Fernando de Noronha - The beach

It wasn't all diving in Fernando de Noronha. This island is also known by it's amazing beaches and natural beauty.

It also had some amazing birds. The camera work leaves a bit to be desired but the way they were fishing was amazing specially when there were some big waves.

Each day we would go diving in the morning and visiting a new beach in the afternoon... and believe me... there were plenty of different beaches to try every day.

Some weird fauna too

I believe the name in English is "rock cavy" (mocó in Portuguese) but I'm not expert... so we can call it a big rat :-)

Accessing some of the beaches was interesting to say the least...

It was good I was wearing high visibility clothing... once you go down the rabbit hole you never know what's going to happen... although in this case we ended up coming up in some amazing place.

All in all with the jungle, boat trip down the Amazon river and the diving it was a good way to relax ... just find a good beach and spend the afternoon there...

Unfortunately,  all good things come to an end so at some point we had to take a flight back to Brazil...

At some point during the trip, Susana had bought a porcelain doll (probably in Olinda) and with all the comings and goings we could all hear something broken in the fully packaged and wrapped up doll. We couldn't tell what was broken for sure but we could tell that something was definitely broken...

Normal people would have waited until they got home and then they would have un-wrapped the doll and hope for the best... in this case... instead of doing that, María and Susana talked me into convincing airport security to let us use their X-Ray machine to see how broken the doll was... With the excuse that they didn't know how to explain everything to them in Portuguese they wanted me to do it for them. I can only say in my defence that I was a nicer person back then. :-)

I honestly thought they were going to laugh in my face but it was a small airport, we were the only passengers around and they seemed to be bored so against all odds they happily agreed (and without much effort on my part!) to help us out and next thing you know every airport security officer in view joined in trying to diagnose the doll's malady.

After some serious debate and a double back on the X-Ray machine it was concluded that one of the arms was broken but the rest seemed to be still intact.

Prognosis: Superglue the arm and good as new.


When we finally boarded the plain, I'm not sure what they put through the air-con but it looked like we were on fire...

Luckily... we made it back to Brazil mainland in one piece with no more adventures... which was a good thing as we had enough adventures for a lifetime in this trip! :-)

Fernando de Noronha - The diving

The why we chose to come to this little island off the cost of Brazil was simply because it is renown for its natural beauty, not just in land but also underwater.

This was also one of the reasons why I went to Egypt earlier in the year to get my PADI course (this is and international diving certification that allows you to dive anywhere in the world).

Now that I was fully certified, I could enjoy the crystalline Brazilan waters of Fernando de Noronha. María already had the certificate from the time she was in Thailand and Susana did like me and got hers before coming here... somewhere in the South of Spain I believe...

I had the option to do the course in the UK of course, but given the choice of diving in blue warm waters full of fish and coral in Egypt or diving in freezing black waters full of washing machines and tyres in the UK I opted for option number one. I know... shocking...

Getting to Fernando de noronha wasn't easy. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and there's only one way in... by plain, unless you own your own boat, of course, but giving my propensity to sea sickness I'd rather pulling my teeth with pliers and no anaesthetics than travelling by sea.

Places in the island are restricted so you need to make your booking well in advance, on top of that you'll also have to pay a tax for "nature preservation" which will vary depending on the amount of days you spend in the island.

That's not all... then you also need to find accommodation... and let me tell you... it's not cheap. There is a limited number of beds in the island so they know they can charge you anything they want...

Once we got to the island we started looking for a place where to stay (as we hadn't booked anything before hand). On the internet the prices looked pretty high so we thought it would be easier to find something on our own once there... and we did... we found a cheaper place...

You need to understand... after spending 2-3 days in the jungle and another 2-3 days in a stinky boat lost in the Amazon river, our standards for accommodation were quite low, we could pretty much sleep anywhere so when I say we found a place you need to understand that, most of you, would have probably  run away as far and fast as possible from that place but for our standards at the time... it was an improvement over the past experiences.

A lady offered us a couple of rooms in her house for a reasonable price... let me describe the rooms with one simple anecdote... a couple of days in, coming back from a diving trip María and Susana found and invading army of ants in both their suitcases... there were so many that they had to fumigate both  suitcases (and fumigate is the right word here).  An invasion of ants took over their suitcases... there were ants everywhere, in the hundreds... so they had to buy one of those sprays for killing insects and fumigate both suitcases inside out... a few hours later they removed the hundreds of casualties from the suitcases and left the suitcases outside to freshen up because the stink from the insecticide was hard to bear inside the windowless rooms... I bet had they still have those suitcases today... you could probably still smell them now...years later...

And let's just finish this by saying that ants weren't the only insects around either...

Moving on to the most interesting parts of the trip. The first day we did a little wander and found a diving shop so we booked a couple of days (4 dives) starting the following day.

So the following day, we went to the supermarket, bought something for breakfast and headed for the diving boat. In this case, the diving boat was a small boat with 10 places or so for divers plus a couple of dive masters. Once everyone was on board we headed for the reef... and the sea was a bit choppy... so 5 minutes in and I was feeding the fish with my earlier breakfast... by the time we got to the diving spot I was green and could barely stand up... someone put the equipment on me and pushed me to the water... as I sunk in I started to feel a lot better and once I was 15 metres down I came back to life...

Once under water, the green colour disappeared from my face and a more pinkish shade took over... I almost look healthy again...

All the dives we did were quite shallow... no more than 15 metres

and apart from the extra light you get at that shallow depth we got to see lots of different creatures... from turtles and manta rays to some kind of very docile shark

and we also had the chance to go through some really cool caves

After the second dive we headed back to port... and although I didn't have much left on my already empty stomach my generous nature made me keep feeding the fish all the way back to port... You can't imagine the feeling of satisfaction when my feet touched land ... like being born again.

In the afternoon... after re-filling my more than empty stomach we headed for the beach... there were plenty to choose from so we decided to visit a different one every day...

Olinda

The next step on our holiday was Olinda, one of the best preserved colonial cities in Brazil. The plan was to spend a day there, recover from the jungle/river experience and then fly to Fernando de Noronha for the final part of our holidays.

From the airport of Santarém we took a flight to Recife with 3 stops Belém, Sao Luís, Fortaleza and finally Recife. Every time we stopped, some people would leave the plain and some would board the plain... the best part was that we would get breakfast every time... so 3 breakfast later we made our way to Recife. :-)

Due to our latest experiences in the jungle and the river we took everything they gave us and the things we couldn't eat, we just chucked them in in our rucksacks... blankets included!!! we left nothing behind because now we knew that you never know what's going to happen next so as they say... hope for the best but prepare for the worst...

Once in Recife we negotiated the price with a taxi driver and he took us to Olinda. I can't remember who made the booking for the hotel we stayed in whether it was María or Susana but let me tell you... after all we went through for the past days the hotel they booked felt like a piece of heaven...

Pousada dos quatro cantos.

Clean, peaceful, spacious... it almost brought tears to my eyes...:-)

We dropped our luggage and off we went for some exploration...

The streets still preserve the cobblestones and the original colonial architecture

In the distance you can see the contrast with the new city (Recife)

As a good and proper colonial town, there were lots of Churches... and I mean... LOTS!

Even inside they were quite impressive. 

In between Olinda and Recife there was a little bit of green separating the two...

Every building was full of colour

The sea wasn't too far away

We did quite a little bit of walking that day... it was nice and peaceful... 

Then we stopped for a beer and some dinner just before heading back to the hotel...

What we didn't count on was the Bachata concert on the same street as our hotel, not sure whether it was a daily occurrence or it was just for us, but we were so tired that even with the music at full blast and the windows open we slept all night...