Maceió

(APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE. WHAT FOLLOWS IS LENGTHY).

21:30
Our day starts well. Vicki and I have both slept more than adequately, and both feel better than yesterday. We take this is a positive portent for the day ahead. We’re up in good time, and packed/ready to go a good 90 minutes before our check out time of 11:00, and spend a chilled hour or so luxuriating in our very sizeable, very comfortable room. (I’m going somewhere with this…)

Our cab’s not till 12:00, so the three of us head down to a cool little coffee shop at the top end of Pelourinho. I have an Espresso and a Caipi Limao - both are top notch. We’re back at Pelourinho Boutique in enough time to see our car arrive. It is not big. For airport runs while we’re here, I’ve booked a car class big enough to comfortably seat all of us, and fit our luggage in the boot, and in some cases (including today) paid a premium to do so. It very quickly becomes evident that Breno (for ’tis his name) has a car that is insufficiently large for this. He suggests putting one of our hold bags on the front passenger seat, meaning the three of us have to squeeze into the rear passenger seats. It’s not a comfy journey, but we maintain our good humour throughout.

Arriving at the airport, we join a short queue to drop our bags, having already checked in. The queue moves slowly. I’ve seen glaciers move more quickly. I’ve seen cadavers move more quickly. The check-in staff are perhaps not the most efficient, but they’re also dealing with a family group of perhaps 15-20, a large proportion of whom are young children, and who appear not to have checked in, and not to have selected seats on board, and are now demanding that they all sit together. This one poor schmuck is dealing with this group when we join the queue, and is still dealing with them when we finish dropping our bags 45 minutes later.

The flight to Maceio is barely 50 minutes, and we’re very quickly out of the airport and into our cab to Praia Do Frances. This car is suitably proportioned, and I’m sitting up front next to the driver - who is a little nuts. The closest we have to a lingua franca is our shared scratchy Spanish. He tells us that we are the first gringo tourists to come up this way. We don’t entirely believe him, but it’s clear that this is not a well worn traveller path.

We arrive to our guesthouse in one piece. Vera welcomes us, and we have a brief back and forth to highlight that I/we don’t speak any Portuguese. She continues to speak to us in Portuguese. Quickly. We resort to Google Translate, which helps a little, but she often slips into speaking Portuguese when I’m not holding my phone, so can’t translate what she’s saying. FFS.

Eventually, we complete check-in, and she takes us to our room. It is tiny. I’d find it a squeeze for 1, but for Vicki and I to share, it’s ridiculously small. Thankfully, that means the A/C unit on the wall doesn’t have a ton of volume to cool, so - you know, there’s that. There’s a small double bed, bumped up against the wall, so one of Vicki or I will have to climb over the other if we need to get out during the night. Bizarrely, there’s a pretty sizeable fridge against one wall, which very much takes up the space that would otherwise have allowed for the bed to stand in the middle of the room. 3 nights here is feeling like a long time… We agree to give it till morning, and regroup.

Meanwhile, we’re thirsty, and approaching peckish. We walk down to the beach - around 8 minutes. The sun’s pretty much set, but there’s an ethereal greyish light in the sky over the horizon. Pretty beautiful actually. We stop at a beachfront bar, which has a happy hour. Caipis for the boozers, a virgin Caipi (or something) for the non-boozer. Very cool. We head up the main street in the town, and there are countless restaurants and bars lining the pavement. We stop at one that looks/smells good, have a quick scan of the menu, and agree that we will do well here.

Things start well enough. They bring Vicki a Corona Zero pretty quickly. I order a glass of white wine, and - nothing. Ten minutes pass. I stop another waiter, and ask about this glass of wine. He disappears. There’s a conflab by the wine fridge. Our waiter returns and tells us he can’t do a glass of wine, but can do a bottle. Righto. A quick scan of the wine list, and I order a Chilean Chardonnay. There is a further conflab by the wine fridge. Our waiter returns empty handed. Well - that’s not entirely true. He brings over 4 bottles of wine, none of which are the Chilean Chardonnay we’d ordered. We settle for an Argentinian white, which happily is more than half decent.

We reason that our luck will now turn, and order some food. Tilapia for the girls, and something that I *think* is lamb, but which Google Translate is adamant is called ‘Sheep Blanket’ for me. Our waiter, disappears off, looking pleased with himself. Close to an hour later, tables around us are receiving their food, despite ordering after us. This bodes not well. I ask one of the waiters (using GT, obvs) how long our food will be. He looks askance at me, and my heart sinks a little. He heads off to discuss with the waiter who took our order. We keep a close eye. There’s a moment of realisation on their part, which I wish I’d captured on video. Yeah - the order’s not been placed. We laugh, because you have to, right? Our waiter comes back over, and is apologetic. He promises 5 minutes until the food arrives. That strikes me as a little faster than is ideal, but at this stage - who fucking cares. Moments later, he reappears at our table. There is no sheep blanket. I pick something meaty at random from the menu. I’m close to being past caring.

Finally, FINALLY, our food arrives, and it’s pretty good. Notwithstanding the Fawlty Towers approach to restaurant management and operations, the chef can clearly cook. Happily, there’s a pretty good guitarist / vocalist combo belting out a mixture of Brazilian songs, and English (language) pop covers. I’m rather taken with the guitarist’s work on the cover of Billy Jean…

We stop in at a supermarket on the way back to our cells, and meet Rodrigo, a lovely kid who speaks excellent English. He tells us that he taught himself English watching YouTube clips and Netflix shows. Arriving back at our guesthouse, Vicki and I quickly decide that the move/not move decision is being made, and it’s being made tonight, and it’s gonna be MOVE. The room is just too small for both us to be comfortable. We can’t unpack anything, as there’s no storage provided. The final straw is seeing the shower, which is an electric power shower, and which has a very dodgy looking electrical outlet right above the shower, where - you know, all the water comes out. We enter high level discussions with Tam, who is entirely in agreement. We’ll grab some breakfast tomorrow, then set out to find alternative digs for the following couple of nights. I’ll get into wrangling with the agent we booked with once we’re comfortable…Read more