from Sandy Needham

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Brazil Dispatch 39


Below are vignettes of the beauty, the aggravations and the lessons of the third world:

>Mornings nowadays are without noisy work along our road because the monstrous condo has been completed. It is sitting there empty at the moment. Waking up to the ocean sound never disappoints. I continue to savor the privilege of not rushing each and every morning, and I luxuriate in my routine of stretching and working all my joints at a relaxed and deliberate pace. After the rainy season, we always rent a power washer to restore our lovely flagstones from dingy grey and black to their warm, subtly varied neutrals. From the balcony I look down on the palm shadows swaying from overhead, and out to the aqua ocean rolling in between the fronds. The beauty: I am so grateful to share each morning with it!



Now that we have put up our Christmas lights, the iguana is completely baffled by his coconut tree!



>Some local errands are more eventful than others, though driving around town never really gets better. Often when we are about to pass a car, the driver absent-mindedly starts drifting over the line into our lane. We have seen people turning left from the right lane, or even the right shoulder when the light changes! I generally consider the road a gauntlet and try to anticipate intrusions from every side. The closest I have come to an accident was the day a car decided to ignore the jug handle and simply stop on the highway to make a left turn. I had glanced to the right quickly to make sure no one was coming through the jug handle (some people think they have the right-of-way over a car proceeding down the highway) and when I looked back I was cruising behind a stopped car! I think there was one inch left between us after I slammed on the brakes and swerved. Whew.

>At a traffic light the other day, a boy of probably eight years approached to wash the windshield, though I gestured ‘no’ (and it was clear that the windshield was already clean, thanks to our caretaker, Marcos). The boy soon knocked on the window after failing to get a taker and held out his hand for some coins. It is common that the kids are coached – very badly – into making absolutely pathetic faces. I said, “You don’t need to make that face, I’ll give you something.” When I handed him the coins and he still had the face as he said “obrigado,” I said ‘Smile!” and he plastered this big fake smile on top of the fake pathetic face. Then he said “ciao” with the plastered smile and the furrowed brow. A man sprawled on the curb was overseeing the windshield cleaning by this boy and a smaller one of about six. The small boy was stuck between lanes when the light changed, so I disliked the lounging man even more as I drove away.

>Inside the supermarket a 10-year-old girl approached me with a shoebox- size package of diapers in her hands. Could I buy them for her, she asked? I asked how much they cost, and she said R$14, about $US6. Feeling the Thanksgiving/Christmas spirit, I decided to do it. I know the store discourages this by way of announcements in a rare show of customer-friendliness, so I asked a nearby employee if there were rules I was breaking. He jabbered too rapidly for me to understand anything beyond “You can do it.” (He was probably asking what I meant by “rules!”). When I got home I saw that the diapers actually cost R$22, which made me resent the girl’s dishonesty. She had thanked me sincerely. Newton later told me that these store beggars pick out pricey items and later sell them or return them for store credit.

The supermarket ran out of regular-size plastic bags and had only small ones, so the packer put each item I bought into twenty-four separate little bags!

>There was a rash of robberies in town awhile back. The small businesses that line the streets have no recourse when a gunman shows up. It’s such a curse. Generally, no one gets hurt; the word out is not to resist; guns rule the day. The police are usually nowhere to be found until the rash has quieted down. Our very tall, ex-model friend, Carmen, from Spain was a little too attached to her large designer handbag and, when accosted by a much shorter young man downtown, struggled in a tug of war over the purse. It was only after he ran off the victor that Carmen realized he had had a knife (thank goodness not a gun) and had made eleven slashes in her hand and forearm. They have healed nicely, not being too deep, with just enough scar for Carmen to wear as her badass badge of honor! What a woman. I hope there is no next time, but if there is, I hope she does not resist.

After gunmen robbed a string of restaurants, we stopped carrying anything into a restaurant other than the credit card or sufficient cash in a pocket. We always leave the cell phone locked in the car and hide the car keys in a plant!

>Another going-out annoyance is the random police blitz to catch drinkers with breathalyzers. Newton says in Brazil they either do nothing or they take ridiculous measures, so there is no tolerance for any level of alcohol in these blitzes. When our kids were visiting last March and we were returning from dinner, Newton saw there were police ahead on the highway, so ducked quickly into some small dirt road. He decided to stop and check WAYZ for an alternate route when a police car roared around the corner and three military police jumped out with machine guns posed on our car. They instructed through a megaphone for Newton to put the keys on the roof of the car and to get out – along with Jake in the front seat – with their hands up. Elise, Larissa and I were instructed to get out and stay on the side of the road while they inspected the car. They suspected we were drug dealers since we avoided the police (it was not a blitz), but the one with the megaphone saw my terrified face and subtly indicated with his expression not to worry, as I beheld my husband and my son in police headlights with the automatic assault rifles leveled at them!

After they found nothing in the car, Newton explained to them that he had had one glass of wine at a restaurant and feared the police would take his license and impose the US$1,000 fine. The policeman let us go after telling Newton that he shouldn’t endanger his family by having a glass of wine!

>Newton called the prefecture to report six adjacent streetlights that are burned out, of which he took note while running as the early darkness fell. There is no mechanism to replace the bulbs automatically, so when the prefecture gets a call from a citizen who has taken the trouble to record the number on each pole, they eventually replace the lights. Newton also called about their sending the truck that picks up limbs and plant cuttings piled beside the street. Despite the presence of computers at the prefecture and many businesses, there is much confusion about locations and addresses. Most of the streets by the beach are not marked. No one seems to check or printout a Google map for the drivers. The other day an inquiring guy said he had been driving around Cotovelo all morning, but without street signs he had no idea where to deliver his lumber. Lost productivity is simply not on the radar in Rio Grande do Norte…it can be refreshing when it’s not exasperating!

>The coconut man came to shinny up our three "coqueiros" to retrieve the mature coconuts, as he does now and then. He has an incredible invention – a sort of belt with a stirrup with which he sidles up the trees. He pulled down the dry palm leaves and threw down the coconuts to Marcos. His 'fee' is half of the lot to sell on the beaches, and the remainder fill our frig and Marcos’ frig in his little caretaker house. Newton drinks the coconut water from one or two each day till they run out, as I welcome the gradually expanding available space in the frig! I find the water a bit too sweet for me.

>As I closed the windows on the late afternoon light, the plants reflected in each windowpane produced an entire gallery of those botanical paintings typical of colonial Brazil. Enchanting!

>Our employee, Betania, comes twice a week to clean and cook. I like her and she laughs at jokes and is grateful for birthday money and seems smarter and more informed than our caretaker, for example. It looks like she and Marcos are becoming friends – or more than???  She smiles beguilingly when she talks to him. He has a young wife who is living in the interior with her parents and the baby daughter Marcos tried to prevent by paying for birth control (he already supports three kids from previous ‘marriages’ plus his daughters’ half-sister from some itinerant man). I am hoping his wife and child do not return to live here because she is a real Brazilian "gata" who arches her back and stretches herself over the doorframe if a male appears. It was unsettling to me when she was living here and working as our cleaner/cook. She is not very sharp or polite; when she wanted me to help her light the oven she would come to the office door and make that horrid “PSSTOOO” sound that is the cultural equivalent in the Northeast to saying “excuse me, I’d like to say something to you.” Then she would say “Light the oven!”

Betania is much sharper and mature, and I don’t want to lose her, even if she is too rough. She crashes the dishes around, knocks paint off the walls with the broom and off painted furniture when she moves things (yes – the paint I spent hours making perfect). We told her to empty out the manioc storage jar and wash it so we could use it for a new sugar jar and she said, “Oh, did it break?” The sugar jar, which is only used for the occasional guest, got crashed down on the counter so hard while cleaning that it was cracked all over the bottom…but still in one piece. Finally, when Newton made flan, the cracked bottom fell apart and the gig was over. Betania never mentions that anything is broken – we just hear shattering and try to figure out later what is missing! But I like her.

>On Thanksgiving we grabbed our beach chairs before lunch and had a beer in the shade above the beach. A big event unfolded as a bulldozer struggled towards us along the beach, dragging a dead whale! The whale - a baby - must have died in the deep and washed up, though we had never heard of this on Cotovelo Beach. It was light beige and partially opened with a large protruding jawbone that looked like a tusk. The stench hit us, so we hurried home along the diagonal wind trail from the ocean, praying that the bulldozer would keep moving past that diagonal! Marcos reported the next morning that the bulldozer made it up to the road via a dune at the end of the beach and a truck transported the whale away for burial. Problem was that the bulldozer stopped at the local gas station to fill up and all the workers were cringing from the stench!

>Our friends Priscila (Brazilian) and Ali (Turkish) just moved into an apartment they bought and beautifully re-designed themselves. They are a professor and a researcher in Ecology at the federal university, so are staying here for the foreseeable future. They love to cook a great variety of organic and healthy dishes with the luscious flavors of Turkey thrown in, so we ate the best dinner in town at their new place. Not only are they brilliant, they are also funny, well traveled and big on book exchanges in English! We went to Novo Mexico Brazil restaurant for a fun Thanksgiving dinner with them and to acknowlege the only American friend left in town, the owner Niels from New Mexico. Ali and Pricila met in the US and remember Thanksgivings with fellow students. Niels gave us all free dessert for the holiday.

>My friend Ana Paula, who moved from Natal to Florida, was back in town. She stayed with me for the weekend, which was so lucky because Newton was in São Paulo. We were enjoying martinis and food and great conversation on the balcony, me facing the open bedroom door. Suddenly, there was a black cat poking his head around the doorframe from the stair landing, looking at us. Ana Paula then saw him, too; I jumped up and the cat ran.

We checked the entire house to be sure he wasn’t hiding anywhere. We finally assumed he leapt back out the way he came in…wherever that was. The only openings were two high windows in the dining room and the high kitchen windows, all always open until we retire for the night. Is it my imagination, or can I smell cat pee when the dining room is closed up?

My theory is that magical realism has leapt from the pages of South American novels into my life. Staying home while Newton is away has wrought strange happenings: black wires of our two laptops hanging out the office windows after robbers grabbed them when I was upstairs (that was early on before we knew to lock windows when we leave the office); electrical blackouts (twice); the security alarm going off multiple times in the night; that big black bird that flew into the bedroom at 3:00am and, thankfully, flew back out again after a few flappings around the ceiling; and now, the black cat. I feel like I’m Gabriel Garcia Marquez' boy with the yellow butterflies around his head, except mine are black bats! Is Brazil trying to make me superstitious about being home without Newton? It’s working.

>My great Spanish friend, Alicia, took me to her daughter’s ballet recital, which featured professional dancers from Rio who were fantastic, fearless dancers. The ballet was "Gypsy Soul." I couldn’t help but notice that I worried less about their pulling off multiple turns and ambitious lifts than I had over my nine-year subscription at the New York City Ballet. These dancers did not let their heads get in the way of dancing with complete abandon, and their technique did not suffer. What an unexpected piece of cultural heaven!



Here is Claudia Mota, Prima Ballerina of the Teátro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro






Here is Edifranc Alves, as quite a handsome Gypsy!



Alicia and her husband, Ernesto, told us the story of their pousada (casual hotel) participating in the first gastronomic festival in Baia Formosa, a nearby beach town. The festival was to begin on Thursday morning. Alicia made a special trip on Wednesday night to decorate the booth that the town was providing. The organizer had not yet been able to tell her how big their space would be or how many tables and chairs the town would provide, so Alicia and Ernesto had rented 50 tablecloths and plenty of cutlery just in case. It turned out that no booth had been assembled on Wednesday night. Instead of starting on Thursday morning, the festival finally got underway on Friday evening! The promised signage identifying their pousada never materialized. Alicia and Ernesto’s booth had the most people and they made plenty of money from this success, EXCEPT, with all the rentals for two additional days and all the extra staff unnecessarily lined up, they only made $40 profit in the end. And were very tired.

The irony: Alicia worked in Madrid as the big events organizer for SONY PlayStation and actually ran an event with an air show. Too bad she is fully engaged with mothering, her current job in wind energy, and Pousada La Bonita duties because I think the town of Baia Formosa could really use her next year!

I had a great weekend at Pousada La Bonita over another weekend Newton was in São Paulo. Alicia and "Wild Man" Ernesto gave me the master suite again – the only room not rented! They included me in their family meals and activities. Carlitos, 9, was kind to work every English word he knows flawlessly into Portuguese sentences for me! Alicita, 7, is a good mathematician and learned a challenging card game my Mother handed down. I adore this family.

>Many of our gringo friends have moved from Natal. Most recently was Gabriela and Maurice, who are moving to Europe after they take a long trip through Bali, Indo-China, Tibet and India. A group of friends went to the airport to see them off. One of my favorite sights, ever, was Newton and Maurice’s fellow-poker-player, Fred, a bon vivant Frenchman, pushing a luggage cart replete with salamis and baguettes jauntily protruding from the cart basket and a cooler full of champagne! Once Gabi and Maurice had finalized the travel arrangements for their big dog Lica, we all went out by the Departures curb, Lica was let out of her travel cage on a leash, and we toasted and snacked until boarding time. NO ONE bothered us. Sometimes the third world really works! Maurice was always good for conversations in perfect English, especially as a fellow history buff, and darling Gabi’s English was getting really good. My loss.

Pictured here, left-to-right: Luciana (from João Pessoa); Jordi (a zealous Catalan); Fred (Français); Rita (Natal native); me; Gabriela (São Paulo); Newton; Isaac (Belgium); Lica; Maurice (Belgium)

>Fred has a new sailboat that he and his partner, Rita, navigated up from Rio. We spent an evening on the boat with a small group of friends, anchored at the local yacht club. The evening was calm, the temperature ideal, the wine cold, and the conversation in Portuguese more manageable for me than when the group gets too large. I am doing better. Rita is kind, beautiful, and a privilege to know. She is my favorite samba dancer, she has a fear of ghosts, her back is the straightest I have ever seen. She once replenished me with her own energy by rubbing my hand when I was faint; she knows things in her cells I will never learn. We have a huge mutual affection despite limited conversation…an admiration of essences. I love her. (AND she resembles my beautiful friend, Monica, from college!)


>Here is the current view in front of our house of the completed-yet-empty condominium, In Mare: (If there is anyone left who doesn't know, this used to be a field of coconut trees.)






























We managed to be invited to a promotional event at the completed condo and finally saw beyond the wing in front of our house. We drank some hard-earned champagne and took photos.






















I can still do morning stretches and yoga on the balcony with nothing but the empty ‘eyes’ of In Mare’s unoccupied windows looking at me. We don’t know what bureaucratic limbo is preventing tenants now, but this may change over the holidays or in January when owners move in for the summer. Will they see me if I do my yoga in the dark? I can only be glad I had some months since the trucks and workers stopped to savor the sanctuary of my balcony, once again. Let's see how the next phase goes.

>Considering the natural beauty, no schedule, and the marvelous friends that still remain in Natal, our lives in Brazil are rich…sometimes despite and sometimes because of the crazy quirks of this Third World backwash! It is such an interesting interval in my life. When I stop reading the appalling news from the US and the rest of the world and do whatever I want, or do nothing, and then I reflect on that, I see how serene letting go can feel.

As blogger Amanda Walkins put it: “Nobody regrets time they’ve spent unhurried and unburdened.”

We’re off to the US for Christmas in Las Vegas with our darlings. Here’s to wonderful holidays all ‘round!

Love,
Sandy




Sunday, October 12, 2014

Brazil Dispatch 38: Road Trip

Soon after we returned home from our US "wedding trip," Newton had an electronic design trade show four states to the south with a booth to man, single-handedly. Our destination was the city of Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe - the state just before Bahia. We decided to drive.




After covering the short coastline of the state of Paraíba rather uneventfully, we soon hit quite an alarming patch of traffic as we approached the city of Recife in the state of Pernambuco. "Apocalypse," "Mad Max," "Science Fiction," "Grapes of Wrath," were words that came to mind at the time. The road was just horrible, full of holes; the passing scene's lack of beauty was complete: a combination of rusted scrap metal collections, dingy little businesses, slum homes in disrepair, pedestrians and street venders everywhere, and more gigantic trucks, pick-up trucks moving household goods, regular-size cars, motor cycles, bicycles, and mule carts than could be feasibly packed into the available space. The gleaming high rises along the beaches of Recife were further off in the background. We followed other vehicles inching into the adjacent service road where traffic was creeping at a pace palpably less stand-still than the main road. Eventually, we were forced into the inevitable, unlikely confluence of the two rivers of machinery and humanity, quite stuck near a huge stainless steel gasoline truck which seemed required to bend in a cartoonish way to cut into the seemingly impenetrable fray.

We were not visiting Recife, but simply traveling south on the famous BR101 federal highway that runs north and south near the coast of Brazil. In its defense, there are also newly paved, smooth, well-marked four-lane segments, as well as scary two-lane curving segments with incredible natural beauty...and everything in-between. Once the road improved and the traffic thinned and speeded up, we saw our first highway motor cycle passing between two cars at high speed....something that occurs in city traffic typically. Not easy to watch. There is a theory that road improvement funds get partly pocketed by local politicians or by contractors doing sub-standard work; who knows? I must doubt that the allotted money makes it entirely into roadwork, though we certainly do appreciate the civic-mindedness of officials in the well-functioning stretches.


Newton had booked the beautiful, tranquil Pousada Tabapitanga in Porto de Galinhas (Port of Hens), a beach town further south in Pernambuco. After a brief visit to the little town where we admired these decorated coconut trees and had a coffee at this café, we discovered that this pousada offers everything needed for a relaxing weekend. We just stayed put!











The eco-friendly establishment included an absolutely garbage-free, pristine beach. The service under the white umbrellas was ideal for two over-traveled lazies!





I liked the graphics and messages on these signs:



The food was decent here, though the service was the slowest we'd seen in awhile. For impatient gringos, there is no better therapy than aligning with the rhythm of the Nordestinos and practicing their incredible patience. It is crazy to champion efficiency - that precept which requires a certain stress - in the face of so much beauty to absorb. The rhythm can sometimes be, nevertheless, completely aggravating!

The local population already showed a wider range of 'café au lait' skin color gradations than we see in Natal, and this continually included darker shades as we neared Bahia - the state where the African slaves disembarked. I am constantly on the trail of DNA after becoming a fan of Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s wonderful Public Broadcasting genealogy series. Many of the service staff do not smile, though this is due to the region's culture and not surly attitudes. They do not associate smiling at the clientele with some economic/
competitive advantage, as we're so inured to doing in the USA. While slightly disconcerting, it has a refreshing guileless quality to it, as well.

I just want to remind you at this point that this was winter in Brazil. Being somewhat near the equator in the Northeast, the temperatures drop from the January summer just a few comfortable degrees. The water can be a bit cooler, which means that you can just perceive a difference when you enter. 

As we continued south in Pernambuco, we visited the Praia dos Carneiros (Beach of the Sheep, though we saw no sheep). A crowded bar/restaurant called Bora Bora was a bit of a touristy turn-off (with that same tempo of "service,"), but the beach off to the right was quite beautiful.



Global warming has caused the shore to rise at high tide and erode the soil around the coconut trees:


Here's Newton 'tree-surfing:'




I was touched by this concerted effort of two little girls to fetch their father's bike for him over the rough beach terrain. He was minding a surfboard rental tent. It took them quite some time, but they prevailed!



The highway out of the state of Pernambuco and into the state of Alagoas was one of the most beautiful stretches of all. It ran near the shore with deep forests of coconut trees. 



We drove through the Alagoas capital city of Maceió to a well-known beach called Praia do Francês (which was frequented by French wood smugglers in colonial times). It was lovely to wake up in the Hotel Ponta Verde and see in daylight what lay beyond the sliding glass door of our room:



This beach day was a little scrappier, with constant vendors, beggars, palm readers and the cacophony of multiple roving, high volume CD carts. I bought this bathing suit cover from the vendor. It is cleverly cut for versatility, so he was demonstrating the possibilities:


For dinner we walked around the corner to a delicious little restaurant run by an Italian woman. She assured me I was not the first person to tell her she looks just like Isabella Rossellini! Octopus, oh so good.

The drive to our destination the next day in the state of Sergipe required crossing the São Francisco River on this large raft:


We caught the late afternoon sun over the water: 


The city of Aracaju is modern and developed, a surprise to the foreign attendees who were unfamiliar with its existence prior to the trade show. It has a population of about 600,000. 


We mysteriously could not detect any sign of trade show preparations downstairs in our hotel that evening, and were beginning to wonder. The staff knew nothing about such a conference. Newton investigated and realized he had booked us next door to the exhibit hotel! We spent some time that evening setting up the CAST booth - my first time to be involved. You can see that my role as the straight-picture-police served CAST well!



There tends to be one female for every hundred males at these techy shows. Come on, smart girls!



This was the trade show cocktail party:



Tapioca - very typical in the Northeast - was offered for most breakfasts on this trip. A heaping tablespoon of the tapioca flour is placed in an oiled skillet and carefully spiral-spread into a circle with the back of the spoon. A thin white pancake emerges! I could not resist combining the delicately sweet tapioca with scrambled eggs and cheese rolled up inside!


We were thrilled to find a really delicious Japanese tempura lunch near the conference. I also had the finest, freshest 'isca de peixe' ever - small pieces of fresh fish lightly breaded and fried. This is a typical dish at simple beach set-ups. I had to walk more than a mile from our hotel to reach a part of the beach that was not built-up. There were only two other plastic, umbrella'd tables occupied, but the service was a new low for me in Brazil. The waiter finally came by my table, then finally brought the caipirinha, though I believe he didn't understand about making it with the little envelope of stevia I gave him instead of sugar...my caipirinha was suspiciously sweet! Then I finally got him to bring me a menu. Then he went and sat down at a table and drank a beer. I waved, yelled, and pleaded for him to come over so I could order food. It was getting late and I was starving. He finally ambled over in slow motion. The fish was perfect, but I was too full to eat the elaborate churrasco dinner provided by the trade show organizers that evening (except dessert!).

On our return trip we spent a night in Maceió, the capital of Alagoas. Its population is almost one million. We had little time and saw little of the city. Our Hotel Merediano looked quite modern and chic, though I could not help but be amazed by some glaring design flaws. Looks like some contractor has an ambitious-but-poorly-trained relative! First, I noticed that the space between the lobby and the elevators narrows so that two people can barely pass, much less the dozens that are frequenting that high-traffic space. Naturally, people were backed up on both ends. The first rule of interior design had already been broken. When we returned from dinner and walked up the wide stairs from the street to the hotel front, they led only into the impenetrable glass window/wall of the dining room. To actually enter, you had to squeeze past a narrow space with a plant and walk along the driveway to the door on the side. Strange. 


The last straw was when we opened up the curtains in our room the following morning. The window was placed in the wall askew to the axis of the room, which meant that a good portion of the window to the left is actually behind an added panel, and a section of wall on the right is exposed beyond the panel. So glad I didn't know about this before falling off to sleep!


This hotel handles food sculpture much better!



On our way out of town we snapped this lovely shot of the beach and a beach soccer game:

 


If anyone needs an adrenaline rush, just ride with Newton on a two-lane curvy road with humongous trucks…passing every one of them on our side! I almost fainted from hyper-ventilation at one point (well, there were three trucks in a row and it looked like he was going for all of them). He is an excellent driver, but I cannot get used to seeing a truck barreling towards me in the same lane.

We headed to a small, historic colonial town for our last stop, Olinda, in Pernambuco. It was founded by the Portuguese in 1537! We drove through the city of Recife this time, having seen only the airport long ago. Olinda, just north of Recife, is famous for its Carnaval. This particular weekend it was hosting a music festival.

We stayed at the Pousada dos Quatro Cantos, my favorite of the trip: a gorgeous old colonial structure with Mediterranean floor tiles and a charming courtyard.




I always love these tall colonial doors that open out to a veranda:





The hilly terrain of Olinda keeps one walking uphill and down:





Up a very steep road is the highest point overlooking the town. Preparations were underway for a jazz performance that evening outside the church; food vendors were setting up, crowds gathering. Everything was caught in high winds. 

This view of Olinda shows the city of Recife in the background:






When we returned up the hill later for the performance, the unfortunate rain drove most everybody for cover. We were not even sure how the musicians protected their instruments properly. We headed for the bar/restaurant that had looked inviting earlier, the Olinda Art & Grill. It was filled to the gills and rollicking with good cheer. We had to squeeze into a corner between the waiters' food pick-up station and the soloist, with just enough elbow room to sip our tall kiwi caipifrutas until high stools became available, right as the band arrived. A table opened up soon after that. Everyone was cozy in from the rain, brimming with high spirits, enjoying the music/noise/conversation and good will. It was an infectiously fun evening.

Later, Newton decided to go the opposite way from the pousada down to Olinda's largest church, Nossa Senhora do Carmowhere the main music festival events were playing into the wee hours...also in the rain, but with a covered stage for the musicians.





The following day we bought Christmas gift souvenirs and explored some high-end artisan shops. We ate lunch at Art Café, one of many charming little restaurants:  




You can see here what model Nordestino tourists we really are:


Love,

Sandy
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