props again to the Brazilian bus system. Comfortable seats, frequent stops every 4 hours on average, respectable and responsible drivers, and quick attentive staff at each rest stop to fix the occasional flat tire resulted in a relatively painless trip that was spot-on almost to the minute if you factor in a 2-3 hour “mishap” window. And besides, after trekking it through the northeast by bus the entire way, it would almost be cheating to finish the last leg by plane.

You do a lot of thinking when you’re on a bus for 34 hours. Your mind races around about everything and nothing at the same time. You think about what in your right mind brought you to be on a 34 hour bus ride. You worry about where and when your next potty break will because you don’t want to be “that guy” who opens the bus bathroom door and unleashes hell for the rest of the bus. You think about your friends and family; your life; where it’s taken you and where you are going from here. I thought a lot about how much I like blogging and how I appreciate all the people who take the time to read up on my travels and post a shout-out on the comment wall. And I tried to brainstorm ways to keep the blog going when I get back to the US despite my life being painfully more boring upon return. Yeah, all that emotional stuff, but it’s the truth. And there’s a lot more of it to come in the last few days here as I close-up shop and prepare to leave. I have blog posts and personal journal entries to get up to speed on. So in the spirit of writing and reflection I’ve totally sold my soul to trendy yuppie multinational globalization by settling into Starbucks São Paulo, busting out my laptop, and attempting to talk to this smoking hot blond sitting across from me only to get blown up by the boyfriend bomb who just walked over with two cups of coffee. C’est la vie. Or in Portuguese, a vida é assim.

So in our last exciting episode I left you on the beaches of Jericoacoara atop the sand dunes with that unforgettable sunset. The entries to follow pick up where I left off.

Hop, Skip, and a Jump

Northeast trip is OVER sad to say. I just got back to Sao Paulo a little while ago after a whopping 34 hour door-to-door bus ride. Of course, blog posts and stories to follow of everything in between my last post and getting back to Sao Paulo just now. I am about to pass out and wake up at time yet to be determined. But in the meantime, I'm taking a little survey of all you Tudo Certinho fans. Just curious what all YOU have been up to for the past 34 hours.