Sea Calls Me Home
Newsletter 14, featuring Albufeira but less drunk, an unexpected singalong and canine Princess Leia.
I hadn’t been to the beach for a while, despite living in Recife, which is a coastal city.
You see, I’m in Zona Norte.
Advantages: nice green spaces; bit more space for your money, flat-wise; nice restaurants and bars.
Disadvantages: bloody miles away from the sea
I’d had a few opportunities to join others at the beach but for various reasons I’d not been able. Mostly work, meetings or feeling under the weather.
But then I heard a selection of Bia’s uncles, aunts and cousins - and her grandma - were staying in Porto de Galinhas, a resort town just down the road from Recife, which doesn’t have sharks.
I thought let’s not let the opportunity slide again, despite being in the post-New Year malaise, having loads of work, wedding event planning and visa stuff to do.
Porto de Galinhas
We booked a cab for Friday evening - they had been there for the week. Early January is a typical time to go for a holiday here, being the hottest time of the year. In Recife, it’s pretty consistent temperature, but even a degree makes a difference with the humidity being so high.
The journey was fine but it’s not typically advisable to try to get in or out of Recife around 5pm due to traffic. As such, we arrived slightly shellshocked but glad to see Bia’s Tio Juju, Tia Fernanda, cousins Matheus and Flavinha. We stayed and chatted for a bit before deciding we’d accompany Tio Juju into the town centre. He wanted to go to a cashpoint, Bia wanted some gin, syrup and tonic (lovely in the hot nights).
In the process of wandering around and unsuccessfully trying to find a suitable bank for Tio Juju, the scale of Brazilian vacation season became apparent. The high street was jam packed with tourists, karaoke, street vendors, bars and market stalls. Most visitors seemed to be Brazilian - I recognised a good few with accents from the interior of the country, I imagine many had popped over from Recife too - but I definitely spotted more gringos than usual, with a good number of Dutch people and lots of Argentinians. It reminded me a bit of something like the strip in Albufeira, but less drunk.
After getting a selfie with a knock-off Shrek and Donkey statue, we headed back to the resort.
Being silly
Upon our return we greeted the rest of the group (Grandma Alacoque, Tio Piu, Tia Ninha, João Miguel, Dona Dinha) and went to properly take in the lodgings. We were staying at Beach Class Residence Eco Life. It consists of a series of condominiums based around a vast pool area, some areas with slides and toys for kids, some with warm water to bathe in, and some to cool off in. The rest of the area was like a giant patio, with people sat around tables drinking, chatting and listening to music.
Basically a fancy, nicer Butlins.
We started the evening by going with Bia’s cousins to check out the games area. We managed about 10 minutes of table football before the youngest cousin, João Miguel, decided he was over it and put his chin hopefully on the pool table, despite it being occupied by 4 teens. To avoid him accidentally losing any teeth, we took him down to the younger kids area and popped him in the ball pit for a bit before taking him home.
We joined the table with Tio Juju and Tia Fernanda’s group of friends. Being a family-oriented joint, there weren’t many people in our age bracket. As such the group we were sat with were generally in their mid 40s to mid 50s. After a bit of awkwardly trying to interject in conversation, we got to the failsafe of comparing notes about the UK (yes it’s cold, yes it gets dark at like 4pm, yes we have racists but there aren’t really no-go zones as such). Apart from an interval to go to look for turtles on the beach - of which we found none - with Bia’s grandma, Tia Fernanda and Dona Dinha, this was how we spent the evening.
The extended group were lovely people and very welcoming. We ended up having too many drinks and going to bed at like 3am. The generation above us can really handle their booze.
Into the sea, you and me (and Tio Juju)
We awoke the next morning feeling a bit rough. We had set our alarms for around 9 to get an early start at the beach but tacked on half an hour or so.
We dragged ourselves over to see the others - we’d been kindly allowed to stay in a spare bed one of the group of friends had, as we were only around for two days. Only Tio Juju fancied heading to the sea, so we joined him and walked along the hot sand for 15 minutes or so. We left our stuff with a couple of Argentinians sitting at a table to the side and went to bob around in the sea for a while.
The little soul cleanse in salty water was very welcome. Less welcome was when Bia’s phone fell out of her bag on the way back to the resort and said salty water certainly did not have a positive impact on her device.
We rushed back, refreshed but with dampened spirits (and dampened phone) to dry it off. Spoiler alert: aside from not wanting to use the charging port in case it fries the circuitry, it’s still alive and kicking touch wood. We later bought an induction charger to solve the problem. Keep your fingers crossed for us.
Stringing everyone along
We had lunch upon coming back, a picky mix of breaded prawns, chicken legs, grilled steak and pasta. Towards the end of the grilling process, the group from the previous night came by again.
The afternoon was spent - yet again - sitting around singing and playing guitar, while having a few beers. Carlan, one of the group, is a lawyer who moonlights as a musician - or possibly the other way around. He decided to bring out his acoustic, something he had promised to do the night before when we started talking about Radiohead.
He has a pretty vast repertoire, with a good chunk of Brazilian songs, some of which I knew well enough to sing along to. He also threw in Here Comes the Sun and Something by The Beatles - a little nod to the gringo, I’d like to think.
Eventually, I got the guitar passed to me. Alice - a new addition who wasn’t in the group yesterday - was keen to sing a couple and has a wonderful voice. I played Back to Black by Amy Winehouse and Rolling in the Deep by Adele with her singing (I gamely attempted backing vocals for the latter to little success).
This carried on until eventually Carlan’s daughter Luisa came to sing a few. They had played live together a few times I think and again, she had a great voice. Lots of talent around the table, in short! The highlight came with a big singalong of Zombie by The Cranberries, with most of the 20 or so people knowing the words, which is not something I had down on my Brazil bingo card.
Drowned out
Later in the evening, the ‘official’ entertainment started up in the pool area - with an admittedly very good band that made playing any more guitar impossible.
We freshened up and headed to the pool patio area to dance a little in the sweltering heat. We ended up chatting and drinking beers with Alice and Bruna - one of the group - till fairly late. At one point Bruna kindly offered to give us a lift back to Recife to save us a cab fare - the only snag being a 7am departure time to beat the traffic.
Based on that, we packed up and got to bed as the music wound down around 11.30pm.
It didn’t help much though, both of us running on fumes after a busy weekend.
It was grey and raining heavily when we left the apartment on that last morning - “perfect” end of a holiday weather. We made record time getting back to Recife though on the plus side, and Bruna’s dog Leia was in the back with Bia, which brightened up the mood. She really was a princess. It was time for a rest after that break.
One man cinema club
The next week being busy with all of the things we’d shelved for the weekend in Porto de Galinhas didn’t leave us too much space for eventful activities. Special shout out on the visa front to Zélu for driving Bia and me around to register our marriage over here, and to Roger and Emily for managing the legalisation process of yet another required document.
I was tired, the late nights over the weekend seemingly being the final straw for my sleep pattern. Bia got sick a bit later in the week, feeling achy and exhausted. It was raining a lot. The internet was down for a chunk of the start of the week.
Looking for entertainment, I found an old external hard drive with a bunch of movies on. This enforced return to offline, indoors activities led to a bit of a movie binge.
This newsletter is already running a bit long, so here are my thoughts on each of the films I watched, in two sentences:
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
A masterful, tense, send up of the kill or be killed attitude of American capitalism. The bleakness can make it tough to watch at times, but the performances are universally excellent - particularly Jack Lemmon (whose character would inspire Gil from The Simpsons.) 7.5/10Perfect Days (2023)
A cultural meeting of life and class in Japan and the slow cinema style of Wim Wenders makes for a meditative look at what brings value and meaning to life. Requires concentration and commitment to unravel; great soundtrack of 70s cuts from the US and Japan. 8.5/10To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Daring satire of the Nazi invasion of Poland considering when it came out, making it controversial at the time as wounds were fresh. Stands alongside The Great Dictator and Dr. Strangelove as one of the funniest films about war I’ve seen - well worth watching. 9/10Paper Moon (1973)
Set in the Great Depression, filmed in black and white, this is a film about grifting and con artistry but really it is about love, chosen family and survival. Despite the desperation, has genuine moments of humour and the quasi father-daughter relationship at the heart of the film, which saw 9-year-old Tatum O’Neal win an Oscar, avoids neat, easy resolution. 8/10
An enjoyable sweep across the week all in all. See you all soon.
Dan & Bia.
P.S. - Check out the ‘title track’ from this week’s blog here.
