Recife for Disaster!

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OK devotees, back to the keyboard after a few days off...in this episode we continue down the coast of NE Brasil, getting a taste of several states, I get drugged, deserted, mugged but rescued in Salvador, we continue to pass thru too many inumerable cute towns and gorgeous beaches to count...(but if you want the travelogue, check the discovery channel...or national geographic)...so, whats really happening?
The notes in my little note book are getting more cramped as I´m down to the last couple of pages...not that theyre the last few pages, just the last few usable pages as every notebook starts at both ends for Really important stuff...´so the back and front few pages have the names and eddresses of people, phone numbers, currency exchange rates, time comparisons etc etc..all a bit silly really as its the first few pages that always get wet and blur!!...so now its down to the last few...like the cashews I was rationing myself on the deck of a fabulous old hotel in some fabulous old colonial town on a river the other night...sun setting, a magnificent old cast iron bridge, about a kilometre across the river/inlet..twin spires of the old cathedral catching the last of the sun...strangely, several big brick chimney stacks, like quite high, just sticking out of the ground...must have been something there once, right by the riverside wharf...now all gone...once more the bloody language thing slowing down my understanding and appreciation of this wonderful country.....so this hotel, its like a huge conference centre cum motel/hotel...but all the huge conferences have been held somewhere else..it has certainly deteriorated from age rather than from wear and tear...it spreads around the top of a small hill just beside the river and gives a fabulous view out over the town.....and we are about the only guests, they give us 2 rooms, the furtherest from reception!...do we really look like the noisy types?.....I sit and contemplate the view and the beer and the cashews...ah yes, this is also big cashew country...so many cashew stories for later.....and Brasil continues to impress.....it really is pretty cool and the people are always friendly...sometimes a bit much so!...and lots of people speak some English...unfortunately we only meet them in innocuos surrounds where they just want to talk about our travels or the bikes...they are never there when we need assistance with directions or anything technical!...and thats frequently!....
We ride thru big sugar country, you´ve seen the miles and miles of sugar in Qld, well this is a million times more!...it just goes on and on..for days we ride thru the cane..and its steep in parts, like real hills and valleys...all covered in cane with little dirt tracks running thru it where the slaves are taken in to plant, weed, cut, load etc..looks like nothing much has changed in several hundred years!...and the smell of molasses and burnt sugar as we sweep past the huge mills, out in the middle of nowhere, suddenly a gigantic conglomeration of buildings, creaking and roaring, steam and smoke billowing out of chimneys and loose connections, huge trucks rolling in and out....all those odd shaped buildings sort of tacked together...whats it all about you wonder?...the cane trucks are so overloaded its frightening to come across them on the road...massive loads on 3 dogs behind a small, overworked tractor...or truck...
And huge tracts of bloody gum trees!...yes, as the old growth forests in Oz are being logged out and replaced with pinus bloody radiata, the Brasilianos are planting out huge forests of eucalypts!..bizarro...was riding just this morning thru forests of dead straight, 30metre tall gums, all planted in perfect lines and the smell of eucalyptus brings a tear to the eye...ah yes, another discourse on homesickness might be coming...except I feel its passed already...we´ll see...not that I don´t miss you all!...but sometimes it gets stronger and then fades again.....and then the mills, ah, the mills...where they are cutting up the gums into poles, or posts...and some lovely local timbers around..most of the buildings have wonderful hardwoods, shudder to think of where its all coming from...like the Amazon basin probably...saw quite a bit of timber coming out of there!
On Ambulances...they are frequently seen on Brasilian roads...not surprising given the number of prangs,,,and we´ve seen a few!...a hold up, traffic jam in Salvador when we were coming in the other day...finally got to the scene...just a regular suburban carriageway but the 2 cars were abso write-offs...like totally smashed to crap!..scary stuff...and out on the roads, every few hundred kms theres a cop check point, at the state borders the trucks seem to have to get a paper check and look like they might wait for days...we just cruise thru...but at each of these places they have a stack of all the pranged cars, trucks and (ulp) bikes from their patch...a salutory lesson...as you go thru the deviation you have to see all these wrecks...slows one down a bit!...anyway, ambulances...I nearly had a prang with one when it pulled out to pass a line of trucks coming towards me...briefly considered the old conundrum about having an accident with an ambulance!!.....pulled over and let him go...one other thing, they´re all really small!...I mean they are like little Renault delivery vans....if Ted or I had to get taken anywhere they´d have to double us up to fit in...or leave the back doors open!...and its not that the brasilianos are particularly short...maybe statistically shorter people have more accidents...who knows?
Speed bumps - now I´ve forgotten the word for them here...deliberately erasing it...but they have been steep...some have the profile of half a 44 gallon drum..really slow everyone down...and theres also sonorizadors...sounds like something you´d have at night to help you sleep but no, they are grooves across the road....not as violent as the humps but certainly get your attention...bit like cattle grids...
Cattle- well we sort of suddenly came to the end of big sugar and entered whats supposed to be big chocolate, or at least they say the world centre for cocoa or cacao or whatever, is just down the road from here but we haven´t seen a single cocoa tree...curious, maybe it grows way off the road? and whats all this got to do with cattle??...now we´re into grazing land, cattle of all colours but still lots of the beautiful brahmins or whatever...somebody help me on this?....I saw a little mud house on the side of a hill this morning, tiny place, probably hoilds a family of 15 and on the grass around the house were about a dozen huge cattle lying down all around the house..the cattle were soo big and the house soo small it was a disturbing perspective.....apart from Gary Larson, who has seen a cow lying down?.......and along the road the bulls get to eat in the long paddock..don´t know if its a reward for service or just a privilege but very few cows get to be on the actual roadside..hmm
Little towns - we pass thru lots of small towns and they invariably have narrow, cobblestoned roads, tight twisting little suckers that throw you around, up and down, people hanging about everywhere, lots of them will smile and wave if we do first...unbelievable number of beautiful young women, maybe all the men have gone to town to work!......and invariably, altho´there was one exception, no signs at all...or at best ambiguos signs...like you come to a 3 way intersection and there will be 2 signs...huh?...and always I´m aware of the enormous poverty differential in this country......and on that subject...along the way we see lots of the roadside settlements of the landless movement..its a long story, go check the net for details but its been going on for a long, long time...we stop and take some photos at some of them...I´m not sure of the land ownership deal here or if they have adverse possession (I´ll bet not) but if they did I reckon some of these places have been there long enough..often just shanty shacks of sticks and cardboard, bits of plastic..anything at all...quite a famous thing here and all over the country I believe...more if I see them.
Kids selling stuff on the side of the road again...one place , spread over a couple of kms people holding out something...I slowed down and they were strings of fresh plucked quail!!...if only one of them had the nouse to set up a little barbie plate they´d kill a pig...worst of all at all the next towns I never once saw quail on the me and you?...other places, other days, kids with prawns and this orning somethings that looked like yabbies..but again, no-one cooking!...
About snack o´clock one day we pulled off to a beach, Beberides, there, I´ve remembered a name!, while we had a beer and tried some unmentionable snacks and bought beads from the locals the cry went up to come and see the big fish!...all along this coast are fishing boats, altho you could hardly call them boats, they are a couple of metres long about one and a half metres wide up to several metres long, flat bottomed, rectangular, like a little punt, with a swinging mast and handheld boom...apparently te original wind surfer design....and they go out for long periods, like days even, and catch fish...hopefully!...well this one had just come in and we went down to look and they had this giant fish..the guy was scraping the scales off with an oar..showers of huge scales going everywhere, people grabbing them as they dry them out and make jewellry of sorts with them...don´t know about the flies tho´....this fish would have to be 50 or 60 kilos...this guy must have played it for a long time and I can´t see how he ever got it on board...just as well the fish didn´t decide to go east or this sucker would have been in the Ivory Coast by Xmas.
And we went thru Recife and Maceio, both cities of romance and adventure, well, next time maybe..but I´ve always wanted to get here...loverly beaches...had a good run getting thru Maceio...on a wide 6 lane divided highway all thru town...then I noticed all the traffic on the other side was also going our way..a bit disconcerting..maybe they change in the arvo and it all goes the other way!!
Pipa was a perfect little beach spot, nestled into the side of the hill, small but perfectly formed surf..maybe?..a really international crowd, a real little united nations, and maybe the level of graft and corruption makes that a good analogy!
Ah, found the notes again...the town with the old hotel overlooking the river was Penedo and I got down to tha last 3 cashews, did I tell you they are the biggest you could find, absolute whoppers..and fresh, and perfect and salty..ahhand luckily I pulled it off...you know...when you get down to the last one you just hope like anything its going to be the best one?...nothing worse than getting to the last and its a dud....sorry...
On the way to Salvador we stopped by accident in Aracaju...pulled up by a roadside tent, like an information booth thingo, a few people milling around and unfurling a sign about motos so we stopped...they were organising a big moto exposition/meet that very weekend in that very city...they were all over us, gave us drinks, chatted us up...interviews on TV..the works...then we left...as we went on towards Salvador we saw fifty thousand bikes going to Aracaju...waving and tooting..all big road bikes, lots of Hyabusi...should have stayed!!
Anyway, got to Salvador, Brasil´s 3rd biggst city so probably in excess of 10 million people...we got to the fringe, found a freeway then hit the usual problem, 2 choices of signs to the Centro Historico!!...we took one, turned out to be a blind, found our way to the beach road and saw signs all the 32 kms to where we wanted.....followed the beachfront pretty much but every now and again we´d be thrown up a side street, turned over hills, cobblestones, tight turns..back on the beach road, round twists and curves, up and down and all around...we had a map of sorts but nothing any use...hhmmm seems lot of our city maps are limited!
Eventually found the main square in the old part...I´ve told you about the óld parts´I think..surrounded by touts and louts we decided to try a bit further, got separated...everything not working, you miss one corner, think you´ll just go one more and go right and right again to get back but no...wrong and wrong again, its one way, or it spears off another direction, nothing is logical, everything is chaotic...and really steep, like bottomless twisting laneways on slippery surfaces, dogs rushing out barking, people becoming ever more threatening, its getting dark, maybe rain, where the fcuk are we?..inevitably get back to the square...little singlet guy yells out something that we take to mean he knows where the others are....he sprints off with us following..turn into a carpark but no sign of T&S...singlet guy sprints off and 10 mins later turns up with T&S...un believable!...so we find a place to stay, alll very cute in this area, millions of old churches and stuff, galleries, restaurants, all pretty clunky..bit Antiguan...went out to have a drink and feed...at one of the squillion ultracool restaurants, tables and chairs precariously on the cobblestones, music everywhere..this is music city..the only bummer is there is so much overlapping music..very difficult, unless you go somewhere very loud, to hear just one source...and the drums, groups of fantastic drummers..beating awayfor hours...one guy controlling it all and then they go for it..crowds gather around everyonemoving and grooving.....I´d had a couple of beers and a couple of caiparinias...can´t eveb spell it..its the local drink, crushed lime and sugar with avgas..loverly...anyway, I´d only had a couple but suddenly felt really fuzzy..I got up and tried to walk back to the hostel, had no idea where I was or where I was going..staggered up the cobblestones, in a darker section a group of people came up from behind and sort of just swept past me, hands going everywhere, luckily I was too out of it to resist I think, then they just moved on...I could hardly believe what had happened...then a chica I´d been chatting up earlier...and maybe she set it up!...found me and got my glasses back and took me home, well she took to me to a couple of reggae bars on the way...don´t know how I stood up enough but I remember dancing for a while...funnily enough, or maybe it was irony!...they didn´t take my wallet from my back pocket...I mean its the universal place for wallets!...which had a few reals and nothing much else, but they found a hundred or so real stashed in my pocket in case my wallet got stolen! Ha..
Anyway...I slept half the next day and felt really fuzzy until the next night so I know it was something more that someone had put in one of the drinks.....Roeys the go...........now I know how it feels...wouldn´t be too bad in better circs!
So, we pushed on, had another ferry ride...but how hard was it to find the flipping ferry?..its such a muddled maze...but we did and the bikes had their 7th boat trip and we our 6th...not counting the fishing boat in Nica and the hollowlog/rocket in Vene.
Ride, ride, ride...raining on and off and surprisingly cool....now we are in another really nice beach place but a squillion tourists, mainly brasilianos I think....and time for something to drink...but I´ll keep my hands ove my glasses from now and on and try and drink with friends!!
Thanks for your feedback, I´ll try and get some replies off on specifics if we stay another day here....full moon tomorrow and some famous full moon rave party allegedly being held somewhere down the coast...you know, 35 kms of dirt road, gotta be there...but if it keeps persisting down like it is we´ll either hole up here or make the dash further towards the next big destination...the famous Rio......OK, here it goes...always a bit unnerving finally hitting the PUBLISH button but no time now to go back over it...
Love to you all............oh, I wanted to say something about the food and drinks...traditional stuff you know..but maybe next time.....
Check Ted at tedgrambeau.com
Check Grant at homepage.mac.com/gforbes3

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