Partying in Recife, recovering in Porto de Galinhas & Praia da Pipa

What a change it was to be suddenly in a city with loads of people partying in the streets as opposed to the rather quiet little beach towns! Terça Negra ("Black Tuesday") is a free party taking place every Tuesday in the center of Recife with live music, mainly Afro-Brazilian and Reggae. And everywhere really good-looking Afro-Brazilians!

I met up with some people from the hostel and some locals who took us along to another even better party, a Reggae party with a couple of live bands, one playing out on the street and the other one in something like an underground club, I think it was called "Garagem". At the end of the night we again had invested all of our money (except the taxi fare) in beer and in caipirinha, so I have to say, it was quite a good night out!

The punishment followed - slow and lasting... since consuming these lovely caipirinhas with the apparently not so lovely icecubes in a local bar, I´m back on my diet of coconut water, bananas and crackers - for a whole week already.

So my visit to Porto de Galinhas was nice but I wasn´t at my best, as was the weather. I stayed in an albergue that was recommended to me, Casa de Alberto, which was cheap but a little strange. I was lucky, however, there were 2 guys working there who were also into surfing (and - to my surprise - also advanced beginners) and we had a couple of great sessions. I successfully surfed a rather big wave on a rather short board (6'1"). One day we even got up at 5 a.m. to catch good waves!

The main attraction of Porto de Galinhas are the "piscinas naturais" - natural pools in the coral that are visible at low tide. People walk around the coral (I don't know if that's a good thing) and snorkel in the pools. Loads of fish remain in each pool and when you snorkel it is as if you were in a massive aquarium.



2 days ago I moved on to Praia da Pipa, which is already in another state, Natal. It is a beautiful beautiful place and quite developed (loads of expensive boutiques but also relaxed and with a great nightlife). It is the first place on this trip that actually has a lot of other European tourists around.

The beach that impressed me the most, Baía dos Golfinhos, is surrounded by red cliffs and you can swim with dolphins!! They are all over the place and come as close as 1 meter.

The next beach, Praia do Madeiro, has the most perfect, small beginner waves I've ever seen. They are easy to catch, straight lines and roll in slowly. When I saw them I immediately rented a longboard, caught loads of looong looong rides and was for once one of the better surfers on the beach :)



My second day in Praia da Pipa was the most beautiful and hottest day of my whole trip. Now I can imagine what it's like in summer here! To make up for it, the weather was truly shitty the day before and after.

My beach days are already counted - I'm heading to the city of Natal next to do a crazy buggy ride in the dunes (they take you to the "Wall of Death" and the "Vertical Descent"), then I'm staying in Jericoacora for a few days, a place that many people told me is absolutely great, and my last bigger excursion will be to the Parque Nacional Lençoís Maranhenses, a massive expanse of sand dunes. From nearby São Luis I will fly back into Salvador on June 4th and back to Europe on June 6th.

I don't know if I will be able to update the blog again during this trip, let's see...

I uploaded some more pictures of Recife, Porto de Galinhas and Praia da Pipa to this webalbum:

Pernambuco & Natal

O linda Olinda!

Saying good-bye from Praia do Forte and my new friend was difficult but if I want to see some more of beautiful Brazil then I´ve got to move on. I´m in Olinda today, which is 6 km north of Recife and is really charming. It has many things in abundance: churches, steep walkways, colorful little houses and tourist guides.

The guides are placed strategically at every corner of this little town and if they spot a tourist they make a run for him. It is almost impossible to convince them that you actually don´t need a guide. Although, today I went into town a second time they already seemed to know me or word had gotten around - I only got 1 offer.

I´m staying at a very special place here that I had heard about from other travellers. It is called "Casa de Hilton" (Hilton actually being the owner of the place). It does not look like anything special at first sight, but Hilton is the heart and sould of the place, which makes it very special (I´m wondering if the Lonely Planet will pick it up in their next edition, they should!)



The price is reasonable, the rooms are simple, there is no breakfast included but a well equipped kitchen, the difference to other places lies in details like the over 200 DVDs that Hilton offers (last night we sat together and watched 2 movies since it was kind of rainy), the use of the stereo sound system and CDs, the attention and good tips Hilton and the staff of the place offer and: a free 30 mins massage for every guest (I´m not joking)!

This is the address:
Casa de Hilton
Rua do Sol 77
Carmo - Olinda
casadehilton@bol.com.br
(081)3493.2379

Tonight everybody is going to a famous party that takes place every Tuesday night in the historic center of Recife, the "Terca Negra". Will tell more about it the next time I´m writing this blog!

Here are some more pictures of Olinda:

Pernambuco

Adventures in Praia do Forte

After all these tours and hiking in Lençois I thought I will take it easy for a few days on the beach in Praia do Forte (about 70 km north of Salvador), but things turned out differently :)

Praia do Forte is a popular vacation destination for people from Salvador and it also has quite a few beautiful and expensive beach villas of very rich people (which are vacant most of the year with only security guards minding the house, pool & garden - a shame!). The beach is a reef on one side that has natural pools to snorkel in and the other side is sandy and has some waves but is rather calm for swimming.

On my first day I met "Miau", a local who is a surfpro but at the moment is selling coctails and coconuts on the beach for lack of a sponsor. He is a very funny guy and we get along really well and hang out together most of the time.



We went surfing together, however we went out to the reef where his friends surfed and the waves were a little big for me. So I got trashed around, still had some fun and was proud of myself that I can hang out there in the line-up with the good sufers and not be afraid of the kind of waves that come along (a big step forward in my surf progress!). I didn't catch any waves but I at least tried. Miau's friends were joking "get that woman out of the water!"



So, if you´re visiting Praia do Forte make sure to stop by the beach by the first piscina and look out for Miau. He will help you with anything, whether you need surf lessons, a guide or just an excellent coctail!

Loads of turtles hanging around Praia do Forte - they have a project to save endangered species of sea turtles called TAMAR, which is right at the beach and really worth visiting.





On one of our walks at a more remote beach Miau and I encountered this little fellow who seemed to be a bit lost on the way to the sea:



Let´s hope he made it!



Yesterday we all went to a "Rave" together which was about 50 km away from Praia do Forte towards Salvador. It was in the garden of a house with pool, huge sound system and international DJs. It was all a bit chaotic (getting there, getting in etc.) but it was good fun in the end. I even met the nephew of Rejane in the middle of the party, he had come from Salvador. It's really funny, I know 4 people in Salvador and then meet one of them at a party!

The guy we got a lift from promised that we return around 8 a.m. in the morning but in the end he did not want to leave and we were all stuck there until noon (none of us had any money left, so the omnibus was not an option), that was a bit of a drag, but in the end we got back o.k.

Since we already knew that we won't be back from the rave all night I checked out of the rather expensive Youth hostel and left my backbag in Miau's house. I've never seen such a place before!

The house has a width of 2 m (!) and the whole family (3 brothers, 2 sisters and the mother) lives in 1 room in the first floor that has the length of 2 1/2 beds - so that means there are 6 bunkbeds, 3 on top of each other and about 1 m space before and after and half a meter on the side. There is no kitchen (the mother runs a little local restaurant nearby, which serves as their kitchen), only a shower and a toilet curtained off. To get into this "apartment" you have to climb a small metal staircase outside that has no railings, which is rather tricky. Kind of favela style... (it is only the top part there where the whole family lives):



So, I'm going back now to see if Miau is already awake and we can go for dinner in his Ma's place (she cooks really delicious dinner, and it costs almost nothing compared to the tourist restaurants on the main street).

Tomorrow I'm going to take an overnight bus to Recife and will explore the famous Porto de Galinhas and a pretty town called Olinda.

The wonders of Chapada Diamantina

The last few days I spent in Lençois visiting different sights of the stunning national park. The park is huge (1520 sq km) and has amazing waterfalls, swimming holes, caves and weirdly shaped mountains.

Lençois is a quiet pretty little town, apparently Jimmy Page liked it so much that he built a house here. In the past the area also attracted diamond miners who searched the riverbeds for the precious stones. Now - since it has become mainly a national park it attracts loads of tourists. Well, I could not quite experience that since it is - as I mentioned before - off-season and really quiet everywhere. The good thing about it is that in youth hostels I usually have the whole dorm for myself and that I meet many more locals - mostly the ones that normally work in tourism but now have little or nothing to do and are happy to have a chat or show me around. Also, our tour groups had most of the sights for ourselves. If you want to visit the sights of the national park you need to book a "passeio" (a tour). Some people also go on 3-day-hikes with guides and camping equipment but most people just go on 1-day-trips (lazy people like me :)

The 1-day-trips I did were really exceptional: I did not expect so many highlights and beautiful and extraordinary sights and activities (o.k., I did not go for the 400 m high base-jump, just looking down a rock face that is 400 m high was enough adrenalin - for the "irish" readers: just imagine the cliffs of Moher x 4, it is scaaary...)

I booked my tours with the agency "Chapada Adventure" and I was quite happy with them.
The first trip was filled with manifold attractions: We hiked along Rio Mucugezinho, which has - like all the rivers there - a reddish color due to the iron in the water. We went swimming in the "Poço do Diavo" - a spectacular waterfall with a huge pool of dark red water, swimming in pools of that colour took me a while to get used to.

Then we went cave snorkelling in the "Gruta da Prainha", which felt like being in a suspense movie, swimming around pitch black caves with only small torches to see the way, beautifully scary.
We visited the "Gruta Azul", the first cave with mystical blue light I ever saw. It comes from a combination of minerals in the water (I've been told it is "calcario, carbonato de cálcio, magnezio" and natural sunlight), it is absolutely beautiful.



We also did a short hike up to "Pai Inácio", a weirdly shaped mountain that gives a 360 degree view of even more weirdly shaped mountains (that is the first picture on top of this post).

After that we did a 1 hour hike through an 800 m long cave, "Gruta Lapa Doce", which is full of stalactites and enormous like an oversized cathedral.
And on the way back I fell asleep in the van :)

The second tour was a hike to "Cachoiera da Fumaça". I did not expect too much, just another waterfall, and was not perpared for what we saw there - the 400 m drop that I mentioned before. Pictures cannot capture the view down that overhanging rock, I'm not afraid of hights but this was something else...



The next day I took a tour break and went to explore the surroundings of Lençois with Elisabeth, a Swedish girl, who was part of the tour group. We went to "Riberão do Meio" a waterfall that has a 30 m long natural slide, good fun! On the other side of Lençois there is the "Cachoeira Serrano" with loads of natural stone pools connected by small waterfalls, very unusual and also great fun.

The third tour took us 150 km into the national park to the "Poço Encantado". It is the most spectacular of all the blue-light caves (see the first picture of the webalbum at the end of this post). It is 60 m deep and the water is so clear and lit up by sunlight that you can actually see the ground! It is surreal and beautiful.

As the second highlight of the day we went to another blue-light cave that you are allowed to snorkel in. It is "only" 40 m deep and you can also see right down to the ground with all its strange underwater rock formations and the blue light coming in through the hole above the cave. Looks like an underwater laser show... I won't say more, just look at the pictures here:

Chapada Diamantina

Going south - Porto Seguro, Arraial d'Ajuda & Trancoso

So I did finally leave Itacaré, not without having the Friday party night out (the intention was to go out for 1 beer, I ended up just about catching the bus to Porto Seguro at 7 a.m. in the morning...)

I travelled with the Swiss couple, Simone and Bruno, who also headed down South. We stayed in Porto Seguro for a couple of nights to organize our onwards journeys. I ended up buying a plane ticket back to Salvador because it was only 10 EUR cheaper than the 11 hours bus trip (a good advice for Brazil travellers: if you need to do a long haul, double-check on the internet for cheap flights - I was lucky with TAM, but there are various cheap airlines: Varig, Voegol, Voebra. If you find a flight go to a travel agency and ask them to book it for you. Unfortunately you can´t book flights online for Brazilian airlines if you don't have a Brazilian personal ID number).

Porto Seguro has a charming historic district and for evening entertainment the "Passeio d'Alcool" (I guess I don't need to translate that). There is a big crafts and souvenir market along the passeio (Porto Seguro is a popular holiday spot for Brazilians), a lot of really nice stuff, also loads of horrible kitsch, but my absolute favorite was this stall (I would live entirely on "bolos" as cakes are generally called, if I could my body could process that much sugar):



The Lonely Planet recommended to visit nearby rustic and magical Arraial d'Ajuda, that supposedly is attracting a wilder crowd of "nouveau hippies" (whatever that is, it sounded interesting). As it turned out, my 2005 Brazil edition of the guidebook was not quite accurate (as it turned out to be for quite a few things, so wait for the upcoming edition if you can. Although, I am not saying that LP is a bad travel guide - I use it for all my travels and I can highly recommend it!), anyway, the place was quite dead, full of upscale shops and deserted restaurants, elegant pousadas and not a single wild hippie in sight (also maybe the fact that it is deepest off-season and the weather was rather shitty that day had some influence on that...)

The really beautiful Praia Pitanga was a good 40 mins walk away but worth the effort. In the beach barracas were a few lonely middle-aged, white and apparently wealthy tourists, a rather weird sight after the great mix of locals and young people on the beaches of Itacaré. Maybe if the weather had been nicer I might have gotten to like the place better...



The next day we moved over to Trancoso, which is around 2 hours south of Porto Seguro and muito simpatico. The town square of the size of a football field is surrounded by little shops and restaurants and actually is a football field, since it is only grass and no cars, no concrete, very romantic, especially when lit up in the evening.



The beaches are much closer and very pretty. Unfortunately the weather was still kind of shitty and I spent one afternoon as the only guest in a beach barraca sitting beside the pizza oven (to keep warm) chatting with the restaurant staff - it turned out to be a rather entertaining afternoon in the end and I made new friends :)

The next day I was finally lucky (Bruno and Simone unfortunately had to take off that day and missed the good weather). I went to Praia Espelho - it is in the top 10 of Brazil's most beautiful beaches, a lot of effort to reach but really worth it!

There are 2 buses a day, one that goes there at 8 a.m. and one that comes back at 5 p.m. They travel along a dirt road and break down on a regular basis. I was lucky, not only did the bus break down before it reached Trancoso and not when I was on it, I also met a nice couple from São Paulo, who went the same way.

From the bus stop it is a good 4 km walk to the beach, but when we got off the bus, some guys on horses rode by and the couple bargained for us to go to the beach (and return) on horseback for a very cheap price. So we conveniently reached the beach and on top of it got some local stories from the guys. One of them told us, for example, that he bought his house in the area 13 years ago for a hammock, a walkman and 50 tapes! (now its worth much more, since the place developed)



Here are some more pictures of Porto Seguro, Arraial d’Ajuda and Trancoso:

Porto Seguro & Trancoso