“Meat” the Heat of Recife

Recife, located in Northern Brazil, this coastal city is hot!    The heat in Recife really takes you by surprise if you are not ready for it.  Luckily the airport where I landed had air conditioning, so the landing and gathering my luggage was at least comfortable…  I guess you could say that, that is if my luggage had arrived on the same plane that I did, which it did not.  I had to come back and get it a few days later because it was “missing”.  This brings me to an important travel tip for today.

Travel Tip:  Fill your carry on with a few overnight supplies.  I was glad that I had done this because I had a clean shirt and other needed clothes to change into.  My toothbrush also came in handy, though the Brazilian Airline (Varig Brasil Airlines) I flew on gave me a toothbrush and a pair socks during the flight.  I am a guy though, and did not feel the urge to pamper my feet with soft socks!

Back to the heat though, it was close to unbearable and something that I will never forget.  Since I was on a business trip I was responsible for giving a presentation and my brain literally stopped working.  I started to get really dizzy and could not go on, as I pushed through the fog that smothered my brain I noticed the fan had been bumped and was no longer blowing on me.  Once the fan went back on and was pointed directly at me I was able to function normally again.

On another day, the day I was to go get my luggage, my guide for the day asked me which type of bus I wanted to take to get to the airport.  Luckily I speak Portuguese so I understood what she had asked, my problem was that I just did not understand what she was talking about.  A bus is a bus as long as it get us to where we want to be…right?  Apparently I am wrong.  She explained that one bus cost about 1 Real less than the other.  That is equivalent to about .30 cents in USD.  I said “I do not care as long as we get to the airport.  We ended up taking the less expensive bus.

Bus rides in Brazil are an experience that everyone should enjoy at least once during their lives.  It is exhilarating, you are the biggest thing on the road and your driver seems to know it as he pushes through traffic, including going up onto the sidewalk.  believe it or not this is very common and I was even in a bus that went onto two wheels at on point during the ride (back when I lived in Sao Paulo)!

Another thing to look for are the small children that get onto the bus at the bus stops by sliding under the pay station located at the center of the bus.  They then hand out small candies with little notes attached to them asking for money, they do not consider this charity because you are buying the candy.  Almost everyone in the bus hands the candy back as the kids gets off at the next stop.

I found out that these kids have handlers or pimps for a cruder term, that take in all of the money the kids get.  I even offered to buy food for some kids claiming to be starving and they said no they would rather have money instead of food.  But let’s get back to my bus ride to the airport.  My guide tells me that this is where we need to get off so I oblige her.  After the bus pulls away I ask her where the airport is because I do not see it anywhere.   She looks at me and says t is 2 miles that way.  Now I know why the bus is less expensive!

Normally 2 miles is nothing but the heat of Recife and soon I will be lugging a huge suitcase it is a killer.  Literally a killer, if you do not stay in the shade you can suffer dehydration, sunburns (where the burn has degrees to it) or worse.  Because of this I looked for shade to walk in and the left side of the road was the best bet with a wall running almost the whole way.  The only problem with this wall was the fact that I am a tall guy and the shade ended at my neck.  I tried to fix this by crouching over , but I am quite sure you can get an adequate vision of what I looked like.  A +6 foot American walking crouched over hiding from the sun!  The irritating part was that it would have only cost .30 cents to get dropped off right in front on the airport.

Anyways, after the long walk we made it to the airport where I got my luggage and had a couple of hours to bask in the glorious air conditioning at the airport.

I took another bus to the ocean, walked on the beach and visited the sites down by the harbor.  Wow the beauty of the old architecture is fantastic as they have been restored to the way they looked when the were first built.  They are bright colors with trimmed out towers overlooking the ocean.  While I was in town a rally for the rights of a minority group parading.  I did not venture close as the road the parade was on was blocked by cops, more than I could count all with riot gear on!  We went back to the hotel to rest after a long day of exploration.

On my second to last day on this business trip I got another taste of the north, this time in the form of fried pork.  I visited some long time friends from back when I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil. These wonderful people are not well off, in fact they lived in a very poor part of town, a slum, but they are my fiends so I paid no attention to my surroundings.   They are some of the coolest people I ever met and often times the coolest people live in the worst conditions and surprisingly they were some of the happiest people on the planet.

These friends had me over for dinner, which happens during the hottest part of the day and is called “Almoco”.  They had prepared rice with beans, small pieces of fried meat and a couple of other dishes.

Dinner was ready so they called us into the dinning area where the food had already been placed on the table.  Luckily they had lids and covers over the food because as I walked into the room I spooked a chicken that was on the table trying to get the cover off of the rice!  I think I said something to the affect that dinner was still up and running as the chicken ran from the room.  Everyone laughed and it covered up the embarrassment of my hostess.  Dinner was good but I had not eaten any of the meat, I find that I sometimes become a vegetarian when visiting 3^rd world counties.  Probably has to do with the meat vendors and their smelly market corners with rank items hanging from every part of the store.  It could have something to do with the countless times I have gotten food poisoning from eating meat, or it could be because of this story.

I said I had not eaten the meat and my host pointing out to me that the meat was really good and that I should have some.  I am not one to upset people while on their turf so I picked up a piece of fried meat and start to nibble on it.  They ask if it is good and I say yes, thinking that it should be safe because it has been fried to the point of being jerky.  They smiled as I asked “What kind of meat is this”?  My hostess gets all happy as she tells me that it is pork and then as she finishes clearing off the table she says “Yea we were so happy when our neighbor had that pig killed last summer”.  My eyebrows raise and I think to my self ‘I have been in the fridge and I did not see any meat’ then she opens a cupboard and places the uneaten meat with the rest of the pork that was hanging there.  Needless to say beans and rice were my best friends and I was a vegetarian for the rest of my trip.

Although meat is not on my list in most parts of Brazil, there are some meats in the area to die for… I mean that in a yummy sense.  Brazil has “Churrasco’s” or Brazilian Barbecue’s that are really wonderful places to eat.  I will tell you about them on another day.

As my friends finished dinner I waited in the living room talking to my old friends.  Brazilians love Americans and America, I am not sure why but things have evolved that way.  I noticed on their wall they had put up an American flag that I had sent in the mail to them.  I asked why they did not have a Brazilian flag and they said it was because no one had given them one.  That sounds logical to me.

Recife is a great place to visit for a few days, I personally would not want to live there because of the heat, but the people are the friendliest and finest people I have ever met.  They will give you the shirt off of their backs, and go out of their way to help you.  The old historical sights at the water front are very cool and give you a feeling that this place has been around since before the memories of the people that now live there.  If you get the chance to visit you will love the people, history, and beaches.  You may even like the heat, although I did not.

Lord out.

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