Sailing around the World
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Thu 3 Mar 2011 13:02
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WEDNESDAY 2nd
MARCH 2011
Recife, is the capitol of Pernambuco, a region or
County on the NE side of Brazil.
Recife has a population of 1.8 million people and
is a very important City in Brazil and especially for the annual
Carnivals,
It has fantastic beaches, covered with thousands of
scantilly clad girls and guys, strutting around showing off their
assetts.
the only trouble with these wonderfull beaches is
that you are not encouraged to swim, yes, no swimming, thats
unless
you want to be eaten by sharks,
07.45 We joined most of the other sailors at the
Yacht Club and headed off in a big comfortable a/c coach. for a tour of Recife
and
its adjoining older city of "Olinda
" Olinda is a very pretty and colourfull city, and was originally
the centre of buisness
in Brazil. Most of the wealthy merchants lived in
this city, so therefore it has a good collection of fine Residences all
overlooking the harbour of Recife,
This was important, because the merchants could see
from their houses what sailing ships were comming and
going to the city and therefore could make
their way down to the docks to meet the boats and do their buisness.
The city is almost ready for its annual carnival
with all the houses and buildings being decorated and painted, plus all the
painted
portraits, and miles and miles of colourfull
streamers along the sides of the streets.
The Carnival kicks off tomorrow, thursday and will
continue for 5 days, and much longer in other places,
Our lady guide emphasised the sensual nature
of the carnival and kept referring to the sexy girls and fellows.
(We have our balcony reserved to view the whole
procession from start to finish. )
We were taken to many interesting places, including
the dock area, where the government are spending a lot of money on renovating
the old warehouses as they did with the old Jail
House, with hundreds of craftshop, restaurants , clay figurines, and sculpture
shops,
not to mention art galleries,
It is interesting to see how the authorities here
are developing their tourist trade, starting with Sun, Sand, & S* (
with no
swimming in the sea ) the Carnival is the big
attraction, no one knows how it started, it just kinda happened.
but grew like "Cork week" into a huge money maker
for the locals, except here , the government recognised its potential from the
very start and have continously funded and
supported the whole venture.
Later, we went to the beach area, where we met Bob
and Maggie ( Ocean Jasper ) while having lunch in one of these weigh
and pay places, How small is the world, there must
be thousands of restaurants in this area, and they just happen to
be in the one we end up in.
When we were suitably stuffed, we left the
restaurant and walked a short distance to the beach, Ohhhhh, what a
sight,
the place was jammed with sun worshippers, many of
them here fro the Carnival and all that goes with it.
We sat at the edge of the beach for a while, thats
Joe & Judy ( Brown Eyed Girl ) The Bubbly Bev and Mo ( Tucanon
)
Bob & maggie ( Ocean Jasper ) and ourselves, we
discussed with the Yanks our impending trip up the east coast of the
USA
as far as Maine, taking in " New Port " "
Block Island " martha's Vinyard, Nantucket, Cape cod, and
Newhampshire, where we
expect to meet our Daughter in law, " Christine",
our grand children, Hector, and others from that side of the family.
They all live up in that region and will be very
helpfull when we arrive there.
We walked back about 5km along the edge of the
beach to the Marina, The lovely Yacht Club and smelly marina. phew, and whats
more
the locals go fishing and swimming in this stink
pot. but we will not let that get in the way of enjoying this wonderfull place.
However, One cannot drink tap water around
these parts, so we all have to be extreemly carefull not to wind up with "
Jelly Belly "
Back at the Y.C. Joe, Judy , Skipper & Aileen
had an evening meal, basically we all had steaks, and it was ok,
later, Skipper and Aileen joined John and Jenny ,
plus Dave & Sue on " Tzigane " for a few laughs, and plenty of night
caps,
not to mention the huge cigars, We also
compared the differances between the World ARC organisation and that
of the " Blue Water Rally " ( RIP ) so it became a
late night,
Thats all for now,
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde ( Skipper )
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