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Hi.... After our week in Salvador and our night in the airport there, we flew to Recife last Friday (18th August), choosing to stay in the neighbouring town of Olinda for a couple of nights. You can see from the photo the well preserved colonial buildings of Olinda in the foreground against the backdrop of the more modern Recife, although both are said to be the most important cultural centres of the north east (for music etc. etc.)... It is a pretty little place and nice to mosey around, although our feet are definitely starting to itch at the prospect of seeing what you really come to South America for... the Amazon, the rainforests, the Andes... and Olinda was such a sleepy little place after Salvador...
This afternoon we flew from Recife to Fortaleza. These cheapie domestic flights have been cracking for covering these vast distances, 'though we're keen to get back on the buses from now and be on the ground and 'in things' more. We've skipped Natal and Praia da Pipa (our original plan) while thinking we really needed to get a move on if we're to make the end of the drier(!) trekking season in Peru in September / October. We can't believe we've been on the go for three weeks already, and really how little time we've got to explore this continent!
Fortaleza was intended as a stopover on the way to Jericoacoara and around the coast and its dunes and national parks as far as Sao Luis, but we've arrived and there's a lovely vibe here. Still... time to get going now, as I said... tomorrow (Tuesday) or Wednesday we'll get the bus to Jericoacoara (supposedly very chill, lovely hippy beach town on the coast!)
We've booked into a youth hostel here in Fortaleza, and are loving the idea of a free buffet breakfast again tomorrow morning, and the fact that it's relatively 'plush' (at 18 quid a room) after our little corregated-roofed room at the back of someone's house in Olinda (at 8 quid a night!) - absolutely lovely and friendly 'though everybody was there...
It seems as though every day people are lovely to us all the time, going to great lengths to make sure that we get on the right bus... and off at the right stop... and just being so great. The Brazilians really are fantastic people, and we were just saying tonight that it's a cracking place to come for a holiday... Every airport we've been to seems to be international, so getting here's not a problem, and then travelling is so easy and everything so cheap once you get here...
We've just tried loading up some more photos of Olinda, but it seems there are restrictions here on uploading stuff, so we'll try again tomorrow somewhere else...
Anyway, still happy, still loving it, ready to move out of the towns now, and, like I say, really beginning to realise how little time we actually have (and after part of me initially found the idea of a year on the go somewhat daunting!)
Thinking of you all very much... xxx
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