Where the sun first arrives

Mission Brazil - which is the Embassy and all the Consulates - has a program called Route 66 - or Rota 66.  It's a special program that assigns each officer stationed in Brazil a city to get to know.  That way, many Americans get to know many more Brazilian cities.  And many Brazilian cities get lots of first-hand interactions with Foreign Service Officers.

I recently made my first trip to my Route 66 city - Joao Pessoa.  I wrote it for the Route 66 blog and you can read it in Portuguese here.

Here it is in English:

 I had the lucky opportunity to visit the point at which the sun first touches the American continents –Pontas do Seixas in Joao Pessoa, Paraiba. This easternmost point of the Americas has a longitude of W 34° 46' 59.9999" and is only 3705 miles or 5962 kilometers from the African coast. Pontas do Seixas is located next to the Estacao Cabo Branco – an exhibition and cultural space designed by Brasil’s own Niemeyer. This space is where the opening ceremonies for Joao Pessoa’s 2nd Annual Travel and Tourism Fair were held. The team from the American Consulate in Recife participated by giving talks on visas and tourism in the United States.

Joao Pessoa has other claims to fame - as the capital of the state of Paraiba and also as the third oldest
settlement in Brazil. It was founded in 1585 and originally known as Vila de Felipéia de NS das Neves. It later changed its name to honor governor Joao Pessoa for refusing to switch political parties. His statue stands in one of the main squares.










Igreja Sao Francisco is a new cultural center that stands on the site of a beautiful former convent and church. The architecture and courtyards are very peaceful. There is gorgeous tile-work and a beautiful gilded altar and frescoed ceiling. It is a great example of helping historic buildings to achieve new purpose while maintaining their historic qualities.

While visiting Joao Pessoa, our team had lunch with the mayor at a delicious Portuguese restaurant – Restaurante Adega do Alfredo. We learned that in an effort to preserve the ambience of their town, the city government enacted an ordinance which limits the height of buildings near the coastline. The result is that the neighborhoods along the beach are wonderful to stroll through with many interesting restaurants and shops.







We visited an artisan center as well as trying exotic ice creams made from fruits of the cerrado at
Delicias do Cerrado. We also enjoyed some regional cuisine of the Northeast at local favorite – Mangai. There were many regional specialties including queixo coalho, cartola and 6 different types of rice.

Joao Pessoa is a beautiful city that exemplifies many of the wonderful qualities of the Northeast of
Brazil. I look forward to visiting this lovely city again.

Road Trip to Maceio part 2 - the Ride Home

One would think that after such a bizarre and nutty day, the next day couldn't possibly compare.  But if you thought that - you'd be wrong.

We woke up pretty early in the Love Motel and quickly got ready and headed home.  After all, we still didn't have any reservations and after the previous day, really just wanted to relax in a familiar environment.  Most Brazilian hotels come with breakfast - cafe da manha.  It's usually a buffet with fruit, breakfast breads, juices, coffees, and some hot items.  But of course - the Love Motel didn't serve breakfast - not when you're charging by the hour.

We got in the car and headed north.  We left so early that nothing was open - and really the road was pretty rural - it's not like you're going to run into a McDonalds.  I was mainly hoping for a gas station store to be open.  The gas station stores in Brazil can get pretty elaborate.  But - it was still too early.

We made another attempt to take the coast road - I had vague hopes to drive for a while, find a nice beach to run around and play a bit, and then get back in the car.  I always have such high hopes . . .

The coast road takes you through many small towns.  They're great fun to drive through and are very interesting.  But since the road goes through the center of town, there are also lots and lots of speedbumps - or lombadas.  These speedbumps can be quite large and our little car would often scrape along the top as we went over.  The speedbumps sometimes are painted yellow, and sometimes the paint as faded.  Then the speedbump becomes a big surprise. There can be signs indicating that a lombada is coming and sometimes there are no signs.  And sometimes there's a sign, and no lombada.  Suffice it to say, our entire family became involved in trying to spot the lombadas and let K. know in plenty of time.

Signage was also an issue.  Often we came to forks in the road where the signs had arrows pointing the various ways.  Usually the signs pointed to local beaches, and then beaches further ahead.  Rarely did they give broader directions - like "This way to the North Highway".  Also - being close to the ocean, the signs were often faded and barely legible.  It made finding our way home very interesting.  Luckily, Brazilians are very nice and very helpful - always making sure we were headed in the right direction.

Eventually, we switched drivers and I was the one constantly shifted and scraping over the lombadas.  I kept looking for the signs for the ferry - I figured we'd have to get to it at some point taking the coast road.  Eventually, we noticed small boats with cars on them going across the water.  As I drove through the town, I figured the road would turn off towards the ferry.  But at the logical point, the road curved away from the water and a new sign stated that "The company was not responsible for anything that occurred on the road".  Huh?  Thought it was odd, but then thought maybe my Portuguese just wasn't good enough.  Either way - we proceeded along this road.

This new road was better paved and had no lombadas. We drove through farmland and sugar cane fields as we headed inland.  Again, there were sugar cane fields in various stages of harvest.  I thought - perhaps the sugar cane company has made their own road around the ferry - through the farmland.  Since there were other cars traveling the same direction, I wasn't too concerned.

Then - the nice paved road became covered with dirt.  At first we thought it was due to the recent harvest and some rain - mud sweeping over the road.  But then the paved part completely ended and it was just a dirt / mud road.  We were about 30 minutes down this road and with the other cars traveling with us we thought it must just be a not-yet-paved spot.  But then the road got worse.  Our little beater car wasn't designed for four wheeling.  We were about to turn around and retrace our steps, but first I pulled over and asked another car if we were on the right road.  He said - "Oh yes - it's all fine. Just follow me."  So we did.

The road got progressively worse and with the recent rains, we were worried when we had to drive up hills that were somewhat steep - we didn't want to start sliding backwards.  Eventually, we started to see housing on a hilltop nearby.  We figured we were coming to the town and the paved roads would start up soon.

As we got closer to the town, the road rose up so that we were driving along a ridge with sunken farmland on either side. The road was pretty narrow, but ok.  I saw a large flatbed truck filled with people coming towards us from the town.  Luckily there was enough room for us to pull to the side for the truck to pass.  When the truck passed, we saw the rest of the road in to town.

The reason the road was higher was because you had to cross a river before you got to town.  The river was spanned by a wooden bridge that appeared ancient and was at least the length of two flatbed trucks.  The wood for the bridge was worn in many places - so much so that a second set of wooden planks had been placed perpendicular to the original planks - forming a track to make sure your wheels drove on.  I just kept telling myself that the big truck had just made it over - our little car should be OK.  K. got the special windshield breaking tool ready in case the bridge collapsed and we ended up in the river.  I hung back, wanting to let the guy I was following clear the bridge before we drove onto it.  But he stopped halfway over and motioned for us to come along.  So we did.

We got to the other side, and finally hit paved road!  Our guide drove us up the hill through the humbler neighborhoods of this town, and then back down to the highway.  He pulled over and made sure we knew where to head next.  What a great guy!

The rest of the way home wasn't as eventful.  We drove through some more towns and past some gorgeous beaches - but by now, we were truly exhausted.  We just wanted to get home and rest.

Road trip to Maceio, or How our family ended up in a Love Motel

Thanks to a Brazilian holiday, we had a three day weekend coming up and decided to visit Maceió - the state capital of Alagoas, our neighboring state.  We'd heard it was beautiful and had good friends who had grown up there and gave us tips on best beaches as well as a good place to stay.  I called ahead and made reservations.  Since it was a 3-4 hour drive, we decided to leave early on Friday morning so that we  could be down there by noon and have a half day at the beach.

We got our of the house on schedule, stopped for some coffee and pastries and hit the road.  Getting out of Recife can be difficult as traffic is a huge issue.  It's one of the reasons we left relatively early.  We didn't hit traffic on our way out of town, but we did run into issues with road construction and detours.  Since Recife is close to the Port of Suape and many multi-national factories, they are working to improve the roads.  This can result in frequent re-routing and detours.  Often the signage is minimal or non-existent.  After the third time through a particular interchange, we finally hit upon the correct path and continued on our way.  Of course, by this time, our early start had been eaten up and we now ran into holiday traffic.

We continued on our way down the coast past many beautiful beaches.  It had been recommended that we take the coast road and it was well worth it.  We watched the water go from deep blue to turquoise; we passed beach towns, resorts and many many sugar cane fields. At one point we crossed the state line from Pernambuco into Alagoas and continued south.  The signs weren't always clear, but we just watched for things that said "southern coast" and Maceio and figured we'd eventually get there.

At one point we headed inland for quite sometime.  I was a bit concerned because I knew the route was along the coast (there was even a ferry along the way), but since the signs still said Maceio, I figured we'd be OK.  Inland was very interesting.  We drove through lots of sugar cane fields in all stages - newly planted, recently harvested, burned (just prior to harvest).  We also past the dwellings of the farm workers.  They lived in mud huts.  We saw a few in process - a grid of 1-2" diameter branches and people packing mud in between the spaces.  Each dwelling was about 6 by 8 feet.

Eventually we turned east again and came back to the coast.  Apparently we had missed the ferry part.  The drive had become much longer than the proposed 3-4 hours, but the kids were being great - they even listened to their first "This American Life" and really loved it!  We came to Maceio and used our iPhone map to find our hotel.

When we reached the hotel's location, the name of the hotel was different than I had been told, and different than the one I had made reservations at.  So we drove around some more in attempt to find our hotel.  Since everyone was pretty tired and hungry at this point, we eventually found a taxi and asked him to take me to the hotel while K. and the kids followed in our car.  He took us back to the place we had originally gone.  But when we asked them, they weren't our hotel, we didn't have reservations there, and they were booked for the weekend (major holiday weekend).  We conferred with our helpful taxi driver and eventually learned that our hotel had moved 3 years ago to a spot north of town.  We decided to grab some late lunch and then head north to the beach where the hotel was supposed to be.

Living close to the equator, sunset is around 5:30 each day.  Since we were in a new place, we wanted to make sure we had found our place to stay before it got dark and harder to navigate.  We headed north towards the hotel around 2:30 thinking we had plenty of time.  We drove north for a while and finally found the beach where the hotel was supposed to be located.  The road leading to the hotel was dirt - but that's not uncommon.  But the road appeared to go through a fairly humble community. We drove to the end of the road where it dead-ended at the beach and saw a sign for the hotel.  We turned down that road but couldn't find the hotel - not good.  We decided to head back to the main road and re-group.

When we had originally decided to go away for the weekend, friends let us know our destination was know for a high rate of violence.  I spoke with our friends that had family there and was told that the violence was primarily in the humbler neighborhoods - the favelas.  I understand that urban environments can have neighborhoods of varying safety so I wasn't concerned.  We knew that we just needed to avoid those humble neighborhoods.  And now the place that we had reservations for (on a holiday weekend) appeared to be in one of those neighborhoods.  Realistically, it was probably fine.  But, not knowing the town or area and having the kids with us - we weren't about to take any chances.

We headed back in to town and started stopping at every hotel or motel to see if they had any vacancies for the night.  But - holiday weekend - no room at the inn.  And by this time it was getting close to dusk.  We were all tired and had been in the car all day.    We considered driving back to Recife, but in the dark, after driving all day, on roads without great signage and lots of potholes - it just seemed like a very bad idea.  One hotel was very helpful and called a number of other hotels trying to find us a room, but everyone was booked.  When I asked if he had any suggestions, he said that just north of town there was a hotel that they've sent people to when every place was booked.  He assured me that the area was safe (he knew I was with my kids), and gave me directions.

We got back in the car and headed north once again.  By this time it was dark making finding our way and avoiding potholes extremely difficult.  Finally we reached the area and found the hotel.  We drove up the driveway and found it blocked by a large gate.  I got out to find the front door of the hotel - but there wasn't one.  Instead, at the large gate, was a picture menu of the various rooms that were offered, along with the rates - by the hour.  It appeared we'd come to one of Brazil's Love Motels!

In Brazil, since most people live at home with their family until they get married, it can be hard for a couple to have "private time".  In order to meet this need, there are many motels rent rooms by the hour.  They are very discreet and not the seedy experience you might find in the US.  But I never thought I'd go to one - much less take my kids there. But - it was a safe, clean place to spend the night - much better than attempting to drive home, or sleep in the car.

Of course, it was quite odd for a family of four to be checking in to the place.  They were quite confused.  And once again, I had forgotten that Brazil requires that all people checking into a hotel (kids included) needed ID.  So we had to go back to the city to find a shopping mall (in the dark, with yet another wrong turn detour through a dicey neighborhood!) and an internet cafe so that I could print out our travel documents that thankfully I had uploaded many months ago!

The manager was wonderful - personally making sure that the room was cleaned and ready for a family before he allowed the kids to enter the room.  The kids were fascinated by the mirror over the bed - thought it was pretty funny.  But finally, we could rest and get some sleep.  The next morning we woke up pretty early, packed up and headed home.  We'll try Maceió again - but with different accommodations!