Fortaleza, Brazil Feb. 4th 2009

Fortaleza is called the city of light. I guess because they claim that the sun shines 2,800 hours a year. It was true when we were there. Hot, humid and reminded us of Alabama in August! Lovely, right!! It has over 2 million people and is Brazil's 5th largest city. As soon as you leave the harbor, you can instantly tell you are in a poverty stricken part of the world. If someone dropped me there with a blindfold on and took it off I would imagine I was in Mombasa,Kenya. They use the hillside like a landfill and all their trash is exposed. Just when you think you are in Kenya, you make a corner and there are highrise condos. There are condo towers all along the beach, hundreds of them, really. There were signs of old world meeting the new world right beside our ship. The local fishermen have very tiny boats. They are called jangadas. The fishermen go WAY out into the ocean and haul in boat loads of fish. They have been fishing this way for hundreds of years. At a lecture we attended, they told us that this way of fishing was brought over from Africa. The man seen cooking in one of the photos is cooking fish on that griddle. Fortaleza is a good place to buy lace because the fishermen handed down the way they tie their nets to the local women and they started making lace! Very interesting and we saw many stalls with ladies selling their wares. We found one young gal making necklaces where she was tying knots and shells/beads onto the string to make necklaces that were so long you could almost jump rope with them. In the photo, that is what we were buying. The necklaces were one dollar each! The gal did not speak any English and we tried Spanish but did not get very far. Resorting to sign language worked for her. Ten fingers in any language works! She threw one extra in for good measure. You may be a lucky recipient of one of these fantastic necklaces that can wrap around your neck about 6 times and make a smashing choker. They have a cathedral here in Fortaleza. On the outside it looks to be turn of the century old, and it almost is. However, the inside was re-done in the 1960's...not as fabulous as the outside. It was nice, however, to see many people inside and to take some shade for a few minutes!