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Published: February 11th 2007
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Technically I'm not writing this from Fernando de Noronha, as I'm now in Maceio. However, I never had time to write my blog while on the island because the internet is so expensive. For those who don't know, Fernando de Noronha is an island approximately 500km off the coast of Brazil. After spending five days there, I have to say its pretty fantastic and I don't even dive or surf, which are two of the main reasons for visiting.
I went on a tour arranged for me by Dolphin Travel in Recife. This meant that two of my full three days were occupied. The first morning was spent on a boat tour round the island. The only problem was the tour was in Portuguese, luckily I found some a couple of Americans to act my translator! The tour went round the main island and I got to see dolphins swimming. I've included the best photo I got, unfortunately they seem to swim faster than my camera could take photos.. The afternoon was spent on a tour of the historic sights: the local museum, the governers palace and the biggest fort on the island.
The second day's
tour involve being driven around in a 4x4 to the various beaches on the island. The beaches on the island are very tranquil and most of them unspolit. A lot of the beaches are used by sea turtles for nesting and as a result, access is controlled at night. On one of the beaches, the nests have been fenced off to prevent interference by humans.
There was a surf competition going on one of the beaches where we stopped at. It was slightly odd sitting on the beach when this was going on, as there would be frequent announcements (both in English and Portuguese) telling the surfers the scores they needed to move up the rankings.
I also for the first time in my life went swimming in the sea and tried snorkling for a bit. However, the snorkling was generally unsuccesful as I didn't go deep enough to make use of it and a couple of times I ended up beached.
My last day was spent in the company of two couples: Jose and Lucia and Rogerio and Jessica. They had hired a buggy and asked if I wanted to join them. This meant I got
Does this look familiar...
If you look closely the hole in the rocks is meant to be shaped like the outline of Brazil. to visit some of the beaches I didn't make the day before. One beach involved climbing down two ladders and a cliff top path to access...
On my last night we went to see a lecture given by Project TAMAR (the conservation society on the island) on Sharks. Unforuntately, thee lecture was in Portuguese, which meant I understood very little. Although I did learnt one important fact: if you ever visit America, be scared of cats!. Apparently in the last fifteen years, cats have killed four times as many people in New York alone than sharks have in the whole of the United States.
Yesterday I flew into Recife then got a bus to Maceio. I got a taxi from Recife Airport to the Bus Station. The taxi driver asked me where I was going, he even offered to drive me there for the mere sum of 300R$ (about 75 pounds). I declined because it was about ten times what the bus would cost. The taxi driver was great though because he told me exactly where to go in the bus station to get the right bus. The bus was far more luxurious than national express ever manage
and at one point a kid got on selling snacks. The only slightly scary part was the Latin American driving style of taking at corners at full speed using the racing line and overtaking in places where he clearly shouldn't really.
I'm probably going to stay in Maceio until Thursday then its off to Salvador for the Carnival.
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