Olinda - where the Portuguese and Dutch met

Leaving the hotel in Maceio we thought we would be heading to Porto de Galinhas. However, it turns out that there was no bus too there so we would have to go to Recife and then out of there. Having got onto the bus we decided that we would leave Porto for after Fernando de Noronha and head north this time. Thus we found ourselves in Olinda.

You will be pestered by the people in many Brazilian town, but nowhere as much as here. Firstly, the taxi driver who was taking us to Olinda from Recife decided that we needed his help and started meddling in getting our accommodation sorted. I still fail to understand why he felt the need to do this given we had a perfectly good conversation with him in Portuguese and knew where we were heading. Secondly, Olinda has trained more tourist guides than they realistically need. Most of these are ex street kids and will pester you on every corner, following you around and offering their services. Whilst teh town would be very pleasant, this makes it somewhat exhausting and tedious.

Olinda itself is a larger version of the Salvador´s Pelourinho. It is a lovely colonial town, ideal for relaxing and strolling up and down the hills (far more tiring than it seems). Having been built on the hills by the Portuguese, it now looks onto Recife (built by the Dutch much later when they conquered the northeast). Whilst the churches in Pelourinho seem to be mainly for the tourists, Olinda´s churches are not really. They have weird opening hours and only come to life in the evenings during services. If all the services are as beautiful as the ones I saw, they really need all these churches. One service was in a convent that was empty save the 20 nuns that were singing most beautifully. The second service was in celebration of the Olinda´s patron saint and it was truly touching to see how powerfully these people believe. There is a wooden door with a simple inscription in that church and the iscription even though naive is touching. The person who wrote it said that after the death he was going to the Heaven to meet his ´folk´ and it was written in such a genuine way.

Olinda seems to specialise in giant carnaval dolls, that I haven´t seen anywhere else. They are above all sinister, but very interesting and it is well worth paying a visit to two places in the town that display a large number of these (in one place we saw one doll in action with a person underneath moving it).

Whilst teh guide book will give the impression that Olinda is a just a constant street party, this is not really true (at least not at this time of the year). In Alto da Se thee are many tapioca stands (btw, the ones from Edite, an old lady missing more than half her teeth, are really good and try to get them later in the evening because when the are just starting the fire is not strong enough so they are very crumbly) and lots of people (Sunday night reminded me of the county fairs in Serbia except they had transvestites here), but after that it is really down to one club in Praca do Carmo (Xim Xim), where the energy of the african beats on Sunday night was nbelievable.