The Life and Struggles of Tessa Dean: Too much information

A day in the life of traveling Tessa consists of too many things. Needless to say, every day is different and holds a lot of weird events and situations I wouldn't find my self in if I were in Finland.

We are no longer in Porto de Galinhas, but I wish to write about the few days we spent there after finding out we weren't going to Joao Pessoa.

Once upon a time in Porto

It was a saturday when Tulio arrived five hours late in Porto. We had had plans to spend the weekend in Joao Pessoar, but since that weekend was a catholic holiday, the roads were blocked by trafic and it didn't seem like a good idea to leave and drive in the dark. We decided to stay in Porto for the whole duration of the holiday.

Thanks to the catholics and our location being the most beautiful beach in Brazil, we could not find a place to stay, so we had to spend the night at a "lovely" hospendaria located next to one of the main roads. Our room was in the basement, a very simple room: bunk-beds, two fans, no windows... Cheap. There's not much to say about that place except that it looked like an old prison, but not the cool ancient kind, more the used to be slaughter house, then prison, then both -kind. Our nights there were not too comfortable since I couldn't really find a nice position on the brick of a mattres. Lets just say I won't miss it. But we had a place to stay and that was a miracle considering how many people were arriving every day to form the crowd of crowds.

Saturday and Sunday went by in a haze of sleep deprivation and fear of crowds, but on Monday we finally packed our gear and drove to a near by surf beach called Maracaipe. That place was like heaven with its long white sandy beach, cheerfull but relaxed music echoing from the local beach bars and mixing with the crush of waves, and also because of the pretty nice view ;). Some day I will have my own pousada on that beach where competition (read: woman) pay extra per night.

After some suco de acerola and some weird but delicious deep friend root starting with an M, we drove to Tulios friends' flat in Porto. There we sat by the pool drinking Brahma and tried to make conversation with Tulios cheerfull mates. It ended up with the girls doing my hair and make-up so that I no longer recognized my self (however Niklas seemed to be more than okay with the outcome). Now we were ready to hit the party in Porto, and what a night we had ahead of us.

If you think finnish liquor is good then you have never tasted what Brazil has to offer. Cachaça de cana was the word of that night, its sweet taste and quality took Niklas by surprise... He made a lot of friends while I decided to play defensive because of my earlier adventure with smirnoff vodka and fanta.

The streets were full of young and old people enjoying the holiday in a somewhat finnish style. A warm night with a cool vibe. Then, in the middle of chatting, a sound like a juicebox being popped, next, the whole crowd jumped to a mix of running and screaming. Then another pop. From my eyes it looked as if someone had shot the starting shot of a sprint, but when hearing Tulio shout "run guys!" I popped out of my state of wtf?! and started sprinting with the rest of our group to take cover. Turns out it was just the police trying to calm down a fight by shooting some blanks. The outcome was far from calm but I guess they got their message through. Still at the same time it pissed of a lot of people who knew Porto to be a peaceful place.

Cats and Climbing

Now we're in Olinda, a city right next to Recife. Olinda used to be the capital of Pernambuco and it still is the so called reggae capital around here. They have too many churches here, and roads I would'nt like to drive down for the sake of my life. This old part was built by the portuguese during the what ever, when ever, but a long time ago anyway, so that would explain.

This place has a lot of artesan shops, the kind my mother spends too much time in. We found some really cute paintings by some random guy living here in Olinda. Basicly the ones we bought are paintings of colourful cats with a lot of details in them. These things are unique and you can't even get a picture of a from IKEA with the price these paintings cost us.

It's really pretty here in Olinda and blaablaa. We found this awesome pousada and its great and safe and blaablaablaa the usual stuff, just look at the pictures.

Pousada Alto Astral: