Day 55: The Best-Laid Plans...

Day 55
Today I'm in: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

I had big, ambitious plans today.  I was going hardcore sightseeing.  I was visiting different neighborhoods, going to parks, stopping in museums, and so forth.  I left the hotel and walked with purpose.  I was headed for Copacabana, the next suburb up from Ipanema, and after stopping at Polis Sucos to get another cup of ridiculously good acai com granola (pictured) and I decided I'd walk to Copacabana along the beach, because hey, it's nicer there.

It's Saturday and everyone in Rio was on the beach.  Young, old, black, white, you name it, the place was packed.  I made it about three blocks before I gave in and decided to go sit on the beach with the rest of the city.  So much for sightseeing.

After about an hour on the sand a Canadian couple set up shop next to me and we started chatting.  Christina and Sharif were visiting from Toronto and were coming up on the end of a two-week swing through Argentina and Brazil.  She just finished law school and he got his MBA a few years ago, so we compared notes on Toronto, Chicago, job searches, travel and life in general.  One caipirinha turned into two, which turned into four, and suddenly it was almost three o'clock and I had only made it a few blocks from my hotel.  We made plans to meet for dinner tomorrow night and I staggered off down the beach in the direction of Copacabana.

Fortunately it didn't take long to get there.  Like Ipanema, Copacabana is a truly vast sweep of white sand and it was completely packed.  It's angled more north-south, compared to Ipanema which is east-west, so it gets head-on sunshine in the morning and by afternoon it's almost completely out of the sun.  The neighborhood around it has (according to my guidebook and several people I've talked to) seen better days, but the beach and its proximity to central Rio mean that it hasn't fallen that far downhill.  The streets were lined with more utilitarian shops and restaurants - not quite as upscale as Ipanema or Leblon - but there were tons of people around and it seemed like a pretty nice place to live.

Since the sun was starting to set, I decided I'd head for Pão de Açúcar, the famous Sugar Loaf Mountain that stands guard over the entrance to Guanabana Bay.  You can get up there via cable car, and I was a little worried that sunset on a Saturday would be packed, but things moved along pretty quickly and I found myself at the top after only about fifteen minutes in line. 

The view from the top was pretty incredible - the skyscrapers of downtown Rio to the north, the middle-class Flamengo and Botafogo areas lining the bay immediately below, and Copacabana and Ipanema on the far side.  Lesser morros pop up from the urban jungle everywhere.  If I were looking to build a city, let alone one with millions and millions of people, this probably isn't the place I'd choose to put it.  But the landscape is what makes Rio so spectacular.

It got pretty crowded at the summit right before sunset (including the requisite hordes of Japanese tourists, who literally appeared, kamikaze-style, out of nowhere) but it was a perfect evening and the scenery didn't disappoint.  Everyone clapped and cheered when the sun finally slipped below the mountains.

The summit also features a nice view of Rio's downtown Santos Dumont Airport, which features one of the shortest runways in the world that's allowed to handle commercial jet traffic.  If you've ever flown out of Chicago's Midway Airport and been surprised by how short the runways there are, consider this - the runway at Santos Dumont is a full thousand feet shorter.  To make things more interesting, there's water on three sides.  Plus a massive mountain at one end.  And an elevated highway bridge on the other.  The margin for error there is as close to zero as you can get.  I'll be flying out of SDU in a few days when I return to Sao Paulo to catch my onward flight to Santiago, so I'll get to experience it for myself.

From there I headed back down on the cable car and caught a ride back to Ipanema on Rio's very modern metro system, which in the last decade has finally been extended to tourist areas (tunneling under and around some of those imposing mountains isn't easy or cheap) and has become a useful way to get around.  Work is allegedly underway to bring the system all the way into Leblon for the 2016 Olympics, although I didn't see any construction when I was there yesterday.  It'll come in handy the next few days when I leave the beaches and explore some of Rio's more historic areas.  

Day 53 & 54: Cidade Maravilhosa

Days 53 & 54
Today I'm in: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sorry for the long stretch without updating.  The good news is that basically nothing happened on Day 53 except that I got on a plane at lunchtime in Fortaleza and flew down to Rio.  The flight took more than three hours - Brazil's a big country - and we touched down in Rio just before 4pm.  It was 6pm by the time I got to my hotel, so I didn't see much of the city the first evening.

I'm here in Rio for four full days, so I didn't feel obligated to rush out on day one and see everything.  The city's geography divides it into pretty clearly defined neighborhoods, which makes it easy to explore in smaller bites.  I'm staying in the Ipanema neighborhood (made famous by the bossa nova movement in the 1960s) and spent most of yesterday just wandering the area.  I started with a four-mile run along Ipanema Beach - the beach is fronted by a wide sidewalk, bike lanes and plenty of kiosks selling food and drinks.  Now that I'm out of northeastern Brazil and there's a little bit more distance between me and the Equator, the temperature is back down in the high 70s and it's really, really nice.

After cleaning up and having breakfast I spent a few hours on the beach.  For an urban beach, Ipanema is surprisingly clean - it helps that it's in a very well-to-do area and that it faces the open ocean rather than the dirtier Bahia de Guanabana - and the sand is sugar white.  Like in Fortaleza and Recife, there are barracas where you can rent chairs and get drinks.  Unlike Fortaleza, the barracas aren't huge establishments; they're mostly small tents and there are lots and lots of them.

A few streets in from the beach, Ipanema and its twin neighborhood Leblon are joined by the Avenida Visconde de Piraja, a busy road lined with shops and restaurants and sidewalk cafes.  Some of the shops - especially around the Leblon end where things get really nice - are quite exclusive.  I won't be visiting those, but there are plenty of regular stores and places to eat.  I'm right around the corner from Polis Sucos, a juice bar with acai com granola, my new favorite snack.  It's pureed acai berries served chilled (almost frozen like a slurpee) with granola blended in.  You can also get tapioca beads, strawberries, melon or any number of other fruits mixed in, or you can have a glass of juice from about 40 other different types of fruits.  At about $2.50 per glass, it's not cheap, but it's a lot less expensive than what acai will cost you in the States.  Besides the juice bars and shops, there are plenty of other diversions, like the woman I found trying to rid herself of 25 puppies she "found" abandoned in the street.  She had them all stacked up inside one of the granny-style grocery carts, which didn't seem like the best way to carry puppies, but most of them were sleeping comfortably and a few were out playing on the street.

Behind Ipanema is the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, a vast saltwater lake ringed by a running path (which I'm planning to tackle tomorrow morning) and plenty of high-rise buildings.  Like along the beach, there are also restaurant kiosks, open-air theaters and plenty of other diversions.  That's Corcovado in the far distance, topped by the Cristo Redentor statue.  Just to the right is the Morro de Cantagalo, which has one of the city's (in)famous favelas on its back side.  Unlike most Brazilian cities, where favelas developed on the city's fringes or near industrial areas, in Rio they are mixed right in among the middle- and upper-class areas.  Some of them have amazing views across the city or the beaches.  The proximity of rich to poor means that Rio has a bad reputation for crime - something I'm trying to be aware of when I'm walking around - but most people seem pretty carefree, at least during the day.

Today I'm planning to head one neighborhood over, to Copacabana and its famous beach.  It's an easy walk from here, and although Copacabana reputedly is not as nice as Ipanema, the beach and its view of the Pao de Acucar mountain is supposed to be a stunner.  

Day 52: Back to the Future

Day 52
Today I'm in: Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil

I landed in Fortaleza last night at about 1:45am.  We left Natal about twenty minutes late, and it's testimony to Brazil's efficiency (not something you hear often) that I was in bed at my hotel by 2:20am.  I woke up late this morning in a much better frame of mind and hit the streets of Fortaleza to get acquainted with the city.

There are more than three million people in metro Fortaleza, and it definitely cuts the profile of a large Brazilian city - a forest of high-rise apartments and office towers as far as the eye can see.  Downtown Fortaleza has two urban beaches, Iracema and Meireles, and both were pleasant, although the waves were pretty tame owing to the harbor breakwater.  The view - of large tanker ships and the city's port in the distance - wasn't fantastic either, but both beaches are nicely landscaped, have plenty of kiosks and a broad promenade running along their length.  The city skyline makes for an impressive backdrop, especially today with a cloudless sky and temperatures pushing mercilessly north of 34C.

I also discovered Cincuenta Sabores (50 Flavors) an ice-cream store here recommended by my guidebook that carries just about every flavor you can think of and a bunch you probably wouldn't ever come up with (beer, crispy cheese, caipirinha).  I chose guava and melon for my two-scoop creation, but it would take a lot more visits to work through a menu that large.

So why are the city's beaches so empty-looking?  It turns out most people in Fortaleza head for the Praia do Futuro (Future Beach), a four-mile-long swath of sand east of town.  Praia do Futuro faces the open ocean, so the surf is much higher, and the beach has room for everyone.  It's only a few kilometers from town, but I took a bus - the vast and not-very-safe favela of Serviluz sits squarely between the downtown area and the beach. My bus bounced through the streets (including right through Serviluz), swerving wildly and stopping suddenly, the driver singing along the jaunty forro music playing on the radio.  It made for a very memorable but jerky ride.

Praia do Futuro is dotted with barracas, which are large beach clubs that have restaurants, swimming pools, volleyball courts, shops, stages with singers and live bands, you name it.  Each barraca also has hundreds of palm-thatched palapas with tables and lounge chairs, giving you a shady place to rest while still keeping an eye on the surf and the action on the beach.  It's a setup that makes sense, but it's also for security reasons - the beach's proximity to Serviluz and other unsavory areas means there's safety in numbers.  Unlike downtown, Praia do Futuro hasn't been overdeveloped - there's the odd high-rise here and there, but much of the area is suburban and even dotted with empty lots.

I grabbed a table at CrocoBeach, one of the larger barracas, and spent a few hours in and out of the sun.  I had a nice lunch of arrumadinho, which is salted beef served over white beans and topped with the ubiquitous farofa (fried cassava flour).  I also had a large Antarctica beer, which is served in Brazilian fashion in an oversized 600 mL bottle with a little plastic coozie to keep it cold.  Brazilian brewers, through a partnership with institutional customers, reuse these bottles to cut down on packaging costs.  During my internship at AB-InBev last summer (owned by Brazilians, remember) there was a project underway to figure out how and if this system could be implemented in the US.

Upon returning to Fortaleza I met up with Kacy, a friend of a friend who connected us when she found out I was visiting the city.  Kacy's been living in Fortaleza for about two years, working for an NGO and helping a rural school implement a cooperative-learning curriculum.  We ran into two of her friends on the Dragao do Mar, one of the old city's main squares, and passed a few hours drinking chopp vinho (wine mixed with beer; it sounds terrible but it's pretty great) and trying out some northeastern Brazilian specialties like tapioca carne do sol (dried beef and cheese served in a tapioca-flour pita) and baio de dois, which is rice, beans and sausage stewed together in a pot.

All in all today was a nice break - a well-deserved easy day that helped relieve some of the stress of traveling and not always knowing what's happening around me.  I'm sorry I don't have another day in Fortaleza; this stop wraps up my time in Brazil's northeast.  Tomorrow at lunchtime I fly back down to Rio de Janeiro, where I'll be spending five days on my way out of the country.

Day 51: Passing Through

Day 51
Today I'm in: Transit between Fernando de Noronha and Fortaleza, Brazil

Not a lot to write about today.  I'm writing this entry from the departure lounge of the airport in Natal, a city of just under a million people in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in northeastern Brazil.  As I mentioned a few days ago, Fernando de Noronha has only four flights a day and none of them go to Fortaleza, my next destination.  A six-hour connection in Natal was the only way I could get from one place to the other.  The Natal airport is suspiciously quiet; my flight leaves at 12:15am and there are two other flights leaving the same time, so it should pick up a bit by then.

Owing to yesterday's sunburn, I took things pretty easy today.  I crashed at about 10pm and slept almost nine hours, which was nice to do, and took my time getting up and getting out of the room today.  Equipped with stronger sunblock, I walked (no electric bike since I wasn't going as far) about three-quarters of a mile to Praia da Conceicão, a nice (and shaded!) beach where I passed a few hours in the water or with a book under the trees.  Around noon it got cloudier - a nice break from the heat - and for the rest of the day there were intermittent light rain showers.  I took the hint from Mother Nature and headed back to the pousada to pack up and get showered. 


In happy(ish) news, the pousada staff sort-of fixed my shower.  I came home yesterday and there was thick electrical tape over all the faucets and the showerhead.  I don't think the electrical problem is solved, but I was able to operate the shower and enjoy hot water without shocking myself.  Just to be on the safe side, I took pretty quick showers, though; not more than a few minutes.  

At about 3pm the shuttle came to take me to the airport, which was a little aggravating since my flight didn't leave until almost 6pm.  Noronha's airport is basically three interconnected rooms so there wasn't much to see and check-in took no time at all (no small victory here in Brazil where I've been routinely waiting more than half an hour to check in.)  We took off on time and did a low-altitude circuit of the island, which was encircled by rain showers and clouds, before setting course for Natal.  And here I am, waiting on a flight to Fortaleza.

I also have to confess to feeling a little bit worn out at this point.  Although the last few days on Noronha were incredible, I'm starting to feel the strain of not always being understood and almost never understanding people; I didn't expect everyone in Brazil to speak English but I have been surprised at how few people know even a few words.  Noronha was also packed with families and couples and so I felt additionally conspicuous as a solo traveler.  Feeling like such an outsider has me a little bit down these past few days. I'm happy it took me almost eight weeks to get to this point, and fortunately I have a nice, long, five-day stay in Rio de Janeiro coming up where hopefully I can slow down a little bit and take things easy before the last two countries.  

Day 50: Worth the Trip

Day 50
Today I'm in: Fernando de Noronha, Brazil

That's the assessment after spending the day exploring Noronha today.  This is one of the most out-of-the-way spots in the world to visit, but it's worth it and then some.  I've been fortunate to travel to a lot of pretty gorgeous places in my life but this just about takes the cake.  If it weren't for the lobster sunburn I managed to get (*despite* applying sunscreen rigorously; it's just that hot here) today would have been just about perfect.

I picked up my electric-bike contraption from Augusto's shop at about 9:30 in the morning.  It was really simple to operate and very reliable, despite many of the larger body parts being sealed in plastic wrap to keep them from getting wet and malfunctioning.  It even had pedals so that on hills or any other time I felt so inclined, I could put a little of my own energy in and make the bike go faster.  I wouldn't want to ride this thing through a city (I don't think it went more than about 30 kph on its own, although it picked up speed naturally going down hills) but for a small place like Noronha it worked great.

I was under strict orders from Augusto - in addition to not riding the bike through any puddles and pulling over any time it started to rain - to keep the bike on the island's sole paved road.  As many of the best beaches are not directly on this road, I spent a fair amount of time today walking down dirt paths to get to the water.  There are sixteen beaches in all on the island, three of which are consistently ranked as Brazil's top three by most travel publications.  The first one, Praia do Leão or Lion Beach (where I'm pictured above, pre-sunburn; my face is roughly the same color as the shirt now) required negotiating a cliffside path.  When I got there, however, I had the entire beach to myself - not another visitor in sight apart from dozens and dozens of small resident lizards that all ran up to me when I sat down to drink some water.  They must be used to people and/or looking for food.  They kept a respectable distance and watched me, but it was a little unnerving at first.  This beach faces the Atlantic (called the "Outer Sea" by Noronhans) so the surf is a bit more rough and I opted not to go for a swim here.

To get to the next beach, Praia do Sanchos, I had to climb down a rickety-feeling iron ladder into a chasm in the side of the a cliff, then walk through the chasm to a second set of steps.  The beach, however, was as close to perfect as you can get - warm, clear water, white sand and TONS of fish.  I rented a snorkel and spent about half an hour checking everything out, but it wasn't even necessary.  The water is so crystal clear you can see all the marine life from the surface.  Noronha has a fairly large resident shark population, but the marine ecosystem is so rich that they've never had to resort to eating people like they have in Recife.

After a break for lunch and two chilled coconuts worth of rehydration, I hopped on the bike for the 15-minute ride to the north end of the island to visit Praia Cacimbo do Padre.  This mean's "Priest's Well Beach" and is named for one of the island's first freshwater wells, which was dug by Franciscan priests in the 1600s. It's a vast swathe of sand with Morro do Pico at one end and was by far the widest beach of any I visited today.  It helped that nobody else was there; multiple times today it felt like I was the only person on the island.  The visitor caps do their job exceedingly well.

Today's final beach was Baia dos Porcos or Bay of Pigs, just like the ill-fated Cuban invasion site; it's one of the island's smallest but has the best snorkeling and diving due to the rock outcroppings scattered throughout the water.  Once again, I was the only person there.  I didn't have a snorkel this time (and I wasn't about to hike back to the main road to rent one from a vendor) but I spent some time checking out the fish and coral in the tidal pools above the beach.  Four times a day, this beach becomes the worst one on the island - the end of the airport runway is on the cliff just above - but all was quiet when I visited.

The one thing Noronha's beaches don't have much of is shade.  It's breezy and comfortable when you're facing the water, but turn away and it feels about 15 degrees hotter.  Up on the cliffs above, where the roads are, I felt like I was being slowly cooked alive.  SPF 30 wasn't enough today - good thing I brought aloe with me - and I'm rethinking some of my beach plans for tomorrow.  There are a few more beaches I want to see, but I may have to be a bit more strategic in when I visit them, or bring an sun umbrella with me like a Japanese tourist.  

Day 49: Call Me Crusoe

Day 49
Today I'm in: Fernando de Noronha, Brazil

With a suitcase full of (very expensively) cleaned clothes, I hopped on a plane this afternoon and bid farewell to Recife.  The flight to Fernando de Noronha took just over an hour; about twenty minutes in, the coastline of mainland Brazil curved away from us, and we flew over open ocean for the remainder of the trip.  We landed on Fernando de Noronha just before 4pm.  I'm now more than 500 kilometers from the Brazilian mainland on one of the most isolated islands in the Atlantic, closer to Senegal than I am to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.  


Technically, Noronha is an archipelago of several dozen islands, but the largest (and eponymous) island is the only inhabited one.  It's about three miles long by one mile wide and is punctuated by a series of morros, which are steep rock outcroppings that have been eroded over milennia by wind and water.  Morro do Pico, the largest one, is really striking and is visible from just about anywhere on the island.  Smaller morros are everywhere - the airport runway runs between two of them (is that safe?) and everything is covered in dense jungle. 

At no point in its history has Noronha been joined to the South American mainland, so it's developed a very unique ecosystem.  Many of the bird, plant and fish species here aren't found anywhere else on the planet.  Brazil, which doesn't have the best environmental track record overall, is VERY serious about protecting Noronha - airlines are limited to four flights a day (three to Recife and one to Natal) which keeps visitor arrivals down to about 400 per day.  All tourists pay an environmental tax upon arrival that gets proportionally larger the longer you stay.  I'll be here for three days, so I had to pay 86 reais (almost $50).  Everything here comes with a price - the cost of importing from the mainland is high, and I'm still trying to not wince every time I pay a bill.

There are also no large resorts here; everyone stays in pousadas or small villas that aren't allowed to exceed a specified number of square footage (or meters, I guess.)  I'm staying at the Pousada Algas Marinhas, a very pleasant place on a hillside above the main town - more on that in a minute - with a big hammock-filled veranda, mango trees out back and simple but nice rooms.  The only catch, which I just discovered, is that the electric water heater in the shower shocks me every time I try to turn it on.  I took a cold shower tonight, but I'm going to have to tell them about it tomorrow.  Neither death by electrocution nor a cold shower in the morning sounds very appealing.

The closest thing to a definable center on Noronha are three interconnected villages - Vila do Remedios, Floresta Nova, and Floresta Velha.  I'm staying in Floresta Nova, but there's no real way to tell where one ends and the other begins.  Vila dos Remedios is ostensibly the seat of government and the de-facto capital, but it's a very quiet place - just a single cobbled street leading to the island's small port with a few stores and restaurants and the odd pousada here and there.

Since I arrived late in the afternoon I didn't have much time to explore, and what little time I did have was spent finding a set of wheels for tomorrow.  I did walk down the hill from Vila dos Remedios to the Praia do Cachorro, one of the island's 16 beaches.  It's not particularly noteworthy as Noronha beaches go - I'll be visiting some really spectacular ones tomorrow - but it was still pretty awesome, with a great view of Morro do Pico and one small quiet restaurant with tables set up on the sand.  It's low season here and that, coupled with the cap on visitor arrivals, means that the pace here is just a level or two above comatose.  Naturally almost nobody speaks English (as far as I could tell, I was the only non-Brazilian on my flight) but the cadence here is so easy and understanding that I haven't had any issues communicating so far.

Most of the vehicles on the island are electric or run on liquified natural gas.  By far the most popular way to get around is by buggy; there are far more buggies here than regular cars.  I did some checking around before I got here, and unfortunately all of the buggies are standard-transmission, which I essentially don't know how to drive (I've done it once and it wasn't very pretty.)  It's a bit more vehicle than I need anyhow, so once I got settled at the pousada I started asking around for a bike or a scooter.  Eventually I found a shop called Sol e Mar (Sun and Sea) with a friendly owner named Augusto who spoke a little bit of English and very good Spanish.  He's renting me a small electric motorbike - I'll post pictures of it tomorrow once I've had a chance to ride it.  It's definitely an odd-looking vehicle.

That's the story for today - I'll be heading off on my funny-looking motorbike to visit beaches, do a few hikes and hopefully get some snorkeling in.  I've wanted to come here for years and years, and I'm really excited to see more of the island tomorrow.  

Day 48: Olinda and Laundry

Day 48
Today I'm in: Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil


Things started out smoothly today with a three-mile run along the beach (still loving those new shoes - thanks, Tekkie Town!)  Along the way I stopped into three lavanderias and inquired about same-day laundry service.  I got  nãos from all three and was starting to worry that I might have to wait until I got to Fernando de Noronha the next day to get things washed.  Noronha is a small island with a reputation for being incredibly expensive and I knew that laundry there would cost a fortune, if I was even able to find a place to do it.  


Fortunately, when I got back to the hotel one of the reception clerks called me over and said there was an express laundry service at Hiper Bompreço, a Walmart-like behemoth of a store a few blocks from the hotel.  I packed everything into a bag and walked over, and lo and behold the staff there said everything would be ready 7pm.


With that settled I went back to the hotel to meet up with Tim and Isabela, whom I'd met the previous day at the beach, to go to Olinda.  Olinda is a separate town, but it's basically merged into greater Recife over the years and it took us only about 25 minutes to get there in a taxi.   The cab dropped us off in the main plaza and we hit the cobbled streets to see some of the sights. 

Olinda is a much older settlement than Recife.  It was founded by the Portuguese, but in the 18th century the Dutch set their sights on northeast Brazil and the town was invaded and recaptured quite a few times.  After a particularly brutal sacking and recapture, the Portuguese decided to move their court down the coast to Recife, where the reef that gives the city its name forms a natural protection against invasion.  Olinda was left idle and most of its buildings began to crumble.  It's only the last 20 or so that the town's historic center and brightly-painted buildings have begun to draw tourists, and after being named a UNESCO World Heritage Site a few years back, much of Olinda has been restored.

 It's very atmospheric - stone streets (some still paved in the original stones dredged off the reef - you can see the shells embedded in them), pastel-painted houses with tiled roofs, plazas shaded by banyan trees and large, imposing churches everywhere you turn.  The town is built around a series of hills, so periodically you'd come across an incredible view of the Atlantic, or the Recife skyline in the distance, or sometimes both.  Many of the buildings have been turned into restaurants or pousadas, but the few shops we saw were not overly touristy (bar one that sold t-shirts with the Portuguese equivalent of "my parents went to Olinda and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." 


Olinda also hosts its own carnaval every February - Rio's celebration is the best-known but the northeastern carnavals draw more influence from African traditions and are apparently the place to go if you want to be a participant rather than a spectator.  We visited one of the samba schools where giant masks and costumes were ready to go for next summer's celebration.  

Today was really bright - no clouds in the sky - and quite warm (we kept laughing because our taxi driver told us today was one of the coldest winter days he could remember) so by 5pm we were pretty worn out and headed back to Boa Viagem for the night.  A little bit before 7pm I walked back to the Hiper Bompreço to pick up my laundry, which was ready to go with each item individually and wastefully wrapped in plastic.  Upon returning home to unpack, however, I discovered that one pair of shorts was missing, which required another trip back to straighten things out using my very poor (but improving!) schoolboy Portuguese and some pantomime that bordered on interpretive dance at times.  The shorts were eventually located and all is well inside my suitcase again. 

Tomorrow's a big day for me - I'm off to Fernando de Noronha, an island archipelago about 500 kilometers east of Recife and one of the only landfalls between South America and Africa.  I've wanted to visit Noronha  for years and years and am really excited to finally be going.  Small, remote places don't have a reputation for internet connectivity, so I may or may not be off the grid for a few days.  Stay tuned.  

Day 47: Heh-SEEF-ee

Day 47
Today I'm in: Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

The title of the post is the proper pronunciation of Recife, my current location and the second-largest city in northeast Brazil (after Salvador, which I left this morning.)  The view as we came into land was of an endless wall of skyscrapers fronting the beach - Brazilians love to build up as well as out.  Even smallish cities have a dense knot of high-rise apartment towers, and the large cities have skylines that - in terms of sheer quantity - put American cities to shame.  Most of the towers are of an uninspiring plaster-and-concrete style that doesn't weather very well (so we win on quality!) but it's impressive regardless.

Recife means 'reef' in Portuguese, and from what I've seen in my brief time here this city lives for its beaches.   Even the phone booths are shaped like coconuts.  I'm staying in the beachside suburb of Boa Viagem, which fronts an expanse of sand several miles long.  It's incredibly pleasant - there's a mosaic-tile promenade between the beach and the street, bicycle paths, food and drink kiosks, ornate flower gardens and what felt like an army of city workers keeping everything clean.  I'm looking forward to going for a run tomorrow - the wall of apartment towers literally goes to the horizon in both directions, though, so I'll have to keep track of where I am.

The only thing Recife's beach isn't good for, apparently, is swimming.  Sharks love to come inside Recife's reef to feed, and occasionally a human looks good to them.  There are small sections of the beach that are netted off to give people a place to swim, but most of the water is open and so there are threatening signs everywhere urging you to stay out of the waves.

It's not all bad though - like Salvador, there are plenty of friendly chair vendors and fresh green coconuts to be had.  Today was a bit cloudy, and the sun had already gone behind the high-rise towers when I got to the beach, so it was no good for sunbathing, but there was a steady breeze off the water and people were getting out of work early (it's Friday!) and heading for the sand.  Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

While on the beach I met another American from Chicago, Tim, and his Brazilian girlfriend Isabela.  He's a teacher at the American high school in Rio (he spotted my Michigan bag and came over to say hello) and as luck would have it, they're staying at the same hotel as me.  Tomorrow we're going to visit Olinda, a historic town just north of central Recife.  First, though, I have to find a laundry - I'm almost out of clean clothes and the hotel doesn't provide laundry service on weekends.