Keith's travelogue

Dear All,

Sorry to bump Joy´s interesting blog from the news, but I can´t seem to stop my updates blogging twice (Richard, where are you?).

This update is an ABC of Brazil, that stands for Amazon, Beaches and Culture. Like most of my trousers when I was young, it is actually back to front as I want to deal with Culture, Beaches and then the Amazon.

Culture

After my flight from Rio I was in Savador (can´t remember if I wrote about this so you may see it twice). Salvador was the first capital of Brazil and has lots of colonial history, as well as lots of culture, including the second most famous Carnival in Brazil. This was largely over by the time I got there but the aftermath was present everywhere, with lots of giant street decorations, and African influenced music and dance. So I hit the churches (very different from the Spanish ones,a nd interesting in their own right) and the museums. There is lots of history and the connections between Brazil and Africa due to the slave trade, and a couple of excellent museums giving some of the grubby details.

Then it was time for an overnight bus ride to a place called Olinda. Yes Linda, it means O Beautiful! This is an historic area of the city Recife and was a lovely little place. It also had great cuisine with the best dish tasted so far, shrimps cookend in coconut milk inside a baked pumpkin. Absolutely delicious! By an amazing cincidence when I was in Africa, one of the tour leaders there was a Brazilian lady who used to take groups on the same trip I am on now. The second most amazing co-incidence is that she is now my tour leader on this trip! She had told me I must go to Olinda and have this dish so she took me to the place where it is made, and it was everything she had described. Yum.

Beaches

Then it was south to a lovely beach place a couple of hours away that was where the rich settlers used to land their slave boats. They referred to the slaves in code as ¨chickens¨in order to protect their dirty little secrets. So in typical Brazilian style, the place is called Porto de Galinhas, or Port of Chickens. It is now a beach resort and a taste of what was to come, with the long wide sweep of beautiful white sand that squeaks under your feet and stretches off to the horizon in both directions. The sun was hot, the water was warm, and the coconut and fuit juices were icy cold. A dune buggy trip and a couple of boat trips (one to the mangroves, and the other to a snorkelling place) rounded it off. A great way to relax and get into the beach mood.

After that we headed north to a national park for a cave trip, and guided walk through some temparate forest, and then hit the beach with a vengance at a place called Jericoacara. Four days of kicking back and relaxing, with little to do but explore the sand dunes, lie on the beach and relax. It was also here I found someone with a good game of chess. Well two people actually. A seven year old boy who was quite a talent for his age, and a guy who ran an internet place who was thrilled to find someone (i.e. me) who could give him a challenge. So I left Francisco (the boy) with a present of a chess set and board, and left Piedro with the promise of games to come via e-mail.

Next it was a great 3 day trip along the beaches and across the sand dunes to a place called Sao Luis. The trip involved jeeps along the beach, crossing rivers on little ferries (one was man-powered by two guys using poles!) and visiting little fishing villages on the way. One we visited was just in time to see them dividing up the morning catch. It was magic, as we had to stop each day when the tides came in and meant driving on the beach wasn´t possible. We stayed in little places that tourists and even travellers don´t get to see (Paulino Nevis, Cubare), took a boat trip on the Parabanai delta (third largest in South America, and the only seaward facing one) amongst the mangrove swamps and seeing marine iguanas, capuchin monkeys, getting bombarded in a torrential downpour (it is the rainy season now), and watched sunsets from the tops of dunes. Amongst the massive white dunes near Barrenienhas, we swan in fresh water lakes created by the rain, in a national park. The dunes are creepng over the land eating up the pasture and trees, including areas of mangroves, and even and farms and houses.

Sao Luis is another chistorical/cultural town, so I visited another small but interesting museum on local arts and crafts. But the real attraction was coming further north at Belem, on the mouth of the mighty Amazon River. A quick visit to the Zoo/Botanic gardens and I was primed for my next adventure.

Amazing Amazonas

From Belem, to Manaus is 1500km or so, and it was five days up the Amazon in a river boat, seeing how the locals live on the river with canoes instead of cars, even the kids of 3-5 years old would come out in little canoes (instead of riding bikes). Sitting back, watching all the wildlife - two species of river dolphin, two sorts of storks, herons, egrets, vultures, eagles, parrots, toucans, parakeets, water buffalo, cows, pigs, horses, donkeys and chickens, even a marine iguana.

It was a bit like a time machine testing Einstein's theory of relativity. While we weren´t travelling at the speed of light, our sense of time slowed down, as the only important times on the boat were breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everything drifted by and was looked at with great interest and resulted in animatd disscussions on board, and then it was gone, with a new object of interest coming into view.

It is too hard to decribe the river's vastness. It was wide, so wide, and all around. We went up little channels to avoid the strong downstream curent so were really close to the banks and could see lot´s of what was happening in the forest or the islands that passed by. It was also so deep that we passed large ocean going freighters like the ones in Lyttelton (Manaus is one of the biggest ports in Brazil 1500km from the ocean!).

Today in Manaus has been another cultural experience, with time in the Opera House (World famous, ask Mum I'm sure she ) and two museums on the Amazon indigenous cultures as preparation for the trip tomorrow - four days in the Amazon Jungle, including two nights sleeping in the wild.

So, that should leave you something to read about next time.

Regards,
Keith