Jan 12
10
After four and a half months in Pipa we finally packed up our stuff and headed off on our next adventure.
We loved our time in Pipa – we made so many great friends, attended a wedding, birthdays and Reggae parties, took a boat trip into the lagoons of Tibau do Sul, went horse riding through the rain forests and experienced one of the most enjoyable New Year’s Eve Parties we’d been to in our lives…. in all we had an amazing few months and really didn’t want to leave…however, our intention has always been to see as much as we can while we’re in South America so after lots of farewell drinks and hugs we set off to Olinda…a couple of hundred kilometres south.
Now normally you’d expect that we would have caught a bus, taken a short flight or even hired a car. But you have to think outside of the square sometimes when travelling because the obvious ways of getting from A to B aren’t always the best. While having a few farewell drinks it was suggested to us that taking a taxi might cost nearly the same as the bus but be a whole lot more convenient. And after a few phone calls this is exactly how it turned out – so at 8am on Friday morning we hopped into a taxi for the three and a half hour trip south to Olinda.
We arrived at our hotel around lunch time and headed off in search of food, and did a bit of exploring along the way.
Olinda is a little village on the coast, made up of so many beautiful houses and huge mansions built in the late 18th and the 19th Century – UNESCO listed Olinda as a world heritage site in the 1990’s so many buildings are protected and cannot be knocked down…however, the result of this order is mixed, as the owners of the buildings are either unwilling or unable to maintain them. So many of the most stunning buildings are deteriorating and will eventually rot away – thus defeating the whole purpose of the heritage listings.
Olinda - UNESCO World Heritage listing - doesn't necessarily save the most beautiful buildings..
We enjoyed everything that we saw and took lots of photos, but there are two things that we really, really loved about Olinda and I’d like to share these with you….
Tapioca
One of the staple items of food in the north west region of Brazil is tapioca root and it is common to see the white couscous like powder or the vegetable on sale everywhere.
My previous exposure to tapioca was in my childhood when we were served a white mushy ‘goop’ that tasted disgusting and my Mum said it was Tapioca pudding.
Throughout Olinda we came across ladies in little Barracas selling Tapioca ‘pancakes’ with all sorts of fillings…sweet and savoury.
Rather than me trying to explain here is a video of a gorgeous lady called Maria who clearly makes every tapioca pancake with love and care….
Metres of Beer
Now, if you know Ray and I even slightly, you will probably know that Ray is very partial to a cold beer on a hot day…or any day really, but I, Deb on the other hand, had not had a beer for years until we arrived in Praia da Pipa…
We’ve been drinking a lot of beer and one of the issues with it is that it gets ‘warm’ before you can finish a bottle or can….One of the bars in Olinda has created a solution for the beer drinkers here….a metre long tube of beer….check out the photo below…. We’re not sure how it works – probably the steel tube is filled with ice…but these tubes are a popular choice among the clientele in this beachside bar!
In Olinda they drink beer by the metre..
We were at the Bar on Saturday night and the lad sitting next to us went through one of these on his own…and surprisingly ordered another one…..big drinkers in Olinda obviously….(we didn’t have one because we didn’t think we’d be able to drink 2 litres of beer between us)
We also came across what looked like an abandoned house that was full of cans of Skol – one of the beers of Brazil – and we presume is being stockpiled in preparation for Carnivale which winds its way through the streets of Olinda on “Mardi Gras” – Fat Tuesday – the day before Ash Wednesday – and in 2012 will be the middle of February…..but maybe the cans will be all gone by then…who knows…Olinda is an interesting place and we realise that things are done a little bit differently here, which for any small town is a really good thing!!
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