Travel with Indigo

Today we went to Olinda, which is about a 40 minute drive from here and one of the closest towns. We had a kind of bad experience getting there—first, we took the tender to a very small marina just a short distance away from the boat where we were supposed to meet a taxi. There was obviously some confusion, but finally—and I do mean finally—two guys in a beat-up van showed up to take us to the town. Of course, no one spoke anything close to English so there was a bit of confusion. But finally we got there and it was certainly not a scenic drive. We stopped for gas and by that, I mean we stopped for propane gas, which was a bit different for us and rather interesting. From then on, I kept thinking about what would happen if we were hit from the rear but obviously, that didn’t happen.

Olinda is a medium-sized town on the ocean with lots of people and lots of traffic and lots of run-down areas. There is a historic area which is considered a center for the arts and contains lots of early colonial architecture but it doesn’t take you long to realize that you don’t want to get out and walk around. Interestingly, they have English-speaking (and other languages) guides in yellow shirts walking around to help you and they were very friendly. We asked the van driver take us to a restaurant one of the “yellow shirts” had recommended but the driver never could find it. By then, Phil had had it with the two guys and told them just to drop us off on the beach road and we had lunch at a restaurant that was not high on our list. The boys had pizzas and they made Pizza Hut pizza look like gourmet food. During the lunch, Phil decided to fire the guys and get a taxi back so he had them drive us back to the historic center where we knew there were lots of taxis. Communicating this plan was not easy. We got out and Phil had a spirited conversation with them—I don’t think anyone understood anything that was said on either side but anyway, they left. We got a real taxi and he showed us around the historic center and then drove us back to a place where we could radio the boat to send the tender to come pick us up. If water hadn’t been in the way, we almost could have walked to the boat but the tender had to come around the end of the island and some sandbanks. Were we ever glad to get back to the boat and to our little island area!

The rest of the afternoon, Grant and Will—and even Phil—had a great time jumping off the top of the boat into the water. The people on shore and the people in the boats buzzing around us really enjoyed that! Then the boys went wake-boarding—wish I had their energy—and loved that too.

Grant and Will went ashore to scope out the area before Phil met them for dinner at the Orange Beach Hotel on Itamaraca. In the process, Grant and Will met the Dutch woman who owned the hotel—you know Grant, he will talk to anyone—and introduced her to Phil. She then introduced the three of them to three Dutch archaeologists who were on the island studying Fort Orange and who had been coming to the island for that purpose since the late 1990’s. They were experts in Dutch fortifications of the seventeenth century—talk about specializing—and they told us that there are such Dutch forts all up and down the Brazilian coast left over from that time period. The particular one on our island had first been a Dutch fort that was then enlarged and surrounded by a Portuguese fort. All you can really see now is the Portuguese fort but they showed us where they had been digging for artifacts—very interesting.

By coincidence, Monday night is when they have a big party every week for the hotel and restaurant workers on the island and the Dutch lady invited Phil, Grant and Will to go there with her.  To say they had a great time is an understatement.  In the process, they met lots of people, including an Italian man who spends six months on the island and six months in Italy.  Phil and he hit it off right away and he invited Phil to come to his house the next day or so.  This is the kind of thing that makes this trip so worthwhile!