Brazil (Northeast)
Pernambuco
Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco, shares with São Luis the distinction of not having been founded by the Portuguese: when they arrived in the 1530s, they settled just to the north, building the beautiful colonial town of Olinda and turning most of the surrounding land over to sugar. A century later, the Dutch, under Maurice of Nassau, took Olinda and burned it down, choosing to build a new capital, Recife, on swampy land to the south, where there was the fine natural harbour which Olinda had lacked. The Dutch, playing to their strengths, drained and reclaimed the low-lying land, and the main evidence of the Dutch presence today is not so much their few surviving churches and forts dotted up and down the coast, as the reclaimed land on which the core of Recife is built.
Out of Recife, there are good beaches in both directions. The Portuguese first developed the coastline as far north as the island of Itamaracá, growing sugar cane on every available inch. This erstwhile fishing village still retains its Dutch fort, built to protect the new colonial power’s acquisitions, but these days it’s a fairly blighted weekenders’ resort. Best is the coastal route south, where a succession of small towns and villages interrupts a glorious stretch of palm-fringed beach.

Head inland and the scenery changes quickly to the hot, dry and rocky landscape of the sertão. Caruaru is the obvious target, home of the largest market in the Northeast, and close by is Alto do Moura, centre of the highly rated Pernambucan pottery industry. If you plan to go any further inland than this you’ll need to prepare well for any kind of extended sertão journey, though it’s straightforward enough to reach the twin river towns of Petrolina and Juazeiro.

Inland from Recife

In contrast to the gentle scenery of the coastal routes out of Recife, heading inland brings you abruptly into a completely different landscape, spectacular and forbidding. The people, too, look and speak differently; the typical sertanejo is short and wiry, with the high cheekbones and thin nose of an Indian ancestor. They speak a heavily accented Portuguese, much ridiculed elsewhere, but really one of the loveliest Brazilian accents.

Buses inland all leave from the Recife Rodoviária, and the best place to head for is the market town of Caruaru, 130km from Recife and the largest town in the agreste. The frequent buses there take two hours and are very comfortable; buy your ticket a day in advance. Seats on the right-hand side of the bus have the best view.

Into the sertão

The Pernambucan sertão begins after Caruaru. There is no sudden transition; the hills simply get browner and rockier, dense thorny scrub takes over from the hill plants, and there are cacti every few yards, from tiny flowering stumps to massive tangled plants as large as trees. And, above all, it is hot, with parched winds that feel as if someone is training a hairdryer on your face. The Pernambucan sertão is one of the harshest in the Northeast, a scorched landscape under relentless sun for most of the year. This is cattle country, home of the vaqueiro, the Northeastern cowboy, and has been since the very beginning of Portuguese penetration inland in the seventeenth century: one of the oldest frontiers in the Americas.

The main highway which runs through the hilly Pernambucan sertão winds through scenery unlike any you’ll have seen before – an apparently endless expanse of cactus and scrub so thick in places that cowboys have to wear leather armour to protect themselves. If you travel in the rainy season here – March to June, although rain can never be relied upon in the interior – you may be lucky enough to catch it bursting with green, punctuated by the whites, reds and purples of flowering trees and cacti. Massive electrical storms are common at this time of year, and at night the horizon can flicker with sheet lightning for hours at a stretch.

North from Recife

North from Recife, the BR-101 highway runs a little way inland through low hills and sugar-cane fields, a scenic enough route but one that offers little reason to stop off anywhere, except perhaps at the small pottery centre of Goiana. The coast north of Recife is, as you might expect, best explored along the smaller roads that branch off the highway. Nevertheless, it’s as well to bear in mind that the Pernambuco coast is thickly populated by Brazilian standards. This isn’t to say there aren’t relatively peaceful spots, but what seems a deserted retreat during the week can fill up quickly at weekends, with Recifenses heading for the beaches, enlivening or destroying the rural atmosphere, depending on your point of view.

From Olinda, local buses continue 11km along the coastal road to the beautiful palm-lined beaches of Rio Doce, Janga and Pau Amarelo. Until recently these were pretty much deserted, and, although weekend homes are going up now, development, so far, is less obtrusive than in many places on the coast. Being close to major population centres, however, the water quality at Rio Doce and Janga is not always the best. The area gets busy at weekends, especially in Janga, when there’s music and dancing in the beachside bars at night. At Pau Amarelo you can still see one of several local star-shaped forts left behind by the Dutch in 1719.

A more popular and even more scenic route north is through the pleasantly run-down colonial villages of Igarassu and Itapissuma to the island of Itamaracá. Hourly buses to Igarassu, with easy connections to Itamaracá, leave from Avenida Martins de Barros, on Santo Antônio island in Recife, opposite the Grande Hotel. Another possibility is to go there by boat: every travel agency in Recife runs trips, stopping at beaches on the way, for around $35–40.

South from Recife

The coast south of Recife has the best beaches in the state and is all too quickly realizing its tourist potential – the sleepy fishing villages are unlikely to remain so for much longer. Almost all buses to cities south of Recife take the BR-101 highway, which runs inland through fairly dull scenery, made worse by heavy traffic. The trick is to get a bus that goes along the much more scenic coastal road, the PE-60, or via litoral; they leave from either Avenida Dantas Barreto or the Recife Rodoviária for the string of towns down the coast from Cabo, through Ipojuca, Sirinhaém, Rio Formoso, to São José da Coroa Grande. Before São José, where the road starts to run alongside the beach, you may need to get another local bus to get to the beachside villages themselves. In theory, you could hop from village to village down the coast on local buses, but only with time to spare. Services are infrequent – early morning is the usual departure time – and you might have to sleep on a beach or find somewhere to sling a hammock, as not all the villages have places to stay. As you move south, bays and promontories disappear, and walking along the beaches to the next village is often quicker than waiting for a bus.

For more regional information on the Pernambuco, go to: