Wednesday 16th to Thursday 17th August 2006: BRASIL, Olinda

We were excited about visiting Olinda, a UNESCO world heritage site, thirty minutes from the city of Recife as we´d read that it was a pretty colonial town of cobbled streets and brightly coloured building. Olinda is also steeped in history as it was first founded by the Dutch in 1537 and was the first capital of Brasil, so we were looking forward to visiting the museums and learning more about the town.

Arriving in Olinda we were disappointed to see that the local beach which we´d look forward to swimming in had signs warning you not to swim there because of the sharks!

By the time we arrived in the old town (the better part) of Olinda it was getting dark so we didn´t want to hang around with all our belongings, walking from hostel to hotel in search of cheap accomodation as our guidebook had advised against this due to the frequent muggings that take place. However, we had to go trawling to a few places as again our guidebook was completely inaccurate with the pricing but these places were awful for the prices they were charging so we ended up returning to the first place we looked at and paid the extra hoping it would be worth it!

Annoyed and disappointed with our first impression of Olinda (this was certainly not a safe welcoming place like Pipa!) we went to the internet shop to check our emails and to try and get a different feel for the place but along the way we were constantly harrassed for money from beggars which did little to endear us to Olinda! On checking our emails we´d just received an email from Ricky who had just arrived in Salvador, Bahia (our next stop) and he only had good things to say about it so we decided that we would leave the next day and head straight for Salvador - one of the perks of travelling being you can up and leave when it takes your fancy.

Olinda did have some good qualities; they had a nice pizza and crepe restaurant next door to our pousada! However, we were sorely disappointed the next morning when for our breakfast buffet the pousada actually laid out the same pizza we had eaten the night before except this wasn´t fresh just reheated! The rest of the breakfast options were equally poor and just made us want to leave as soon as possible!

In order to pass a few hours before it was time to check out of the pousada, we decided to walk up to the top of the old town hill where there were good views over the Olinda all the way to Recife.

Finally at midday it was time for us to Olinda (it couldn´t have come sooner as to us this place was completely over-rated and over-priced!) and we looked forward to having a much better time in Salvador, Bahia, and to meeting up with Ricky.

Views over Olinda (Recife in the distance) from the top of the Old Town

The colonial church of Olinda as viewed from the top of the Old Town