Blogs from Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, South America - page 5

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 ... read more

So after a brief stop in Natal, I headed off to Fortaleza to meet Soraia. In fact, we saw absolutely nothing of Fortaleza as our reason for going there was to attend Capoeirence 2008 - the annual capoeira meeting of Mestre Espirro Mirrim (Cordão de Ouro) in Portal da Lagoa - Fortaleza. We spent three days there doing workshops in capoeira, afro, samba and forró. For those interested in capoeira it was amazing - there were arouind 22 Mestres from different groups including Mestre Suassuna, Mestre Barrão, Mestre Suino, Mestre Jogo de Dentro, Mestre Cobrinha Mansa, Mestre Iranir, Mestre Deputado and many more that I forget now. For those who dont know about capoeira - it was like a meeting of superstars - being able to hear Mestres Suassuna and Barrao sing live songs that I´ve ... read more

Thurs 4th Oct: An early start due to the hotel owner´s dog wanting everyone awake at about 5 this morning. Anyway decided to do my own cultural tour of Forteleza today. I found the tourist information very helpful and they gave me a pamphlet in English with all the key sites. Took an omnibus and got totally lost as it went to a different part of the city than that on the front of it. 'Eventually found my way to the centre square and started with the Jose de Alencar Theatre - built at the beginning of the last century in honour of a famous writer (Jose de Alencar). All the balconies are surrounded by fantastic cast iron designs, imported from Scotland! (See photos). The guide there spoke English and was very helpful; I had a ... read more

I finally got up to the northeast like ·I have been meaning to... but it wasnt easy. I got to the airport in Rio on time, but it took a lot of bus and taxi and money to get there.. Then the plane was delayed ... since it was really foggy out, i was pretty glad they didnt just send us off into the mist, so I didnt mind waiting... but they only made the announcements in Portuguese, so I was never sure of what they were saying (between talking fast, bad mikes, and my lack of understanding Portuguese). I did hear treze horas... and I was like... GREAT! 13 hours in the airport. But luckily, they meant we were leaving at 13:00. That didnt exactly happen either, but 3 pm was better than like 2 ... read more

After clocking up the miles these last two weeks, finally in northern Brazil, in Fortaleza. Has been a crazy couple of weeks. Firstly, left Rio De Janeiro and headed north into the state of Minas Gerias (the old mining center back in 1700´s). Beautiful colonial towns like Ouro Preto, Sao Joao and Tiredentes..... very different from rio.... churches with bells ringing on every corner, all day every day. People were so friendly too. From there we went back to the coast to Vitoria (one of the dreaded overnight buses...) and and continued north to Porto Seguro.... holiday destination to the brazilians, home of the lambada.... and with a street named "Alcohol Walk".... nice place but seen better beaches elsewhere. What I havent seen elsewhere is massive beach bars with crazy brazillians dancing the day away, ... read more