After the cultural highlights of Salvador, we decided to make our way up the coast by bus toward our destination island, Fernando de Noronha. On the way, Maceió and Recife, two coastal cities of Brazil that are both name after features of their geographic location. Maceió is an Indian word for natural springs of water that occur in the region and flow to the sea as rivers; whereas Recife is named for the coral reefs found of its shorelines. Both are in the North East of Brazil, Maceió in the state of Alagoas, and Recife in Pernambuco. We had a few issues getting our onward flights sorted out to the World Heritage Site in Fernando de Naronha, so we would be spending extra time in Recife – time that Francesca would spend completing her dissertation. In between spurts of working on that though, we had a few beach trips, visited another World Heritage Site, called Olinda, and walked around Recife’s historical center.
We arrived in Maceió after our first overnight bus trip from Salvador. It took just over 12 hours – most of which was spent freezing cold in the biting temperature of the A/C (n.b. bring a blanket!). We spent 4 days there – the snorkeling was recommended online as the best along the coast. However, the attempts we made to actually GO snorkeling were all futile. On the 6th we travelled to Praia de Paripueira which was a half day trip with a hotel pick-up and drop-off. We left early. 8am. An hour later, we arrived at a nice enough beach, but the tides were completely wrong for snorkeling on the coast, and we soon realized that the visibility was zero here. They do a boat trip from this beach to some little offshore lagoons, about knee height, that are supposed to be excellent snorkeling, but not the day we were there – again because of tides. Trying to extricate this information was tough from the few English words they knew, and the few Portuguese words we knew. We managed to find out that the boat trip was on in a few days time, but it left at 8am – which would mean getting a taxi all the way out here…about $US50 each way…crazy. I don’t know why the tour operators in Maceió and the tour operators on the outlying beaches do not get together on this one and make a streamlined experience for the customers who come – needless to say, due to expense and time constraints caused by this lack of business acumen, we passed on the snorkeling here.
Back in Maceió and a nasty surprise. We stopped at a restaurant along the beachfront; one specializing in camaroa, or shrimps. After eating several of the shrimps, e got fed up. The Sao Paulo inspired shrimp dish means cooking the shrimp WITH the shells. Disgusting. They do not taste meaty, or succulent, but plastic-like with a sharp texture. So I decided to start shelling them myself. After 2 or 3 shrimps, happily shelling away and sharing with Francesca, she helpfully decides to inform me that the shrimp have not been deveined. What is that, I asked? Look it up if you are not sure – I will not be eating seafood for at least six months.
Francesca will now post about the Theo Brandao Museum:
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I headed out to the Museu Theo Brandao by myself as Colin wanted to rest up, so I’ll tell this part of the story. I grabbed a taxi, and once I got there I was promptly met by a University student eager to practice his English and glad to have a foreigner to talk to about history.
He guided me around the small museum, which was founded by history-lover Theo Brandao, and included many of his manuscripts and artifacts he collected over the years. Most of the rooms had figurines from the 1900s and indigenous pottery pieces from the same time period. There were even some ex-votos, like the ones we saw in Salvador hanging from the ceiling of the Church!
It was in this museum that I realized just how much of a pantheon the Candomble religion’s gods and goddesses really form. One of the rooms in the museum contained statues of these gods along with statues of their ‘inspirations’ or ‘representations’ within other religions. For example, Candomble’s sea-goddess alongside the Virgin Mary alongside a few other similar statues.
The most impressive part of this little museum was the upstairs, which held colorful decorations from Carnival. The main hall upstairs provided me with a fantastic photo opportunity: rainbow-colored (undoubtedly ‘candomble-inspired’) Catholic headpieces hang in the center of the room, displayed above a round mirror on the floor for effect. Take a look at the shots!
Past this room was a veranda that opened out to amazing views of the city and the beach. As my guide and I stood looking out, he asking me if I had been to the beach. Before I could answer, he told me to look along the horizon and spot a dark line running along the water. ‘That line,’ he said, ‘is raw sewage.’ Umm… what? I wouldn’t really believe it until Colin and I spotted an open pipe pouring brownish liquid gook into the water right on the edge of the sand along one of the main spreads of beach; needless to say, we did not swim in that area.
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The beach was nice enough though, as was our time in Maceió, even if it was unsuccessful for snorkeling. You can also head down to Praia de Pajuçara where you can rent a jangada, or fishing boat, to take you the few kilometers out to the piscina naturais, or natural pools. Again, the tides thwarted our attempts at doing this – looks like our luck was not in in Maceió – especially as the last night we were there was spent in a hostel across town from our original hotel. The hostel had no A/C – a mistake we swore we would not repeat after Petropolis – but did. A severe lack of sleep later, and we were on the road again, this time by a day bus, to Recife.
Recife is many things. State capital of Pernambuco, a meeting point of the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers at the Atlantic Ocean, 5th most populous city in Brazil and site of rare successes amongst the Dutch military when they took the city and surrounding areas briefly in 1630 until 1654 when they got their asses kicked. Recife has many waterways and islands – over 50 bridges connect Recife’s roadways, making it known as the Brazilian Venice. However, what is not well-known about Recife is the 3 different types of sharks that operate here.
The first type of shark is the one you find in the water. Bull sharks, and tiger sharks birth off of Recife’s coast. Since two river tributaries were stopped up to build a port in the 1980’s, sharks were no longer able to birth in their natural habitat and so now birth and feed just off the coast here, sometimes on the meat of several abattoirs that dump offshore locally, sometimes on people. A spate of shark attacks on humans, many fatal, since 1992 has led to a 1995 ban on surfing. Nowadays the beaches are devoid of life – no one dares go into the water – especially with the signs posted everywhere warning of shark attacks.
http://sharkattackfile.info/shark-attack-search-simple-2/search-date-coutry-of-attacking-sharks.asp
The second type of shark in Recife are of the human kind. The moment you step off the bus here there are warnings about them everywhere. Sex tourists. Often German, or Italian, tourists have recently been coming to Recife to prey on poor children who come from the favelas to sell themselves in a futile attempt to escape from grinding poverty. Efforts to stop these sex tourists in other areas of the country have forced the problem to move here. Which brings me to shark number three.
The policia federale and ex-members of the same are killing people. Crime rates were soaring here as recently as 2011 when Recife was placed 32nd in the homicide rankings in ALL OF THE AMERICAS!
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Recife-one-of-world-s-most-violent-places-3216165.php
Now crime rates are starting to drop, not due to good police work by all accounts, but by the brutal suppression of criminals in the region. Apparently, police death squads killed so many people in the last few years locals have installed an electronic homicide tracker in the tourist area of Recife to shock the city officials into action. Police action is not mirroring the Rio policies of Pacification either – extrajudicial killings happen outside of the favelas, so as to keep the crime there, away from upcoming World Cup celebrations in 2014.
However, Recife does have one thing going for it. History. If you are interested in history then note that Recife and neighboring UNESCO World Heritage Site city Olinda have it in spades. It was the first region to be settled by the Portuguese in and around the 1530’s. In fact we were there for Recife’s birthday – it was inaugurated on March 12th of 1537.
We first visited Recife’s historical city on the 13th March 2013, taking the fairly decent Metro system into the historic part of town called Santo Antonio. The first port of call was the Casa da Cultura de Pernambuco (House of Culture of Pernambuco). This was the old jail back in colonial times – now a local arts and crafts fair, with different vendors selling different goods (the area is especially renowned for its lacework) from each of the old cells. One such cell was a little café in which we found a nice little fruit salad and a little pizza.
After this little marketplace jaunt and our breakfast, we decided to walk past Praca da Republica, Republic Plaza, towards the old town on the island of Bairro de Recife. In the square we came across an ancient looking baobab tree. This is the site of Brazil’s first botanic garden and zoo, now the site of the Palacio da Justica.
Walking across the bridge to the old city I was reminded I was in Brazil! A river of effluence and sewage stretched out over the river covering it in a muddy dirt. Trash mixed it up with the crabs and spiders to compete for space in the river – glad we decided against that river cruise! The buildings here are in total abandon too – they look like buildings from a bad horror movie. Crumbling and destitute, it’s a stark reminder of the fact that the money in Brazil is now all in the South – especially as there is a drought on right now so the farmers up here in the North are having a hard time producing the expected sugar cane and tobacco crops.
Recife is very proud of the fact that they host what they call the ‘other carnival’. They have a street-based free carnival every year, before the Rio one, and they are not afraid to say it is bigger and better than the one down South. We visited what I can now only remember as The Big Head Museum. This contained a raft of famous characters and celebrities in carnival puppet style. Made from wood and painted especially for the parades, these figures where larger than life.
Along the same street (Rua de Bom Jesus), is the Americas oldest synagogue. Kahal Zur Israel is at this site. Mostly in English, this museum is worth a quick visit - the history of the Jews in Pernambuco are explained here. Persecuted under the Portuguese, they were tolerated under the Dutch when they commanded this region. The museum is supposed to showcase the plurality of Brazil’s roots, but for me, it just showed how divided it all still is – this area is far more wealthy looking than the slums that the blacks of Brazil live in. Also, the stories of how the woman were placed in the Mikvah during their menstrual cycles also showed the unappealing secularism of organized religion.
The only other place of note in this area was the Instituto Cultural Santander. A free museum, this is well worth a look. It has three full floors of exhibitions to look at, including a floor dedicated to the Recife carnival, a room full of turn of the century electronic equipment, and various artworks.
One of the installations of artwork was an indoor seating/chill out area which was covered overhead by jackfruit vines. The sweet smell was delicious – enough to send us scurrying for some food afterwards.
We then took a stroll over the oldest bridge in the Americas, Ponte Mauricio de Nassau. Built by the Dutch in 1640, it was originally made of wood. Reconstructed in 1917, it now looks like the other bridges around the area. The view was pretty good from here though.
The Forte das Cinco Pontas, or fort of five points is a Dutch fort that was built during the Dutch occupation in 1630. In fact most of the forts along this coastline are Dutch: it is a known fact in this region that the Portuguese are very good at letting others build their infrastructure, and even better at taking it over by force. These forts did not help the Dutch however, when a joint Portuguese and Spanish force came along and whooped them back out of South America permanently. This fort was interesting because of its pentagonal shape, and because it held the Museu de Cidade (City Museum).
A few days later, we decided to visit the Museu de Homem do Nordeste, the Museum of North East Man on our way to UNESCO site Olinda. The museum provided an excellent guide in the form of Brunno Azevedo, a young local who showed us around the whole museum and gave us expert insights into each exhibit.
The first thing that struck us was a tapestry depicting life in Brazil. The plethora of different animals all living together in perfect harmony was an idealized vision, but far from reality of course.
We discussed the situation in Pernambuco where there were a large number of Indigenous natives before the Portuguese arrived. The only land that really supports human life is on the coast, so the different tribes would fiercely contest these areas. Wars were constantly fought between the tribes – if someone was captured they would live with their newly adopted tribe in some cases for a number of years, until they were sacrificed. Tribesmen were not forgiven for being captured by their own clan – anyone captured who would subsequently escape would be shunned for escaping. Nowadays, the inland areas are seriously dry and dusty, inhabited by people trying their best to grind out a living. The view of most Brazilians of people in this area is one of the lone cowboy, wearing leather and herding cattle. One of the aims of the museum is to question an challenge this view, and also to engage the inhabitants of this region and help them find a way out of poverty. It is not the view of the museum to merely teach history and not participate, the museum is actively looking for ways to redefine the idea of the North East man.
Part of the problem is the status afforded to Quilombos – hinterland settlements of Afro-Brazilians; from a generation of escaped slaves who have slowly been forced away from the rich coastal regions to the inhospitable badlands in the middle of the country. Although they were given the lands that they inhabit in the 1988 constitution, they do not enjoy the same protections given to the descendants of the indigenous people. One of the most famous leaders of the Quilombo was Zumbi, who led the Quilombos in battles against the Dutch and Portuguese. They were successful for a time, until finally succumbing to the colonial might. It was the Quilombos who used capoeira, the Brazilian martial art disguised as a dance.
One of the most interesting things we learnt here however, was that the descendants of the Brazilian Imperial family are still alive, and are still very rich. They only have celebrity status now, and have even appeared in TV commercials. Wonder if that will happen in Britain anytime soon?
After this we went to Olinda – we were going to get the bus, but it took an age, so we ended up getting a taxi. By this time we were starving, so we stopped at a creperia and ordered.
After food, we entered the Museu do Mamulengo, a museum dedicated to the regional puppet shows that came over from Italy and Portugal. Mamulengo is a fantasy world of caricatured puppets that serve to entertain the spectators through drama and comedy. Mostly adlib improv, the tales are not unlike our Punch and Judy, inviting audience participation, often using slapstick violence as humor. Mamulengo is often performed with an accompanying band, with the human performers hidden away. Our guide was very enthusiastic about this craft, and really gave us a great insight into this new unknown world.
We looked around several churches, some more splendid than others. None seemed to match my favorite church – the Church of Saint Francis in Salvador, but the most interesting by far was the Convent of Saint Francis. Built in 1585, the maze of rooms were really emotive to walk around. Perhaps it was the lighting, or the fact that there were so many hundreds of year old priceless artifacts just left out for viewing (by left out, I mean I could have just put them in my bag!). You could really get a feel of the place – some of it is being reconstructed so visitors will be able to see the convent in its totality.
After the convent, we decided to call it a day and headed back to the bus stop where we got a bus back to Shark Town.
Wow! Two years later and I finally rediscovered your blog! Inspiring conversations we had that morning. I hope we can get back in touch anytime!
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