Maceió - let's go snorkelling

We hear about a place not too far south of Olinda/Recife, and so decide to check it out.

It is hot in Maceió- John turned into a lobster!

It was really beautiful as we were promised, but we are glad we were only there for a couple of days, as once we had done the snorkelling, there was not much else to do. There was no one else in our hostel and the only way to communicate with our hosts was through Google translate.

Lesson learnt - When the booking form states "hurry last room available" this does not necessarily mean they have more than one room.

John loved swimming with the fish but the bar and kitchen that was situated 2km off the shore made it a bit weird.

On the day we organised our snorkelling we made a deal for R$60 for the two of us with a guy with a flimsy boat who would take us to the "coral reef". We get there and back fine, but he decides to charge us R$100. Out comes BP to the rescue, we find the words for agree - concordor, and change - troco, and have ten 10yr olds to help us argue with the guy. When that didn't work we resorted to drawing in the sand.

Reconstruction of our negotiation

Whatever we said we managed to agree on R$70 and we decided to call it quits.

Lesson learnt - have troco

 

First stop Brazil - pre Carnaval

So we arrived in a city called Recife in north Brazil after a very short stop in São Paulo. As we landed there was a huge congregation of people waiting for our arrival however they seemed to get distracted with a Brazilian star and let us slip by and start using our soon-to-be-best-friend

Brazilian Portuguese - Lonely Planet edition.

Sarah decided to use BP first and took him to the driver of the first bus she saw, after barely setting foot on the bus we all three of us were off, to where we didn't know, but this was a thing to come with the buses. Eventually we got on the correct bus and arrived in the red light district "2 minutes" walk from our Hostel. We got into bed an hour later.

Recife was ok, but we heard about a pre-Carnaval weekend happening in nearby Olinda. So off we get on to another bus driven by an Ayten Senna enthusiasts. Initially ordering a table for dinner rather than picking up our reservation we had our new home for the next 2 days. We stayed in our 'green box', a room directly above a restaurant so all the diners could see you on the way to the shower.

On the Saturday we followed different blocos around, groups of musicians and dancers who parade and perform down the streets. Sometimes they'd bump into other blocos and jam with each other which was amazing. Everyone knows the songs and we still haven't found any Brazilians who can't dance! I wish Notting Hill Carnival was more like this, there's colour everywhere, everyone is dancing and singing and you can feel the bass in your chest.

A taste of the volume of the music to come

 

 

 

 

Since I got Sarah this camera she is always trying to get the best shots