Christmas In Brazil

Forget trying to extend your tourist visa in Recife – the women who work at the little Polícia Federal room at the airport are extremely lazy, arrogant and egotistical. There is no help to be had there. If you do decide to try to extend in Recife, don’t bother with the address listed online – just go to the airport – ground floor, and ask anyone working in the numerous police offices there to direct you to the serviço de extensão de visto (visa extension service).

So, armed with a rapidly expiring visa, Francesca’s wounded knee and a desire to see something in Brazil that was good but not so expensive that the very idea makes you head for the nearest Uruguayan tourist agency, we decided to travel further around the coast in Brazil, and place all bets on extending our visa later in Sao Luis; a coastal town that apparently has a more helpful approach to foreign tourist visa extensions (see http://www.landcruisingadventure.com/brazil-visa/). This had two drawbacks: 1) exposing Francesca’s knee to the equatorial humidity, and 2) leaving it all out on the field in terms of our visa – i.e. if we are refused a visa extension in Sao Luis, we will have to leave Brazil before the 21st April, and risk missing the Amazon, the Pantanal Wetlands and much more…

So…Christmas comes after Recife. As in, Natal, the state capital of Rio Grande de Norte, the next big city around from Recife. Natal is Christmas in Portuguese; it was founded on 25th December 1599. However, it took a long time for modernity to catch up with this place – tourism only really began in the 1980’s with the first introduction of highways. Nowadays Natal is still touted as the safest state capital in Brazil – but that is changing. Criminals driven out by the police from more traditional hotbeds of suffering such as Salvador and Recife are making their homes here. We arrived in the bus station late in the evening and made our way to our guest house Pousada Ouro Branco (White Gold), which allowed us to see the completely unfinished Natal World Cup 2014 stadium (few think the stadiums are going to be ready, and those that do either hate the stadia collectively, or angrily question the government’s financing them when so many people are living below the poverty line). We were on the outskirts of the area of Ponta Negra which the guide books recommend for backpackers and tourists – not a pretty sight at night. Certainly not a place to walk around after dark as Natal is now pretty creepy. Throughout our stay, though, we found the Venezuelan owner extremely helpful, so I would recommend this guesthouse to future visitors of Natal. Just get a taxi everywhere.

We set off the next day to find out what secrets Natal has to offer. First stop was the Forte dos Reis Magos – the Fort of the Three Wise Men. Named after the kings who are honored on the feast of epiphany, the fort was built on January 6th, 1598 – before Natal village was established, but almost 100 years after Amerigo Vespucci (the Italian explorer who America is named after) landed in the area. In the time in between the area was settled by the hostile Potiguar Indians – who were the reason the Portuguese gave this area a miss for so long. It was the Portuguese who built the fort and slew/enslaved the local indigenous peoples, and who subsequently lost the fort, village and many other areas to the Dutch from 1633 to 1654. Nowadays the Dutch descendants in Brazil (blue eyes and blonde hair), all live inland where the land is less fertile, and living conditions are poor – their ancestors decided to stay on when the Dutch had their asses kicked way back when. It is the Portuguese and, ironically, the mixed European/native Indians (caboclos) who now populate the lush and plentiful coastal areas. Another unfortunate example of the many Brazilian social divides.

The fort is worth a little visit, primarily because of the views. It sits out on the ocean, and on a sunny morning such as we had, it affords beautiful views of Natal, the Newton Navarra bridge, and the walk there was loaded with crabs and crab fishermen, who were literally diving under the water to spear them! None of the information boards at this fort were in English.

The fort stands by its lonesome over 2km from the centro, so mercifully it was not until later that we learned that the road we walked down to try and find a taxi or bus afterwards is now a mugging zone for criminals. There was a group of men hanging around here, but the only threat to my wallet was when one of them called a taxi for us and then asked for US$2 for the privilege! I paid it…

We had the taxi drive us to the Parque das Dunas, which is the second biggest urban park in Brazil. Admission is peanuts, and you can walk around some lovely picnic areas in a lightly forested area that includes an anthropological museum (complete with scary-ass pickled bats, monkeys and rat like creatures), a restaurant, and plenty of wildlife. There are also 2 trails you can do with a guide – a short one, and a long one. Unfortunately the guides here do not speak English, so be prepared for a lonely walk where you feel rushed by an embarrassed young student guide. Worth it though, because an armed policeman comes with you due to the poachers and ‘dangerous locals’ who illegally cross the 7300 meter squared park to log, catch animals, or just get to the beach. Lots of fun – although probably not a good idea with Francesca’s knee.

Luckily for us, before we went on our trail we met with one of the local staff members who did speak English, and were given an all access pass tour – a recurring event for us in Brazil due to our lack of Portuguese and the Brazilians generally feeling sorry for us (which is probably just a current thing – more and more Brazilians are taking to English as a second language, and so this special treatment is probably finite in availability). Anyway, we were shown the museum which everyone gets to see, but also taken into the research lab for all of the flora and fauna of the park. Most animals you would want to see were nocturnal, but they are all on show as taxidermy now. Snakes, tarantulas, lizards, crabs, rats, insects, bats, birds and many more were all on display. We also got to see some of the natural reasons that Brazil and South America became so valuable to the colonialists. Brazil wood or Pau-Brasil, is one such valuable resource. It has a yellow outer-wood underneath its bark, and a dense, orange-red heartwood at its center. It was used as a red dye during the Renaissance period and was traded to Europe since the settlers arrived in the 1500’s. Exploitative logging bought an end to the financial benefits of Brazil wood in the 18th Century when the tree first began to decline. Nowadays it is listed on the endangered species list. This was the first glimpse we got into the non-mineral assets of South America that so attracted the Europeans, especially in the Amazon basin.

So, why is this place called Parque das Dunas (Park Of The Dunes), huh? Indeed, Natal is not just called City Of The Sun, but also City Of Dunes, too. The park supports all of this life within its forests, al of which are growing out of some pretty hefty sand dunes! Sand dunes cover the coast here for hundreds and hundreds of miles from Natal North and West all the way round to the huge national park, Lençóis Maranhenses (bed sheets of Maranhão). We did not get any pictures of the sand dunes in the Parque das Dunas, unfortunately,  because our mobility was lessened somewhat by The Wounded Knee. However, after we left the park, we headed over to our neighborhood's local beach – Praia Ponta Negra. This beach is kilometers long, and has everything Recife beaches do not – clear warm waters that have no sharks being the main one. Also, at one end, dominating the skyline, is the Morro da Careca (Bald Hill), a huge 120 meter sand dune that runs down onto the beach. Swimming was lovely here, warm clear waters with lots of fish swimming around, clear blue skies in 30C+ temperature with lovely views of the city and surrounding dunes. Nice way to end the day.

We had planned to only spend the day in Natal what with the visa expiry looming, and so the next day we had booked an overnight bus ticket to Fortaleza. That gave us the whole morning to see something which is becoming a bit of a theme in this blog. If you look back at our previous posts you will see a few pictures of Francesca and I in front of various big trees. We heard about the next town over called Pirangi do Norte – it is home to O Maior Cajueiro do Mundo – or, the biggest Cashew tree in the world. It covers 8500m squared, produces over 80,000 nuts a season (2 months), and is in The Guinness Book Of World Records who sent an independent representative to confirm it is all one tree. It is, so we taxied out there to get some snaps. On the way we passed O Centro de Cultura Espacial, which is essentially the Brazilian Kennedy Space Centre. Not much to look at from the outside, we cannot say whether it is worth it or not because we didn’t hear good things about it and so did not think it worth it. If anyone has gone, feel free to leave a comment on this post about it – would love to know if it is any good these days!

There is the obligatory artsy-crafty market here too, so we took the opportunity to buy a blanket/sheet for the bus journeys. Overnight journeys here leave you dying of cold as the drivers ALL leave the A/C blasting on all night.

We got back with just enough time to check out and get to the bus station and leave for Fortaleza. It as a pleasant enough journey, and one we recommend for budget travellers.