Recife, Brazil

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In August of 2002 Kate had a meeting in Recife Brazil with international colleagues. This was our first trip to South America and unusual as we usually hang around home in the summer – the weather is warm, the quarry is open, life is good in St Marys during the summer. We'd rather go to warm climes when the weather at home is wintery.

Recife (say "ray-see-fay") is just south of the equator on the coast of Brazil where it juts out furthest into the South Atlantic. I understand it's fifth largest city in the country so it's quite a good size (around 1.5 million). Like much of Brazil it's a strange mix of first world wealth backed by third world poverty. We flew to Sao Paulo first where we changed planes to fly on to Recife. From the air Sao Paulo, by far the largest city, seems to go on forever.

We stayed in a high rise luxury hotel, the conference hotel, right on the beach and spent quite a bit of time on the beach. There's a long sandy beach to the south of the old city center with luxury high rises along the water front. Just a few blocks in the rest of the world lives in pretty miserable circumstance.

Some stories of our stay follow.

We spent a lot of time on the beach which was just across the road from our hotel. There's a pretty good sandy strip,  a bit of protected water before a battered reef and then the ocean beyond. Beyond the reef it's a bit dangerous for swimming as there are sharks out there. But between the beach and the reef it's warm and pretty safe ... although I did see a Portugese Man O'War jelly fished washed up on the sand.

On the beach there are lots of vendors renting chairs and umbrellas, selling food and drinks; others wander the beach selling trinkets. 

We made friends with a couple of beach vendors who made dynamite caipirinhas and kept us entertained. Caipirinha (say "ki-peer-ene-ya") is the national drink of Brazil. It's a simple recipe: take a lime, quarter it, squish it a bit in sugar, add some ice and Cachaça (sometimes called pinga – basically a white rum), shake and serve. If you use Vodka it's called a caipirinski. If you're in Texas and use tequila it's basically a margarita – another of our favorite drinks. They grow a lot of sugar cane in Brazil and a good deal of it is distilled for alcohol: some for fuel, some for the buzz. Cachaça is raw alcohol fresh from the still with little filtration – it's not a polished drink at all.

We had been warned to avoid the ice and for our first drinks on the beach we asked the vendor to hold the ice. No problem, sure. Now that's a potent drink. Thereafter we braved the ice. And actually you're pretty brave to do so as it's scooped out by hand and there are no opportunities on the beach for the vendor to actually wash his hands or take a leak.

Every thing in Brazil is quite cheap. Drinks on the beach were around three dollars, beer a lot cheaper but still over a dollar. One day we were in a super market and I found that you could buy Cachaça by the litre for about one dollar. So they made a good killing on the beach drinks. I wanted to bring a case home, damn the duties we might pay but Kate said no.

The beach was quite busy throughout the whole day with lots enjoying the sun and dipping into the sea to cool off. Brazilian women were usually in quite revealing string bikinis. There were sailboat rentals, a kids playing soccer or skimming on boards, there were even fishermen casting their nets.

We did explore the city a bit a couple of times. We took a cab with some friends to the historic old city one day -- Recife was the first slaving port in the Americas so it's quite old, originally settled by the Portugese (which remains the language of Brazil). Dinner and tipping.

Bicycles. Boat. Seat post fix and beach boys.

Camera hassles on street. Bicycle explore and ride back.

Taxis and stop lights cf. conference in Sao Paulo.

Credit car fraud.

This is only a place holder. There is lots more work on this blog and photo album to follow.

Ps. Photos were scanned during January 2021 of the COVID-19 lockdown from Fujichrome 35mm slides taken at the time. These are quick scans using a "Kodak SLIDE N SCAN Digital Scanner".