São Luis

After a two day stopover in Olinda, in which we stayed in the dampest, most cavey room ever, we flew up so São Luis with GOL airlines - our first flight in Brazil, and possibly the newest plane I've ever been in. Took a load more photos of Olinda since the weather was a bit better...

From Maracaipe and...

From São Luis

The old town centre here is a Unesco World Heritage site due to the excellent examples of old colonial architecture, although much of it is in a pretty dire state. Everything is covered in "Azulejos" a type of tile brought over by the portuguese which helps to protect and decorate the outside of the buildings.

From São Luis

We have arrived right on time for the Bumba Meu Boi festivities, which means there has been fantastic dancing and music in the streets every night till the early hours. There is a strong Afro-Carribean influence here, and due to the promiscuous Portugues there is every colour, shape and size or person you can imagine.


Cant see it? Click here
Here is a photo of some of the dancers, seeing as the video seems a bit dark...

From São Luis

Less than ten days left in Brasil now, with the Amazon jungle still to come!

Back in Olinda

This time we took the bus route, and it wasn't bad at all, and it cost almost three times less than the taxi...but then we did know the route, and that makes it much easier. In fact as we entered Recife I recogonised Olinda on it's hill and was able to ask the driver to stop and let us off, which meant no long metro ride or extra taxi costs.

Anyway, we're here for tomorrow and then the day after we fly up to São Luis. It's been raining a whole lot, which is a bit boring.

We never saw dolphins in Pipa in the end, mainly 'cause it was raining loads so we didn't go back to the beach. We did buy some art though.

There was a nasty incident last night though when one of our fellow guests at the pousada found that his room had been broken into and his camera and laptop had been stolen. Oddly enough the thieves took the time to go through his bag and empty it of his TAG watch, money and passports and just took the camera stuff. This lead us to believe that whoever it was knew what they were looking for, particularly as that morning he had taken the bag out and was showing me the photos on his laptop in the open communal area. Another reminder for Leah and myself about how important it is to keep your stuff as safe as possible, and assume nowhere is secure!

Olinda and on to Pipa

OK, we know it was lazy but it felt good; we took a taxi from Olinda to Pipa yesterday to avoid the 5 hour bus ride. We have to go back to Olinda by bus anyway, so cheating on one leg of the journey isn't so bad...

Olinda is a very pretty town/suburb of Recife, which is an enormous imposing city of skyscrapers - we didn't go there. Olinda is made up of narrow winding cobbled streets and colourful little houses, which double as artist studios, cafes and pousadas (like hostels). We stayed in a rather nice, if very overpriced place called Cuatro Cantos, which was based in an old colonial holiday home. It had high ceilings, polished wooden floors and plenty of character, the only down side being that the rooms we could afford would have previously served as a store room or something similar! Clean and pleasant enough though. Olinda is a great place for just wandering and taking photos and stumbling upon things; music, art, whatever. We'll be back there on tuesday to take our flight to São Luis.

From Maracaipe and...

From Maracaipe and...

Pipa is also a lovely little town, cobble streets etc etc. It also has pretty good surf and the beaches are different to everywhere else we've been in that they are backed by cliffs, though not very high ones. I've been out on the board a couple of times, but we're going to sell it now (or have to give it away) as it's too much of a pain to carry it through the jungle and up to Venezuela - plus the airline will charge us more than it's worth just to stick it in the hold!

Tomorrow we're hoping to go and see some dolphins that are apparently in great numbers just round the headland.