Day 508 10th December
55 miles (Recife to Porto de Galinas) Average speed 10.3 mph Top speed 32 mph
I woke up at 6 and checked emails and fb. Brekkie was ready by 6.30, so I had a toasted cheese and ham sarnie with sausages and eggs and coffee and OJ. Frankie joined me at 7 and we left at 8 to explore Recife. (I met Frankie from Cordoba on the cruise ship and we are riding together for a while)
The roads were quiet but the cycle lanes were not. I think they close a lot of the roads on Sunday especially for cyclists with stewards posted at traffic lights and junctions to assist the cyclists. There were also lots of runners partaking in a family sport day. We saw lots of interesting places and neighbourhoods and did 16 miles in the morning heat. There was a bike that had been adapted to carry a boat propeller without a saddle among others.
Back at the hostel I had a second brekkie of leftover sausage rolls and Pepsi and we packed up and left at 11. The beach front cycle path took us a long way and was a bit hairy at times with pedestrians and other cyclists. We passed the airport and a plane flew directly over me. We stopped just before the toll bridge to have a coco verde which is a green coconut with the top cut off and a straw at a good beach.
We were joined by a local cyclist for a while. then arrived at the bridge where we were told to go around the toll booth and across the bridge on the cycle path. It was a great view with the first sight of thousands of palm trees.
We were making good progress with a strong tailwind all day, but the heat was taking its toll and we soon needed another stop for a large bottle of lemonade. Then at the top of a hill we took a right and found ourselves on a sandy road, which before long the tarmac ran out and became a road of sand. I found it tougher than Frankie whose fatter tyres made lighter work of the thick sand, whereas I just sank.
It wasn’t too long though before we joined a busy road with some ups and downs and then arrived at another toll road which this time was a motorway. Once again we were waved through and had a great hard shoulder all to ourselves. There were a few small inclines and some fast downhills and not much traffic.
When we did our sums we realised we needed to do 12 miles in 50 minutes to make our rendezvous with Danny. We tried, but ended up being 25 minutes late. Danny and the others had left so we went and parked our bikes on the beach and went for a wonderfully refreshing swim. Then I bought beer from a supermarket before meeting them at the apartment. We unpacked and had a shower followed by a siesta after chatting with Juan, Eduardo, Danny and Ezequiel.
We went out for dinner at 11 and had fried chicken, calamari mandioca and croquettes. I eventually found a bank to get some money and we went to the beach and met up with more people from the ship for a chat.
We returned to the apartment and watched tv before I went to my high top bunk for a much needed sleep. A fantastic day, but it’s tricky trying to acclimatise to this heat especially when you have the luxury of air conditioning.
After 12 days cruising the Atlantic I’ve survived the excessive eating and drinking and general gluttony and am now enjoying Brazilian life. It’s 32C, noisy, busy, colourful, incredible, happy and the sea is warm too. To top all my that my footy team even won and Ernie came up trumps too. Up the O’s
Apartment with Danny and the other Spanish guys from the cruise.