A Week in Brazil
At the beginning of March, I made a week-long trip to Recife in Brazil. I was going to a Working Group meeting, and it was a good meeting, but here I'm going to focus on the recreational aspects of the trip! And I must say, I have never taken part in any meeting where we were hosted so lavishly! Brazilian hospitality is apparently a tradition, and I can only say that the tradition is alive and well in Recife.
I've been to South America once before, but not to Brazil. On my previous visit I flew to Buenos Aires in Argentina, and the first pleasant surprise on this trip was how near Brazil is, relatively speaking. Recife is in the north of the country, and is actually just seven hours from Europe, the same as New York. OK, in this case `Europe´ means Lisbon, but even so, Recife is no harder to get to than west coast USA. I flew TAP Air Portugal, and I must say I haven't had such good food and in-flight service in a long time.
On arrival I was met at the airport and taken to our hotel. Forget any preconceived ideas about banana republics or third world misery. There is plenty of money in Brazil: you see it in the smart new cars, the fancy restaurants, the gigantic shopping malls, and not least the luxurious hotels. An interesting statistic: Sao Paolo region (the richest in Brazil) has twice the per capita GDP of Switzerland! Of course, there are plenty of poor people in Brazil too, and indeed we saw children begging, eager street salesmen pursuing tourists, and slightly ramshackle houses here and there. But be honest: you can find all of that in Europe too.
Our hotel was five star, a shiny skyscraper paned with blue glass, just across the road from the beach. Recife is a beach town: all along the shore there is sand, protected by a reef a short distance out from unpleasantnesses such as sharks. The beach is flanked by palm trees and exclusive hotels and apartment blocks. The blue strip I'm standing on is a running track.
Every morning the sun rises around 5:30, every evening it sets at the same time. Year in, year out. Since it is directly overhead at midday, and only has six hours to get there, it fairly races up and down the sky. Dawn and dusk hardly exist: one minute it's bright, the next it's dark. Also, by seven in the morning, the sun is high in the sky and fierce. We were advised not to go outside between 10a.m. and 3p.m. actually, with our vulnerable white skins.
I was very happy to be able to go running in the mornings; I went four times. I would get up at 5:40 (which is 9:40 in Sweden, so not such a hardship), and start running by 6a.m. By that time there were already plenty of people swimming, strolling on the beach front, etc -- in many ways it's the best part of the day. I would run until 7, when it became too hot and humid to continue. And then, I would just walk in my running shorts straight into the warm water, just the right temperature to cool down a sweaty runner! Big ocean waves would come rolling in, and I would try to body-surf on them (with varying success)! Then back to the hotel to shower off the salty water, in to breakfast, and start work at nine. Rarely have I started a working day so refreshed as after that programme -- it was wonderful!
I even persuaded a couple of people to join me. Erik Meijer was the first -- a Dutchman who usually trains at a gym. The first morning we ran together he set off at a cracking pace, and I thought `What have I let myself in for?´ All I could think of was Erik the night before, declaring `I love to torture my body!´ Fortunately, I needn't have worried: he slowed down after a little while, and in the end he turned back before I did. Later that day he was hobbling around like an old man telling everybody that `John Hughes tried to kill me!´ It turned out that he thought I was setting the pace at the beginning, so we both ran a bit too fast.
Rafael Lins, our host, had booked dinner at a different restaurant every night, so we experienced the gamut of Brazilian cuisine. On the first night we ate at a steak house where the waiters go round and round the tables delivering slices of more and more cuts of meat to diners' plates. You are given a little disc coloured green on one side and red on the other; when you can eat no more you turn it over. On other nights we had seafood several times, and it was very, very good.
On the Wednesday afternoon we were taken on an excursion by coach. We drove into central Recife to see the oldest part of the city. It was founded by the Dutch, who (surprisingly enough) played quite a large rôle in the history of the area. You can see how colourful the city centre is in this picture. This street was actually built for the Jews: it seems that Jewish investors helped to finance the Dutch campaign to establish Recife, in competition with the nearby Portuguese town of Olinda, and in thanks the Dutch conquerers built a very fine street for the investors to live on. In recent years the area fell on hard times, and in the sixties was the red light district. But then the city authorities declared a tax amnesty for any landlord who painted his house, and as a result the street was soon spick and span! Nowadays it's full of restaurants, and is the centre of the city's public celebrations.
The whole city centre is full of colourful historic buildings; it was really very nice to see.
There is also a harbour, which isn't used by commercial vessels anymore, but offers a chance for small boys to perfect their diving!
After seeing the city centre, we were taken to a former prison, which is now a centre for arts and crafts. Every cell is now occupied by a small shop, selling everything from T-shirts to exclusive jewellery. On Rafael's advice, I had brought very little money, but still had enough cash with me to buy Mary two prints of the Carnival in a primitive style. The Carnival seems to be a major event throughout Brazil, and in Recife is more of a family affair than it is in Rio. The prints I bought show people dressed up in animal costumes, dancing in the streets etc etc. Of course, if it were 30 degrees more often then we might dance in the streets now and then too!
In the evening we visited Olinda, the Portuguese competitor to Recife, which was actually burned to the ground by the Dutch at one point in its history. Olinda is a maze of tiny streets and charming wooden houses piled almost one on top of another, popular with artists nowadays. It's one of Brazil's World Heritage Sites, and truly beautiful, but since we were there after dark I have no pictures! We ate our dinner at a restaurant offering `traditional regional food´, which turned out to mean seafood stew served in a roasted pumpkin! The top of the pumpkin is cut open to make a kind of tureen, and you scrape off a bit of pumpkin flesh from inside as you serve yourself stew. Delicious!
On Friday afternoon, after the meeting was over, those of us who were still in town were treated to another excursion! This time we left the city and drove to a nearby village to visit a historic church, one of the oldest in the region. Of course, whether Portuguese or Dutch, churches were among the first buildings the colonists built. This one was in a beautiful, brightly painted village.
The church itself was highly decorated inside, like all the churches we saw; gold leaf wasn't in short supply when these places were built!
The ancient church.
The altar.
After the church, we went to see a Dutch coastal fortress from the colonial time. It was actually closed by the time we got there, but that didn't prevent us enjoying an evening walk among the palm trees along another fabulous sandy beach. (Actually, the whole region is made of sand and mud: the only source of building stone the colonists could find was the offshore reef!)
We rounded off the walk with fresh coconut water in a beach café. The coconuts they use are not the brown hairy sort we get in Sweden, they are a smooth green kind. They hack the top off, and you drink the water through a straw. An interesting taste, not really what I expected, and not really sweet. Afterwards the waiter splits the coconut for you, and hacks off a chip of shell, which you then use as a spoon to scrape off coconut-flavoured jelly from the inside of the nut.
Finally, Rafael our host asked if those still in Recife on Saturday would care for an extra excursion, to see a sugar cane plantation. Sugar cane was the basis of Recife's wealth in former days, although the producers are facing hard times now. Of course, we were delighted to. So, on Saturday morning, we were taken by minibuss out into the countryside. After a bumpy journey on a dirt road, we came to the ruins of the sugar cane press.
Sugar canes are about an inch in diameter, like a giant grass, and they're juicy. To this day they are put through something resembling a mangle, and the juice flows out. You can buy it as a drink at street stalls. Nowadays, though, small plantations send their canes to central plants for processing, so the press at the plantation we saw hadn't been needed for a long time. It was very modern in its day: driven by a waterwheel, so that no slaves were needed to power it. The squeezed juice was then boiled in large vats to concentrate it, and allowed to cool and solidify. Once solid, it was dug out of the vats and broken up, producing demerara sugar as the end result.
After seeing the press, we walked up to the plantation owner's house. Imagine our amazement when Rafael's wife appeared out of it! It turns out that she comes from an old plantation owning family, who received the plantation about 300 years ago as a gift from the king. Nowadays the house is shared by her brothers and sisters; no-one lives there full-time, but they use it regularly as a week-end retreat.
And what a retreat it is! The place is huge; many, many guests can be accomodated. It is surrounded by a beautiful garden with mature fruit and nut trees, goodness knows how old. I saw a mango tree for the first time -- they look something like horse chestnut, but with green fruits dangling from the branches. And Rafael served us `sword mango´ the traditional way: you cut a hole in the top, massage the fruit to pulverise the flesh and squeeze it out, and suck the hole for all you're worth. It's messy, but that was the sweetest mango I have ever tasted!
Inside the house, the family have preserved the original decor, and I begin to understand Rafael's fascination with antiques.
All too soon, we had to return to Recife and make for the airport for the trip back. I enjoyed the trip very much indeed, and I just wish it had been possible to take the whole family this time. A week or two touring northern Brazil would be just dandy, thank you. It's a beautiful area with a great deal to offer. I'll just have to hope there's a next time!
John