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We have slept well rising at 7:30am, the sun is up much earlier. Breakfast at the hotel is a feast of exotic fruits (the pineapple is to die for while the cashew fruit is one to lie down and avoid — they are just too weird). There's champagne (or at least a white bubbly) to make your own mimosas, bacon and eggs, omelettes made to order, lots of sweets and meats, and café com leite (Portuguese for "coffee with milk") in little thermos beakers. The breakfast room is overlooking the beach, across the road, where guys have been busy setting up their chairs, umbrellas and bar cart since the early morning hours.
The sun rises each day at 5:00am and sets suddenly at 5:00pm; by 5:30 it's quite dark. Such is the sun cycle when you're this close to the equator; it's 12 hour days all year round. We're south of the equator at latitude 8.05S, technically it's their "winter". After breakfast it's off to the beach.
The beach is right across the street. (Boa Viagem Ave. is two lanes plus a parking lane running north to the city centre. Our hotel is at 4070 Boa Viagem; you could toss a ball to the ocean). There's a long string of similar high rise hotels and apartments like ours.The beach is called Praia de Boa Viagem (Praia is Portugese for "beach" and Boa Viagem is "Good Voyage").
At the beach we're greeted/grabbed by a toothless fellow with a 3 day beard who runs a chair, umbrella and bar service. Macelo steers us to his chairs and umbrellas. We order the infamous "Caipirinhas" (say "Ki-peer-ene-ya") from his bar. We/Kate were first introduced to this drink by Deborah Dawson in Washington DC.
"Caipirinha is a Brazilian cocktail made with , sugar, lime, and ice. Originating in the state of São Paulo, the drink is prepared by mixing the fruit and the sugar together, then adding the liquor." Wikipedia
The base is a white lightning, called "pinga" or "cachaça", made from sugar cane (they also make the same alcohol as a fuel for cars) that sells in the super markets for about $2.60R where beer sells for $1R/can. The cachaça they are pouring is a "Pitu" brand (or at least it's in a well used/recycled Pitu bottle). Pitu is Portugese for "shrimp" and is pictured on the label. For $4R they mix in some lime and muddle with sugar. We avoid the ice which they scoop out in their bare hands. For $2R they serve beer in quart bottles. Later on the trip we found "Pitu" in a supermarket in similar well used/recycled litre bottles for only $1.15R, wow!
The fellow running the beach service next to us, David, is a very black and fair sized. He has a similar gig on the beach with chairs, umbrellas, and drinks. He speaks very good English, our Portugese is minimal at best, "Duas caipirinhas, por favor", and we promise to sit on his chairs another day. The idea here is "little beach bars". Each with chairs, umbrellas and a "pool side" service set up on the sandy beach.
An aside: Reg was telling our dentist Peter Kyle about our struggles in Brazil. He told us about a dental conference he had attended, at a Hilton in Soa Paulo, where some of his mates were robbed, at gun point, at the hotel pool! It can be a very dangerous country.
From our hotel room we can see the "reef", exposed as the tide goes out, there are many small boats with blue sails and a United Airlines symbol, there's the beach itself and some sandbars are exposed. On the beach there are lots of dark skinned beauties in string bikinis; as well as lots of moms and near-moms in similar string bathing suits.
On the first trip to the hotel biffie ("biffie" is Graham for toilet). We go to the hotel to pee; god knows where everyone else goes because there's not a loo on the whole 7km of the beach. Kate meets a fair skinned, reddish haired woman in the elevator and says, "I hope you're wearing sun screen." They chat a bit and it turns out this is Nina Rehn, a WHO employee, part of the Jürgen /Gerhardt empire, and a coauthor with Kate and a cast of thousands on a number of Jürgen papers. We invite her to join us on the beach.
Nina reminds us of our niece Leslie, or perhaps Reg's friend Ellen Smout from Western. She joins us for a "quick dip" and spends the day with us. I recall ordering some shrimp that day from a beach vendor who had set up a little charcoal barbeque. At about 4:30, when things are starting to slow down on the beach, we drunkenly headed back to the hotel for a siesta (caipirinhas are strong, without ice they're deadly).
Nina is from Finland (she hates it there and won't return even at Christmas even though she has family there). She lives and works in Gerhardt's group in Lausanne, Switzerland, but is paid through WHO. She was very nice and fun. Together, we three walked over to the Mercado, but it didn't really get started until after 3:00pm.
Our siesta: we slept in our room until after 7:00 recovering from our day on the beach. We walked for miles looking for a restaurant we had found in our Fodor's travel guide. Tasca Restaurante/Cozinha Portuguesa, was supposed to be only 3 blocks away. First we walked miles along the beach and then took a cab back to the hotel so we could start over! Eventually we found the restaurant, it's only 3 long blocks away, a little to the south, but not by the water. Unfortunately, when we found it, it was closed. Damn!
We took a cab to the seafood restaurant recommended by David (the biggish black guy, friend/relative of Macelo). It's on the beach and also recommended by Fodor's. We have a Piexe (fish) special for two and ask "What kind of fish?"; we are told "From the ocean." It was great! Stuffed with a corn meal/tapioca kind of thing with a few shrimp. Portugese potatoes are served on the platter with the excellent fish.
We shared a bottle of Portugese "Marco Luigi" Chardonnay; very crisp and dry; perfect with the fish. For dessert we shared a coconut dish and an ounce of port. All in all; it was a great dinner and a nice introduction to Brazilian/Portugese foods.
The waiter was very nice. The restaurant seemed be indoors with an entrance and covered roof but opened on one side so you felt like you were sitting outside if you sat on the edge near the hedge as we did (both times; we came back).
In summary, it was a rather fun day in the tropics. But we are determined that the next day we would be more business like and see some of the sights beyond the immediate area around our hotel.
These notes are from a densely detailed travel log we kept at the time. Kate recently discovered it in August of 2026 and I have transcribed with minor edits, corrections and redactions so as to not embarrass the living ....
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