Back in Brazil, Part 3 Olinda - Fernando de Noronha, March 24 - 31, 2025

 This is the final leg of our 3-week trip to northeast Brazil, and the final installment of this blog.

We spent four nights in a small, very old pousada in Olinda, a beautiful, hilly city next to Recife, the huge 3.7 million-person capital of the state of Pernambuco. What a contrast there is between the two places, although they are so close to each other. Olinda has small twisty, cobbled streets and steps, and the houses are extravagantly painted in wild colors, often with dramatic murals. There are dozens of old churches, many in a state of near collapse or terminal mildew. There is also a very lively market with many interesting art and craft stalls, woodcarvings and lace-making, as well as the inevitable plethora of tapioca stands. Olinda is very green, with fruit trees and vines growing everywhere, even out of cracks in the roofs of buildings. 

We spent our first day exploring Olinda, and visited one notable 16th century Franciscan monastery, its walls covered with blue Portuguese tiles depicting the life of St Francis, including parrots, peacocks and monkeys. St Francis loved animals according to legend, but we are pretty sure he never met a parrot.

We regularly did our walking and sightseeing in the mornings after a substantial breakfast and before the heat became too brutal. By noon we were ready to retire to our air-conditioned room for a few hours, before heading out for an evening stroll, and sometimes a bowl of açaí sorbet. 

Despite the fact that Olinda is a well-known and picturesque tourist destination we rarely ran across other non-Brazilian visitors, and even Brazilians were thin on the ground. Apparently we were visiting in the post-carnival low season. This led to the problem of finding an open restaurant in the evening — most were closed or only open at weekends. However we did find some excellent, quiet places to enjoy delicious Brazilian food. Our favorite was a whole small pumpkin filled with a “soup” of shrimps, coconut milk and delicious if unidentified spices.

Feeling quite adventurous one morning, we took a local bus into Recife to visit some of the sights. We were lucky to encounter a young passenger who was adept with Google Translate and directed us to the stop to get off and change to another bus line. Our encounters with young Brazilians have been very positive and rewarding.

Recife is a big, messy city with some beautiful modern buildings, but on the whole it was a disappointment — trashy, grungy and grubby. We visited a couple of the top tourist attractions in the old town but were less than impressed.

Our final Olinda day involved a long Uber ride into a remote area of rain forest in the Recife suburbs, where we visited one of the most amazing art museums we have ever seen — the Oficina Cerâmica of Francisco Brennand. He was a reclusive and prolific ceramicist who worked mostly in the 1960 - 90 period. He inherited a ceramic factory from his father, and spent his life creating and displaying inside and outside thousands of huge, complex and weird ceramic sculptures and structures, based on mythology, imaginary animals, abstract shapes, and artistic interpretations. We won’t try to describe any more — there are a few photos below. The museum significantly rehabilitated our impression of Recife.

Our last few hours in Olinda were eventful, with a series of violent thunderstorms that caused the hotel roof to leak, and flooded the streets on the way to the airport. A misunderstanding about plane times and airport gates caused us to miss our flight to Fernando de Noronha, but we were able to rebook and arrived on this small, remote island only a few hours late. Fernando is about 200 miles off the coast of Brazil, and is the tip of a huge submerged volcano. As a result the coast is black volcanic rock interspersed with beautiful white-sand beaches and tall rocky pinnacles. Most of the island and nearly all the surrounding reefs and islets are part of a national park, so much of it is inaccessible.

We are here for 5 nights, and are staying at a beautiful little pousada surrounded by tropical vegetation. There is only one road across the island served by a regular and free bus service, so we are becoming adept at getting around. It would be hard to get lost in such a small place, with only 3,000 regular inhabitants. We are so far east that we have only a 2 hour time difference with London, and 3 hours in the other direction from Philadelphia. 

Charles Darwin visited on his famous Beagle voyage and was disappointed in the lack of interesting bird life. However, the cliffs and outcrops are alive with boobies, noddies, terns and beautiful tropicbirds. This is a wonderful place to relax in the shade with a pair of binoculars. We are being quite careful not to get exposed to too much sun, as we are only 4 degrees south of the Equator. We have been in the sea up to our knees, but no further — the surf is huge and dangerous. Also, Noronha is famous as a breeding place for many species of sharks. We also came across multiple nests of turtle eggs waiting for the full moon to hatch. Because the island is so isolated and small, everything is imported, except for fish, and we have been enjoying dinners of various local fish dishes .

This is a perfect place to end our holiday — fascinating, relaxing and friendly.

Olinda houses

View from our hotel window

More Olinda houses

Pumpkin with shrimps — Jerimum

 

Francisco Brennand ceramics

Brennand fantastic animals

Courtyard — it’s ALL ceramic

Fernando de Noronha

Sand, rock, surf

Empty beach with black rocks

Brazil’s favorite snack — tapioca

Another reason to stay out of the water

Back in Brazil, Part 2 Salvador - Olinda, March 19 - 24, 2025

We spent 5 nights in an elegant remodeled colonial hotel in Salvador, dined in excellent local restaurants, then headed northeast. Our ultimate objective was the town of Olinda, a beautiful old town close to Brazil’s third largest city, Recife. The distance between Salvador and Recife is about 600 miles (c 900 kms) with many interesting places in between, so, despite many warnings about crazy Brazilian drivers and hazardous roads, we rented a car, and relied on Google maps to get us where we wanted to go.

Salvador Shopping Our first adventure was finding the rental car. Our Uber dropped us off at the front door a massive new multistorey shopping center with a bewildering number of elevators, escalators and ramps. We got completely lost, but luckily a very nice young man who spoke no English but was adept with Google Translate ordered up a golf cart to rescue us and drop us at the rental office — another example of the kindness of Brazilians to the hapless elderly.

Brazilian Drivers really did not live up to their reputation. Most are polite and considerate drivers, obey the traffic signals and road signs, and keep to their lanes, though there are exceptions. For a country that is still developing, there are very few old cars. Everyone is driving newish Korean, Japanese, and European models mostly made in Brazil.

Roads are mostly good. The main hazard is speed-bumps, called lombadas. Even the main 4-lane highway has frequent speed bumps in most towns. Some are signed and painted, others are not, so it’s impossible not to hit a few of them pretty hard, putting a strain on the car’s suspension and tires — and on our nerves, especially when the jolt switched on the wipers and the radio.

Agriculture. Long stretches of the road traversed vast sugar cane plantations, mostly grown for conversion to alcohol fuel — though the Brazilians do love their sweet cakes and candies, too. The other crop we saw in many places was cassava, a rather pretty plant about 3 feet tall with huge underground tubers used for making tapioca, one of the staples of NE Brazilian cooking. 

Monkey bridges The road passed through some long stretches of uncultivated forest, with regular rope suspension bridges designed for monkeys to cross over the road. We did not see any monkeys on their bridges, but we did come across some at our first stop.

Aracaju We divided our trip into 3 chunks of roughly 300 kms each, which led us first to the city of Aracaju, capital of Brazil’s smallest state, Sergipe. Aracaju is a not very attractive city, but just south of it are some wonderful beaches and pretty beach towns. The sand dunes between our hotel and the beach were home to interesting wildlife, including burrowing owls and demented looking guirá cuckoos. We visited the old market in the center of town which sold vast quantities of colorful Brazilian fruits, many of which have no recognizable English names and were completely unknown to us. Little wild marmosets take advantage of generous stall owners who feed them pieces of banana and other fruits. They are very cute. 

Aracaju is named after the caju = cashew tree which grows there in abundance. The fruit is peculiar — an orange-yellow pear-shaped fruit that is used to make an acidic juice and fruit sauces. Below the fruit hangs a small greenish comma-shaped thing, which is the shell of the cashew nut. The shell is poisonous and tricky to open, but inside is the deliciously tasty cashew nut that we and Brazilians eat in large quantities. 

After two nights in Aracaju, we headed towards the next big town, Maceio, in the neighboring state of Alagoas. Google Maps let us down, and led us onto increasingly narrow, twisty roads, through some very pretty little villages, until we were driving on dirt roads through sugar cane fields and eventually came to a dead end. We knew where north was and eventually managed to find a road that led us to our next destination, the small coastal village of Barra San Miguel. Our hotel was on the beach, but there were no surfers or sunbathers in sight. The fabulous white-sand beach was mostly empty for miles in both directions.

There is not much going on in Barra San Miguel, but our hotel was comfortable, and there was an interesting small town nearby called Marechal Deodoro, known to Brazilians as the birthplace of the first President of Brazil. Unlike George Washington, he was not an admirable figure, so is little celebrated. The town was picturesque, with fishermen landing their catch and dozens of great white egrets waiting for their share. There was a huge convent and church, which the tiny guardian unlocked and allowed us to visit.

We did not visit the town of Maceio itself, which is mostly modern buildings, and is famous as the home of one of Brazil’s allegedly most corrupt presidents, who was convicted and jailed for taking millions of dollars worth of bribes.

Our final day of driving took us from Barra to Recife where we dropped off our car, with some relief, and we are now spending 4 nights in beautiful Olinda.

Brazilian food We are not big meat eaters, though most Brazilian menus feature large amounts of grilled beef. However, there is an abundance of wonderful fresh fruit at breakfast — nearly always 5 or 6 varieties — and many interesting baked goods. At our hotel in Barra, they had an open wood fire to keep the coffee and pastries warm, despite the 90 degree heat. 

Another staple of breakfast is tapioca. This is not the easily digestible pudding that was a feature of our British childhoods. A tapioca is a small white pancake of cassava flour, toasted in a frying pan then loaded with sweet or savory fillings and folded like a taco. This is such a popular snack that there are at least 20 tapioca stands on the main square of Olinda. We cannot imagine how they all stay in business. Lin has never tried a tapioca, and Sandy is not a fan of slightly chewy flavorless white cardboard.

More in the next chapter…

Marmosets hanging out in Aracaju market

Wood burning stove at breakfast

Cashew fruit with nut underneath

Huge church and convent in tiny town of Marechal Deodoro

Beach in northeast Brazil - they are all this empty

Guirá cuckoo

Burrowing owl in sand dunes

Fishermen and egrets

Back in Brazil: Part 1 Salvador, March 13 - 18, 2025

We spent a three week vacation in Brazil in October 2023, and felt we had scratched only a tiny corner of this vast country, so we are back again, this time in the northeast, and currently in the great pulsating metropolis of Salvador in the State of Bahia. Our Brazilian friend in Philadelphia warned us that carnival in Salvador is too crazy even for most Brazilians, and it does seem that the people here are doing their best to keep it going even though it officially ended over 10 days ago. 

Salvador is a huge messy city on the Atlantic coast, divided by a steep cliff into upper and lower sections. The lower city is docks, commercial buildings, markets and a reputation for being unsafe. The upper city is where the hotels, restaurants, museums, and tourists are. There are elevators and funicular railways — all free — connecting the lower and upper cities. 

The oldest area, Pelourinho, is a UN World Heritage Site and full of colorful old buildings, many undergoing restoration. Its steep narrow streets reverberate to the sound of drum school students’ public performances.

The performers hammer out complex and skillful rhythms under the direction of a “drum major”. They are accompanied by young men with pots of white paint with which they will tattooo your arms and legs in swirling patterns, if you agree to pay for the privilege. We have resisted so far.

In the squares are large ladies in voluminous white or brightly colored crinoline skirts that comprise the traditional costume of Bahia, who offer photo ops for a fee. Everywhere there are small stalls mixing up and selling caipirinhas — lethal mixtures of more or less recognizable local fruit with cachaça — local sugar cane rum.

Salvador was the center of the Brazilian slave trade, which brought over more than 10 times the number of slaves that were taken to the US. As a result there is a huge population of African origin in Salvador, and many cultural influences in food, music, dance and religion.  There is a visible mix of black and white populations and cultural influences.

We have strolled the streets visiting interesting churches and museums, and drinking in the atmosphere.

On Sunday, we went to the Modern Art Museum, unfortunately mostly closed for renovation, an ancient lighthouse with a very interesting museum of marine history, and the Model Market — two floors of handicrafts, with an amazing art installation in the basement. We had forgotten how considerate and accommodating to old people Brrazilians are. When they see us in a queue to enter a museum, they gently suggest we should go to the front of the line.

Yesterday, we had planned a quiet day with a boat trip to two local islands. It turned out to be anything but. We got up quite early to go to the marina, which was quite chaotic, but eventually we located our guide, who helped us to get established on the “schooner”. There were three guides, all who spoke a little English, though we guessed that there were perhaps 6 English speakers and 80 Brazilians on board. Those Brazilians certainly knew how to party. The on-board bar opened at 9 AM and did a roaring trade in fresh fruit alcoholic drinks for the rest of the day. One of the guides was an amazing dancer, and was accompanied by a small, moderately talented band of banjo, washboard, and drum. They seemed to know every carnival song and all the accompanying dance moves, and soon everyone was singing and dancing along. People of all shapes and sizes were showing off their hip swivels, belly dancing, hand jive, limbo, samba and line-dancing, all within a strict choreography that they all seemed to know. We did not join in…surprise… though we thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment. Our first stop was the Ilha dos Frades, an idyllic spot where everyone made for the picture perfect tropical white sand beach. We first visited a beautiful little chapel on a hill with a lovely view then strolled through the cute little village before succumbing to the inevitable and plunging into the bath-temperature water for a refreshing swim.

Then it was back on the boat for a short trip to the next island, Itaparica. This was our lunch destination, but getting to the restaurant was quite an adventure. First, over the side of the boat to drop into a sketchy looking motorized wooden rowboat that held about 20 people, then a trip to the beach where we went off the side if the motor boat into 2 feet of water, waded ashore and eventually reached the restaurant. We were greeted with a vast all-you-can-eat buffet with many unfamiliar local dishes and ingredients. We did not indulge, but went for a stroll in the equatorial heat round a scruffy village, followed by a refreshing bowl of açaí sorbet, before an equally adventurous return trip to our schooner.

The final lap of this marathon was the 1.5 hour trip back to Salvador. Our swivel-hipped guide tried hard to get everyone dancing again, but most of the passengers were by then tired, and full, suntanned and sleepy. It was certainly the most typically Brazilian day we could imagine.

Tomorrow, we rent a car and head off north along the coastal road towards Recife.

Bahrain crinoline lady

Pelourinho

Elevator from lower to upper town

Mysterious art exhibition

Lighthouse with maritime museum

Bar on day-trip schooner

Our Lady of Guadeloupe church on Frades

Idyllic beach

Back to the schooner after lunch

Part 5: Rio de Janeiro — 5-11 October, 2023

Fabulous Rio -- the final stop on our tour of a small corner of this vast country. We have seen and done a lot, but feel we have only scratched the surface of this huge and multifaceted city. Here is a short list of places seen, food eaten, experiences and impressions:

• Our first day, after a bus journey down from the misty mountain town of Petrópolis, we walked along the famed promenade of Ipanema. We admired the surfers riding huge waves rolling in from the Atlantic, the variety of barely clothed body types and skin colors, the array of people peddling all kinds of food, drink, clothing, jewelry, sunglasses etc. At the end of the beach is a statue of Tom Jobim, composer of one of Brazil’s best known songs. “The girl from Ipanema”. (Weirdly, when we visited the statue a few days later it had been repainted with a different color of clothes)

Ipanema Beach

Tom Jobim

• We take the Metro everywhere we can. It is clean, safe, very frequent and FREE for people over 60. We easily qualify…
• Our local public garden has hosted two street markets while we are here. One for fruit, vegetables, and fish in amazing quantities and varieties. The other for crafts, clothing, jewelry and, of course, food. Every outdoor activity appears to involve live music. Most play cover versions of 70s and 80s American rock, though a few are more traditionally Brazilian.

Hot pepper stall

Flowers at local market

• We took the Metro to the center of Rio and walked up into the funky and very hilly neighborhood of Santa Teresa, where we climbed and admired the huge tiled staircase, the Escaderia Selaron. It is covered with thousands of colorful tiles collected by the artist from all over the world. At the end of the staircase after even more hot and humid climbing is the weird Parque das Ruínas, a ruined house in a small park that has been converted into a more or less safe art gallery and viewpoint.

The tiled Escadaria Selaron

The Parque das Ruínas Art Museum

• Our hotel, the Ipanema Inn, has a deal with one of the vendors on the beach to provide beach chairs and umbrellas, and we have spent several late afternoons sitting on the beach, watching the sun go down behind the hills, and marveling at the non-stop parade of entrepreneurs selling their wares.
• Carts with vats of boiling water for hot sweet corn. They strip off the kernels, douse them in butter and hot sauce, and serve in a small plastic bowl.
• People with tiny charcoal braziers that they use to grill cheese, shrimps, sausages, and skewers of meat and fish beside your beach chair.
• Sellers of sunglasses, towels, beach blankets, skimpy bikinis, hats, and colorful beach dresses.
• Drinks of every variety from highly alcoholic capirinhas, beer, sodas, mate tea, and multicolored fruit juices garnished with fruit slices.
• Many of the vendors are colorfully or eccentrically dressed and have elaborate sales pitches. They are all extremely good-natured and cheerful, though it looks like a hard way to earn a living. And they all take credit cards or cell phone touch and go payment!

Shrimps and sweet corn sellers

Sunglasses anyone?

• We had been warned and read about how dangerous Rio is with street crime, purse snatching etc, but we have seen very little evidence of this. There is a healthy police presence, and like in many big cities there are people sleeping on the street.
• One of the “must see” excursions in Rio is the cable car to the top of the Sugar Loaf mountain. On Saturday, we walked to the cable car station, and were dismayed to see the huge crowd of people waiting to buy tickets and an equally huge crowd waiting to board the cabins. We reckoned on a 2 hour wait at least. But again, our age came to our aid — we were whisked into the “priority” line, given personal guidance on buying our half price tickets, then hustled to the front of the queue for boarding. It was a magical ride up the mountain in two stages with clear, sunny views in all directions over the strange city of Rio with its fabulous clean beaches, precipitous mountains, tropical forests and every sort of housing imaginable from tumbling, poverty-ridden favelas to glistening tower block condominiums, and all these elements mixed in together.

Rio from the Sugarloaf Mountain

• On Sunday, we visited the ancient monastery of Sao Bento (Saint Benedict), where the monks and choir sing the service in Gregorian chant. The church is elegant and plain from the outside, but inside is a riot of Baroque carving and gold leaf. We managed to find two places to sit in the packed church and sat through the sung readings, the credo and other parts of the mass. The singing was very fine, though they could have used a few more tenors, and we were well sprinkled with holy water and anesthetized with smoke from the censers. However, when one of the four priests started a very long sermon in Portuguese about the evils of abortion, we decided to give up our seats to others and refill our lungs with fresh air outside.

Sao Bento’s plain exterior

Sunday Mass in Sao Bento, with incense

• We spent a couple of hours in the Museum of Tomorrow, an incredible modern structure beside the ocean that resembles a white spaceship preparing for takeoff. Using art and science, technology and imagination, it projects a message of sustainability for our doomed planet’s survival. The exhibits are interactive and fun for all ages, educational and creative. 

Museum of Tomorrow

• The ride on the funicular railway up to the famous Cristo Redentor statue on Monday was fun. We were lucky to have clear views, though drizzle started and nixed our plan to take the jungle trail back down to street level. We spotted capuchin monkeys from the train, and identified many of our favorite “houseplants” in the jungle.

Cristo Redentor

Rio from the top of Corcovado before the rain started

• The afternoon rain cleared for us to take a four-mile wind-blown ride along the promenade on bikes borrowed along with helmets from our hotel. The wild waves and looming storm had already chased many beach-goers away, and we watched big machines shoveling tons of new sand onto the beach.
• Today’s visit to the Botanic Garden made up for missing out on the jungle trail. We saw more capuchin monkeys, toucans, parrots, orchids, Amazonian water lilies, waterfalls, flowering trees and insects, including hives of non-stinging bees. Sandy counted 22 bird species.

• Our food experience in Rio has been varied and interesting. Our hotel serves an excellent breakfast which sets us up for the day. A late afternoon gelato in one of the innumerable ice cream shops, or a cup of puréed frozen açaí or mango keeps us going till dinner. We have not gone to any purely Brazilian restaurants which tend to be heavy on meat, and have had some great meals in Italian, Japanese, Lebanese and French leaning places.
• Brazilians, like so many others, are obsessed with their cell phones and use them for everything — calling a cab, making payments, maps, and selfies everywhere.

Tomorrow, we will squeeze in some more sightseeing before flying to São Paulo for the overnight flight from 75 degree F Brazil to 45 degree F Bala Cynwyd. We’ll miss this lovely country and its friendly people and hope to return soon. 

Link to Sandy's eBird Trip Report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/160259

Part 4: Ilha Grande — Petrópolis — Rio, October 1-5

 Unfortunately, after our wonderful first day in the tropical paradise of Praia Vermelha on Ilha Grande, the weather took a turn for the worse and we had downpours and dampness for several days. We still managed to do some exploring (and eating açaí gelato) between rain showers, however, though we did not make it into the sea to snorkel with the green turtles eating at the seaweed farm. Still there are worse ways to pass the time than sitting on a sheltered deck in the middle of nowhere watching the sea, and colorful birds flying by.

On Monday 2, we sadly left the Ilha Grande on the fast ferry to the mainland and found a somewhat reluctant Uber drive to take us to our next stop, the mountain city of Petropolis. 

The flex boat ferry between Ilha Grande and the mainland.

The last hour of this journey was somewhat hair-raising as the rain was pouring down and we were driving fast up a very twisty mountain road, rising 2,700 feet and often in the left hand lane with severely reduced visibility!! But we need not have worried. The Brazilians have an interesting solution to the problem of 2-lane mountain roads that become too busy. Rather than going to the vast expense of expanding the road to 4 lanes, they build a separate 2 lane highway up the mountain, and make the old road one-way up the mountain and the new road one-way down the mountain.

Petropolis is a modest sized city with an interesting history. During the short-lived Brazilian Empire (1822-1889) it was the summer capital, when the emperor and all is family and vast retinue of dukes, counts, barons and assorted hangers-on moved to the mountains to escape sweltering Rio. The center of the city is full of huge, crumbling, and impossible to maintain Victorian palaces. Our hotel was one such, the Solar do Imperio, with huge rooms, high ceilings, plaster friezes, murals, elegant marquetry, marble staircases, window frames that no longer fit, patched-over rotting wood, crumbling plaster — a nightmare of non-stop maintenance, but very grand. 

Our hotel in Petropolis

Lin in the portico. Huge vases of fresh flowers every day.

Hotel dining room

We spent our 3 days in Petropolis exploring the unusual city, laid out by a German architect along several small rivers, and with many Germanic features. The weather was mostly cool and unsettled, with occasional downpours and often a strange damp mist swirling round the buildings. 

We visited the fascinating porcelain museum — 1,800 china animals and figurines made mostly in Germany and France.

The porcelain museum

We enjoyed our self-guided tour of the amazing and interesting Bohemia Brewery, where we bought our senior discount tickets ($3) and were presented with a small beer glass, which was refilled at regular intervals. We learned a lot about the history and science of brewing and the importance of beer in world history. 

Bohemia Brewery Museum

We were delighted with the cute little house of Santos Dumont, one of the original pioneers of powered flight at the beginning of the 20th century. He was an eccentric character of diminutive size who invented a hot water shower system and dined at a 2-meter high table. 

2 meter high dining table with chairs to match

Santos Dumont “chalet” in typical Petropolis weather

The first indoor hot water shower

On our second day we visited the vast Imperial Palace where the Emperor Pedro II lived. It is an imposing museum full of ponderous Victorian furniture and innumerable paintings and sculptures of Pedro and his large family. The polished wooden floors are immaculate and visitors must wear uncomfortable felt flip-flops to avoid damaging them. 

Felt over-slippers that slip in every which direction

Imperial Palace, Petropolis

The city is very hilly and the rain forest on the surrounding mountains seems ready to take over at the slightest opportunity. There was evidence everywhere of landslides, and buildings that had disappeared. Some house owners have just sprayed their entire precipitous back gardens with 6 inches of concrete.

We came across one other interesting type of store we had never seen before — self-service ice cream. You take a plastic container and an ice cream scoop and help yourself from a huge range of flavors. When you have finished serving yourself, they weigh the container and charge accordingly. It was delicious ice cream in many wonderful flavors and very inexpensive…but is it hygienic? We suffered no ill effects.

Self Serve Ice Cream Store

 Today we checked out of our grand crumbling hotel after another delicious breakfast, and took the bus down the mountain from damp Petropolis to sunny Rio de Janeiro, where we checked into our hotel a few yards from Ipanema beach. We are looking forward to several days of exploring this fabulous city, using the hotel’s complimentary bikes, and Rio’s excellent subway system.

Confused electrician?