Monday 7th to Wednesday 9th August 2006: BRASIL, Fortaleza

Having arrived at the port of Belem we headed straight to the bus station in order to catch the next available bus to Fortaleza and the start of the north eastern beaches of Brasil. We were lucky enough to get on a bus that was leaving half an hour later and so began the extremely long (30 hours) and bumpy (the roads are not good in this part of Brasil) road trip to Fortaleza.

We finally arrived in Fortaleza (with very numb legs and bottoms!) on Monday night at 10pm and headed straight for the main beach area in search of a cheap hotel. We searched a few hotels and hostels and were again surprised by the pricing which was considerably increased from the information given in our 2006 South America Footprint guide (this book is turning out to be rather useless considering it´s the newest edition!) so we opted for the cheapest available option and stayed in a dorm in the Hostelling International Youth Hostel of Fortaleza.

Having freshened up in the hostel we headed to the nearby beach to stretch our legs and see what the night life was like. We´d sat on the roadside and had a snack from the local food sellers (as is the custom) and we were just walking along the road to find a bar when we had someone approach us from behind and start speaking to us in a northern English accent - we turn around to see Ricky who we´d met on our day spent at Laguna De Apoyo, Nicaragua back in April - he was one of the English lads who we´d spent the day with talking Premiership Football!!!!
Ricky was sitting outside his hotel killing time until his taxi came to take him to the bus station when he´d seen us walk past! We were all really shocked to have bumped into each other so randomly so we went for a drink together and caught up on each others travel tales and got the lowdown on Fortaleza. It turns out that Ricky will be in Brasil for the next month until he flys home to London and he´s also travelling down to Rio De Janiero stopping at most places we´ll be visiting! After one hour it was time for Ricky to leave so we said our goodbyes looking forward to seeing him at our next beach stop!

Ricky had informed us that Fortaleza wasn´t that great as it´s really developed and this was confirmed to us the next day, however, we decided to stay two nights as we didn´t fancy taking another long bus ride so soon after the last one! We spent the two days in Fortaleza walking along the beach and swimming in the sea and catching up on emails until it was time to take the 11pm bus straight to Natal, a smaller beach town 12 hours from Fortaleza.

The beach at Fortaleza