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!