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…
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| Marmosets hanging out in Aracaju market |
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| Wood burning stove at breakfast |
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| Cashew fruit with nut underneath |
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| Huge church and convent in tiny town of Marechal Deodoro |
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| Beach in northeast Brazil - they are all this empty |
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| Guirá cuckoo |
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| Burrowing owl in sand dunes |
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| Fishermen and egrets |
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