Recife - PostScript

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Kate lists things we like about Brazil/Recife and/or the conference:

• Except for the people who supposedly will rob, kidnap and/or kill you (and except for the hotel staff who are trying to get us to leave) most people are really nice and kind.
• Things are really cheap — largely due to the devaluation of the Brazilian Real. If we had come three years ago, when the Real was on par with the US Dollar, it would have been very expensive. On this visit $1US gives you $3R and we figure that $1CA is about $2R.
• We like our friend Bia, from Brazil, who now lives in Seattle.
• Caipirinhas of course. On the beach, in the bar, where ever!
• The softest sand ever on the beach
• The Balé Folk dancers at opening and closing of the conference
• Hanging around with Linda and Robin
• Pineapple at breakfast
• Interesting Brazilians at the conference
• The staff member at the hotel who showed us how to get to the roof
• Indian head dresses
• And Reg adds, string bikinis on swarthy young beauties.

And some things we hate about Brazil/Recife and/or the conference

• The abject poverty and entrenched class system
• Which means it is a very difficult city to navigate
• And we are pestered incessantly by people trying to sell things to us or beg from us
• The days are very short being so close to the equator
• The beach is owned by the guys with their chairs and umbrellas.
• Too much wind and waves at the beach
• Conference speakers and audience went on and on — a timetable means nothing
• No conference information about what was going on around the conference. E.g., where to dine, what to see, and what to avoid.
• With no public lavatories people pee on the beach, or on the street, where ever they have to
• Sexist cultural values
• Bia, who lives in Seattle, can't ask her daughter to do any work around the house. She's afraid the daughter will tell her father or grandmother in Brazil and they'll call it "child abuse". I.e., house work should be done by the lower class maid.

A very late postscript: Several months after the conference we're at home, back in Canada, when we receive a phone call from our Bank of Montreal Mastercard. "Did you just buy a bike in Recife, Brazil". "Well yes, we bought a couple of bikes back in August when we were there but that cleared a long time ago". "So you didn't just buy a $1,500 bike?" "No we did not." Our card had been skimmed! So the card is cancelled, the purchase is declined, we get a new card and all is good again.

At first we thought it was the bike shop that was responsible and we were very disappointed. They had been so nice to us and had offered to defer payments over time (which we declined). Some months later, at another conference, we bumped into a Swiss colleague, who had been with us in Recife. She was also a skimmed. Worse yet, they had put through a much bigger charge, it was on her Diners Club card, they hadn't detected the fraud up front (as Mastercard had for us), and they ended up with their bank account overdrawn, cheques bouncing, a real mess for them. Our arm chair detective work leads us to believe it was the staff at the front desk of the hotel who skimmed the cards. There were times (check in/check out) when a staff member asked for our cards and took them back to some room behind the desk.

While we didn't get robbed on the street, we were robbed at the hotel. Fortunately, no guns were involved.

In December of 2012 we returned to Brazil. Kate had a conference in Rio de Janeiro and afterwards we did an Amazon River tour out of Manaus. That was fun.

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 ....