Benvindo em Brasil e Peru: Easter at Christmas

Hello again,

Now it's time to talk about the North-East of Brazil.
Since the 25th of march I have been travelling a big part of the Brazilian tropic coast.
I started in Recife and passed trough Olinda, Natal, Fortaleza, São Luis and now I arrived at Belém, my last stop before crossing the amazone forest to the heart of the amazone, Manaus.

Recife (state of Pernambuco) is one of the north-east caost cities with the must diverce and rich variety in cultural activities. A big city with lot's of high appartmentbuilings and a beautiful coastline. There's just one problem since in the 1980'ies they constructed a harbor next to the city and because of the fishing activities sharks are atracted to this area. The tiger shark (max 5,5m long) and zambezi (or bull) shark (max 3,5m long) are too of the few types of sharks dangerous for menkind and the can swim in very undeep waters. These too types are living in the area and have already attacked many people. There were 40 incindents counted and at least 13 people dead over the years form sharkbites. The sharks normally don't eat human beings but they confuse the peddeling of people in the water with the movement of small sea animals or sick or old sea animals, which are easier to catch.

In Recife I visited a ceramic sculpture museum and huge factory of Francisco Brennand.
He also had a beautiful collection of paintings experimenting with very different painting styles.
If you see his family territory you know they must have been very rich.
At the busstop of my hostel I got to know Manuel, a very nice man selling snacks and drinks in his little streetshop. We started talking and he revealed to me he is a poemwriter and he also wrote some samba songs about the city of Recife. A of a sudden he starts to sing for me, wonderfull. His dream is to bring out a book and to record a CD with heis poetry and songs, he has a friend musician with a home studio in Olinda and knows a french musician studying the local music. Hopefully one day his dream can become reality. I told him I wanted to promote him in Belgium.

Olinda is a small city next to Recife. The first settlement build in this area was Olinda, the Portuguese General that putted first foot on land here his reaction was "Ô linda situação para uma vila." : "Oh, a beautiful place to build a settlement." Olinda is a very small but beautiful old collonial village with some old churches and collorfull houses. Here at night there are some nice samba bands playing at local bars, people who feel like it start dancing a slow samba. Very romantic.

My Easter weekend I spend in Natal (state of Rio Grande do Norte), that maens Christmas. Celebrating Easter at Christmas...
A very small town and lot's of tourists. So I go to the city center where, they don't really have an historical part, so now tourists to see. I feel in Brazil again.
Around Easter all Brazilians try to travel and visite there family and in many towns and cities there are theater plays of "A paixão de Cristo", the passion of the Christ.

I meet some nice people in the hostel, and we went out one night to a bar wich used to be a cool place, but we only see old men and prostitutes. So for once you better not watch around to much, to not attrackt their attention.

When we go around the city we pass a huge construction area where they are building a brand new football stadium for 'Worldcup 2014 in Brazil', also a very questionable issue. Later more about this.

Next stop: Fortaleza (state of Ceará)
The whole North-East of Brazil has been occupied, by the Spannish, the French, the Dutch and than reconcurred by the Portuguees. The time when the Dutch where masters there they build the castle "Fort Schoonenborch", to protect it from invasions. Later when the Protuguees took over they named the place to the fortress but made it more portuguees: Fortaleza.

Dragão do Mar
(= the seadragon)
Brazil has known a very long periode of slavery.
The European collonisers invaded South-America, killed most of the indeginous people and used the people that where left as slaves on their farms to produce Cotton, corn, and lot's of other products to transport to Europe. The indeginous people weren't motivated to work because they always had lived providing themselves from the products of nature and without the culture of hard working, because they didn't need to. So when they refused to work for the farmers a world slavery network was put into work. Most of all Arabic people looking for slaves in Africa, selling them to the Portuguees and Spannish shipping them to the whole continent of America. Slavery was forbidden in Europe, so European (descendants) farmers used slaves in America for producing products for Europe.
Mostely North-East of Brazil had to do with slavery, the South wasn't exploited yet.

In the state of Ceará, capital Fortaleza, they also knew slavery, but it was the first place in Brazil to abolish (= stop) slavery.
Chico da Mathilde, as a lot of other people started to fight against slavery.
Chico used to stransport slaves from the big boats to the beach. Some Years before slavery was abolished in Brazil (1888), Ceará stopped slavery in his region and Chico da Mathilde was honored by the Brazilian Emperor in Rio de Janeiro for his brave work. Since then Chico went into history as the "Dragão do Mar".

In Fortaleza in met Karlien, a Belgian girl in met in Rio de Janeiro thanks to Fabio de Melo. She is doing an inturnship in Dende, the favella behind the big public university Unifor. She works for a emancipative organisation for weman 'Dende Sol' in this favella. Here men are welcome too. She gives weekly Spannish and English courses and a intercultural activity with the little children of the neighbourhood to bring them in contact with other cultures. As many people in general in Brazil they have never left theire region or city and they know very few about other cultures or lenguages.

We stayed in the maenstreets, if you go deeper in the favella, people are more poor and living in terrible situations. Where Karlien lives it's a rather quiet and cozy neigbourhood.
With Daniel, the boy of her hosting family I went to a local heardresser and made a metamorphosis.
We drank beer in a local bar until late at night and I stayed sleeping at there place.

From Fortaleza I made a wonderful bustrip (18h), to São Luis (state of Maranhão). We pass at beautiful tropical naturesides and really small and very basic villages.
São Luis, is a beautifal old collonial style city with lost of bars with in the weekend at night live music: Tambor de Criola, MPB (musica popular do Brasil), samba and reggae.
São Luis is called the capital city of reggae of Brasil. So in lot's of bar's they play reggae music.
And Bob marley is everywhere.

Tambor de Criola, is the local music. African slaves brought this music to Brasil. You have some men playing long drums and people singing and weman are dancing in a curcular way in front of the musicians. The weman where long colorfull skirts and haedscarfs. It almost looks like the weman are in a transe.

My hotel, there are no Youth Hostels in this town, is inside of a little favella looking neighbourhood, people are very friendly, but some of their houses are really in a bad state, on doesn't have a door anymore and the windows are holes in the wall.

In the center of the city I meet an Italian guy from Torino, who has his own pizzeria and hotel there.
Het pizzeria only works well when there are foreign tourists, because brazilians are very hooked to their arroz and feijão (rize and beans) every day. His hotel 'Pousada Casa Lavinia', was in the earlier days known as the first bordello in the city owned by a certain Miss Lavinia.

From São Luis I did a boattrip to an island with the town called Alcântara, also the first capital of Maranhão. Founded by the French and later taken over by the Potuguees. There are still some remainings from palaces from Protuguees Kings, an some constructions where never finished.
This is a really small and isolated place here the time seemed to be stoped at least a century ago.
This is the most beautiful historical place I have allready seem in Brazil.
At Alcântara I meet a couple (Tadeu & Ângela) from Brasilia that are very well informed about brazilian politics and economics. Ângela works for a governement secretary that helps and does the followup of the indeginous tribes in Brazil. There is still a lot of work to do. In their family they have both sides, big farmers who don't care about nature and want to make as quick as possible much money and farmers who believe in organic farming and try to live in harmony with nature.

Since I arrived in São Luis, until now, I almost haven't seen other foreign tourists or white Brazilians. And people are constantly staring at me. "Where does he come from?"

Yesterday 09/04/13, I arrived in Belém (state of Pará) my last stop in North-East Brazil, This city is located at the outfall of the Amazon River. here the river leaves the amazonforest and comes out into the Altantic Ocean. The Portuguees that founded the city called it 'Belém' (= Bethlehem, in Portuguees), 'the city where Jesus was born'.

Belém was apparently the first European collonie in the amazon region and has a big harbour. Belém was very important for the export of rubber from the amazon to Europe from 1879 till 1912. In this period Belém was one of the richest cities of Brazil. Later when synthetic rubber was invented the Belém econimy collapsed.

In Belém I'm staying with Saul Berrardo, a friend of my friend Marleen from Brussels.
It's really great after travelling so many kilometers to arrive 'come home' in Belém.

From here I'm travelling throu the Amazon Forest to Manaus (state of Amazonas) the heart of the Amazon, from there I will leave Brazil, to go to Lima (Peru).

Recife