Olinda / Recife

We arrived very hot and sweaty to Olinda, we are not used to this humidity at ALL!
http://www.moon.com/planner/brazil/regions/recife_olinda.html

Olinda is a really quaint place along the ocean. Full of colourful architecture and historic churches. On arriving we quickly did the rounds of a few Pousada´s, bargained hard and got what we think is the best place in town for a good deal (pays to travel brazil in the low season).. our room is rather small but we get a massive breaky and have a pool included. Saturday night we roamed the streets of Olinda and ended up in a fairly busy part of town.. hit up the street vendors for some tamales and hot fries, hungout on the sidewalk and took in the action around us.. further along we found a shop that was selling beer with locals packing the street out front, pretty soon a group of musicians had turned up and in no time an impromptu street party Brazilian style was in full swing!

Sunday morning we attended Mass at Mosteiro de São Bento, a very famous landmark as you can read about below..
http://www.moon.com/planner/brazil/mustsees/recife_olinda/mosteiro_saobento.html

after a quick dip we headed into Recife and Boa Viagem. Rather luckily we got off right near the Hippy Market, which was decidely NOT in full swing.. but the beach front was! Locals lined the beach in their rented beach chairs, sipping beers, we saw a game of volleyball being played without use of the hands or arms (now that takes talent!) and generally everyone was out to enjoy the sunshine and beat the heat. The beachfront is reminiscent of Surfers Paradise as it is full of high rise buildings that as the sun sinks cast long shadows on the beach.
Neither of us had researched overly carefully the return bus journey and to our dismay the 30min ride took over 2hrs as we hoped on the RIGHT bus going in the WRONG direction.. one of the lesser joys of not knowing the language.. however people on the bus were super helpful and tried to assure us we would make it back to Olinda eventually, in the meantime we got a nice scenic journey into some of the not so nice parts of Recife..

Tomorrow we head south to Maracaipe and Porto de Gallinhas. I think there is some nice snorkelling at Porto de Gallinhas and it´s supposed to have a really nice beach.
http://www.moon.com/planner/brazil/mustsees/recife_olinda/marcaipe_beach.html

Maracaipe is on the Brazilian surf comp circuit, and is supposed to be an even smaller little beach town, with not much to do but hit the beach, definately what we enjoy...

the current surf forecast is 2.2mtr and glassy.. sounds heavenly to me! Its been over 2 months since I had a surf.
http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Maracaipe.0to2.shtml