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Published: October 4th 2008
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Sept 17 -20, 2008
Fortaleza, Brazil
We arrived in Fortaleza on a beautiful sunny and hot day and spent our first afternoon relaxing at the hotel and a brief short walk to the beach near the hotel.
Fortaleza is a big city, about 2.5 million, on the north east coast of Brazil 3 degrees south of the equator. Almost everyday of the year is hot and sunny with early sunrise and early sunset. This looks like a very nice place with lots of infrastructure for visitors and many beautiful beaches.
Our first full day here, Wednesday, included a half day city tour with a very good local guide and we saw most of the highlights of the city and visited the large local central market. The afternoon was spent lounging around one of the main beach areas and visiting a very large, night, craft market near the beach. Lots of interesting stuff to buy but we are already over weight for most flights.
It is obvious here that security is an issue with lots of warnings about where to go and when. (Typical of these tourist areas.) One of the best beaches, Futures Beach, is a
great place during the day but walking around there at night is not recommended. These are all very large and very nice beaches with lots of good restaurants and facilities. Futures Beach is becoming more developed and when this happens most of the petty theft problems will go away with the presence of more people and police. Most of the main area is well patrolled now and we never felt threatened in Fortaleza.
Thursday we enjoyed a full day tour to the east of Fortaleza to several large beaches (Morro Branco and Fontes Beaches) and a nice 1.5 hour drive through the countryside. Our day included a walk through some very interesting sandstone formations and a great Dune Buggy ride along the beach and through the very big sand dunes to a fresh water inland lagoon near the beach. This beach is very large and we saw about 4 or 5 KM of it on our tour. This is a very nice place and a favorite of people from Sao Paulo in the south. We spent a few hours in the afternoon at a “ water park” facility that is part of a resort. Live Samba music and a
comedienne ( actually a man ) that meant nothing to us as it was all in Portuguese. Apparently it was very funny stuff !!
Our last day in Fortaleza was a pretty quiet day with a late morning and a long walk ( on a very hot day ) to the center of town and the large Central Market for a look at some of the local crafts and “ stuff”. Same “stuff” different place !! Finished the day with a very nice seafood dinner at a great restaurant in front of the beach. We should be slim by now with all the very long walks. NOT !
Fortaleza has some things to learn from Rio and the other beaches. This could be a very nice place but there is a little too much litter ( not dirty ) but litter. We were really surprised to see a local taxi driver cleaning his cab and dumping the papers etc on to the street. Typical of the attitude of the locals. They need a major education program here ( and some enforcement of the rules ) to resolve these issues if they want to continue being a player in
the business with all the competition for tourist dollars.
Off tomorrow to Manaus in the heart of Amazonia and a 7 day river cruise on the Rio Negro that feeds into the Amazon River. Should be fun !! Alice can hardly wait to see the big snakes and other creatures. I’ve heard there are some big honkin spiders here as well. !! We are not too sure of what to expect on the small River Cruiser TUCANO. Could be interesting ???
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