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