Blogs from Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, South America - page 4

The rain began to pour down but the band played on. Reaching up into the sky with palms skyward, we embraced the cold drops thundering down, streams running through our hair, dripping down our noses, around the curves of our grinning mouths, and soaking what - if anything - remained of our costumes. Our feet stomped wildly in ankle-deep puddles in the cobblestone streets, and all around us, people shouted at the top of their lungs "Eu quero Frevo!" (I want Frevo music!). A few kilometres away on a sailboat, hastily left with a hatch wide open, a cabin began to fill up with rainwater, soaking its interior, saturating the bedding and destroying a book lying beside the pillow. Trapped - albeit voluntarily - by thousands of wet bodies in all directions, embracing, dancing, kissing and ... read more

So our next stop was Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco and an important city for frevo, maracatu and of course, capoeira:-) We stayed in the home of Mestre Mago (São Salamão) and his wife Bel and their two kids Gabi and Belinha. They took great care of us and put up with us appearing only to sleep and eat. So many thanks to all of them. We had a hectic 4 day programme getting to know both the day and night life of Recife, courtesy of Soraias friend Bruno. On the first day we went to Praia de Boa Viagem, Recifes main beach and managed to avoid getting eaten by the sharks:-) Then it was a brief visit to Mercado de São José and we soon decided that a return visit was required to ... read more

Here I´m, trying to write a travelog abou my trip on a motorcycle. We are going to depart from Recife-PE on December 26th and return on January 18th. The group is formed by two 40cc dual purpose motorcycles and one car, which is going to carry three women and one boy. This entry is a kind of test of how to post photos, videos and texts. Soon I will begin to post information about the trip. The map posted here is the real route we´re going to ride.... read more

The next few days after our hectic weekend were spent fairly lazily, so much so that I will endeavour to squeeze them into one blog entry. On Monday, I walked across town with Daniel to Mike's gaff and spent a bit of time over there, having a good first cousin to first cousin chat. We discussed birds, cameras and more birds. Mike showed me some pictures of Carnaval 2006 in Rêcife - they go wild over here around then, I don't think there's a comparable event in Ireland, it's nuts. Mike got hoisted up in a Height-for-Hire thing on one of the main bridges in the city, with a bird's-eye view of all the happenings. He's a shrewd fella, our Mike; his work paid for the whole thing! He did it first in 2005 and they ... read more

The main reason we were spending nine days in Pernambuco was to spend some quality time with the family. This weekend was to be the best opportunity to spend this time with said family. Aidan rented a van from some poor unfortunate fucker who didn't know what he was letting himself in for, and we went around picking up the various people who were coming along. Originally supposed to come were Monica, Pedro, Matheus, Alannah, Michael, Nandinha, and of course Aidan, but Nandinha had been sick for the last few days and was still fairly under the weather so they weren't going to be coming. Telma, Aidan's current bird, came along instead. We packed into the little minibus and headed off for the interior, planning to end up in a town called Caruaru, about 130km from ... read more