Olinda

I spent a few days in Olinda, outside of Recife, due to some more complications with my apartment. Thankfully Olinda is a beautiful place, filled with artists, churches and lots of delicious food! Olinda used to be the old capital of Pernumbuco- now the capital is Recife. The beach isn't much to look at, and it is still dangerous to swim, just like in Recife due to unusually large numbers of sharks. However there are 23 churches that have been maintained from over 200 years ago that were cool to go exploring. Now some of you might be saying, what? Lindsay is willingly going to look at churches? Doesn't she prefer water activities? However, I decided to try to indulge my cultural side and get in touch with my inner artist. I mostly suceeded, I think through exploring the culinary prowress of Olinda (highlights: pumpkin curry, served in a pumpkin with coconut broth and lobster, chocolate and banana crepes, spinach and ricota crepes, Uruguaian wine), but I did enjoy several of the churches. Here are a few pictures below from Olinda.

The artistic-ey street in Olinda.

They even had monkeys!

View from the hotel window!

Yes this piece of art was over my bed.....the building was 200 years old....I'm not sure how I feel about sleeping in the same room with another naked woman!

Fernando by Photo 3

Fernando by Photo 2

Fernando by Photo

I was lucky enough to take a trip to Fernando de Noronha, an island 300 km off the northeast coast of Brazil. This spot is known to have the best diving in Brazil, spinner dolphins and some amazing vistas. The trip was absolutely fantastic and instead of writing to describe it all, I thought this blog might be best expressed through pictures. The following photos were taken on Fernando de Noronha while hiking, diving, snorkelling and driving around by buggy. Enjoy!

Sea Turtles

While out on Fernando de Noronha I was lucky enough to see two turtle nests hatch, one at the Praia do Boldro, the other at the Praia da Cacimba do Padre. This was not a chance encounter but one organized for the public by Project TAMAR, a sea turtle conservation organization in Brazil. Both nest openings happened at sunset, providing spectacular scenary for the little turtles to take on a brave new world in the ocean.

Both nests were green turtles, even though a variety of species inhabit the waters surrounding Fernando. The first nest had about 80 hatchlings and the second about 100.

check out this video of sea turtles racing to the ocean!

Project TAMAR monitors beaches all along the coast to mark nests, protect eggs and tag turtles. Brazil’s coast is prime sea turtle nesting real estate with 5 species of sea turtles in habiting the coastal waters of Brazil – the green, olive ridley, leatherback, hawksbill and loggerhead. Fernando de Noronha is one of the main nesting sites in Brazil for the green turtle but some of the others, hawksbill, loggerhead and olive ridley also nest there too. The waters surrounding Noronha support a large number of juvenile turtles from all species and I saw lots of little juvenile turtles while snorkeling and diving around the island.

To open the nests, the Project TAMAR group coordened off a sea turtle runway with stakes and rope, to allow people to stand on one side and watch the release and providing the sea turtles with a safe open area, free from humans to crawl towards the sea. As you can see from some of the photos, people's footprints remained in the sand from earlier in the day providing an interesting obstacle course for the turtles to get through.

Here's another video of a baby sea turtle!

Go little guys, go find your way to a salty new world!

A perfect sunset, at Praia da Cacimba do Padre, for a spectacular showing of sea turtles and waves at a tranquil time of day.