Cabadelo, Brazil

Calypso is currently anchored in Cabedelo, Paraiba in northern Brazil enjoying the laid-back life here. We’ve spent a fair amount of time working on the boat and generally just lazing about.

An average day goes along the lines of: wake up when we feel like it (who’s clock watching anyway), listen to the sounds of birds and watch the fishermen lay their nets while enjoying our morning juice or coffee. Next, we hum and haw as to what we’ll have for breakfast – will it be mango, papaya, bananas, granadillas, or a whole stack of fruit we’d never heard of before? (I have to admit, some of them are bloody awful!) At some stage during the day, we lower TicTac (our small dinghy) into the water and go ashore or else do some odd jobs on the boat. We may wander into the local village for fresh bread rolls or stop for a $R4,00 (US$1,50) lunch along with all the locals.

The days are short here and it doesn’t seem long before the afternoon heads towards sunset when we listen to Bolero music on a saxophone as the sun goes down perhaps sipping a caipirinha (a local liquor mixed with lots & lots of limes). The only down side is the colour of the river we’re anchored in. Although it’s not as bad as the river is Recife, it still doesn’t temp me to jump in to cool off. On the positive side though, there seems to plenty of fish life (we’ve even found fish swimming around in our loo bowl) so it can’t be all that polluted, just not appealing.

Our bikes have really been useful here as the good beaches are across the other side of the peninsula which is a fair walk, especially in this heat, but only a 10 – 15 minute bike ride. Also, the only food shop, “supermercado” is quite a walk as well. This is the first time we’ve really used the bikes and we’re really glad we got them. That may not always be the case, as they take up a lot of boat space, but for now……

There’s a pousada (Brazilian guest house) nearby run by a German chap who also has internet, serves dinners only to the yotties and has a buffet lunch every Sunday. His wife, Rosa a Brazilian, is quite a cook. We’re going over there this evening as Rosa is trying out something new so we’ve all been invited over to play guinea pigs. I haven’t heard anyone refuse the offer yet.

We’ve had endless trouble with our autohelm since leaving Cape Town but, on the way up to Cabedelo, it gave up completely. Paul has had it all apart, cleaned, checked wiring & connections and it has decided to work sometimes, other times not. It appears there is something wrong with the display instrument so we’ve had someone look at it here but he found nothing particularly wrong otherthan a little corrosion - it was in one of its working modes (Sod’s Law) however, as soon as he reinstalled it, it decided to play dumb again but he wasn’t able to guarantee that the cleaning has solved the problem. We’ll take a trip up the river to give it a trial run but it looks as though a replacement is on the cards, however, that will have to wait until we get to Trinidad.

Currently there is quite an international display of flags around the anchorage. French seems to the most common, closely followed by German and Swedish. There’s another SA yacht, one from Belgium and one from Finland as well as a couple of British. If we were to analyse the types of yachts we’ve seen so far, they really range in all types, lengths and varieties. Otto, if you arrived with Vagabond, she would be amongst the largest but, by no means overly large. There’s a 65-foot yacht expected in today, and a single-handed Englishman is here sailing a 55-foot monohull. There’s also a 55-foot trimaran but most of the cruisers are in the 36 to 45 foot range with a few smaller than 30-foot.

The old saying that the definition of cruising is ‘fixing your boat in exotic ports’ appears to be quite true as most of the yachts here are stopping for some time to get something or other fixed up. We’ve already had to repair our bimini (the boom rubbed a hole through the front section) and now we’ve just had the chap here look at the rotting wood in the hard section of our spray dodger, it’s got worse and worse over the past few months and is now held together by a few millimetres of paint! Getting anything done here is a pleasure as an Englishman, Brian Stevens, runs a riverboat catamaran building yard and has all the necessary skills and materials and is very accommodating. And, best of all, he speaks English (a very rare commodity around Brazil)! Many people have admired the stainless work on Calypso which is thanks to you Baden. If you were wanting a job in Brazil for 6 months, you would be more than welcome here at Brian’s place. Your burglar bars on our companionway have had everyone wanting one. Theft is quite a problem in most anchorages it seems, however, here it appears to be a very safe place to leave yachts if going inland. Chris, a little of your handiwork around engines wouldn’t go amiss here either. In fact, if you’d like to temporarily move the working side of FBYC over here, you would all find plenty of work. And the best part is watching the sun go down whilst indulging in a frosty. The beers are REALLY cold and fairly cheap even though there’s no happy hour – EVERY hour is happy hour here!

We’re off to Iguaçu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina/Paraguay border on Monday morning. We’re flying down via São Paulo and hope to be able to find a bus trip from there which will take us to around the Pantanal region for a few days as well. Iguaçu is way far south from here so we’re expecting it to be quite cool which will be a major change from that which we’ve had since our arrival. One of the first expressions Paul learned in Portuguese is ‘it’s very hot’ and he can safely show off with that expression every day as it’s damned hot all the time!

There’s also a very famous bird park there with hundreds of varieties of birds including parrots and toucans which we’re looking forward to seeing. All in all, I’m making the trip into my birthday present so am going to make the most of it. It will be strange sleeping in a normal bed which doesn’t move! We hope to be able to cross over onto the Argentinean side for a different aspect of the falls but hear there might be a problem getting back into Brazil even though we’ve extended our visa for another 90 days. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Once back here again, we’ll probably stick around for another week or so before heading up to Natal (an overnight passage) and then on to Forteleza. The winds and currents from now on should be in our favour so the passages should be short and simple. So many South Africans simply go straight to Forteleza and then on to the Caribbean, they are missing so much! We’re really enjoying our stay here and it’s at least reasonably priced for all us Rand earners.