Recife means "reef" in Portuguese. It just before the most Eastern point in Brazil and South America (hence, with no time change it was starting to get dark much earlier!). 8˚ 06S 34˚ 53WNow we are off the beaten track of the regular cruise-ship routes, we seem to be docking more often in container ship yards! In Recife, at the last minute, they were unable to let us dock at the passenger terminal so we were all ferried by buses 20 minutes into town. There was a long wait, but they put on a local dance show for us while we waited:
Unfortunately more we were still on CODE RED as more people started to get sick. The authorities would not let any crew ashore (and it was rumored that at one point, they were only going to let passengers on pre-booked shore excursions ashore. I guess the reality of the town losing out on all the tourist dollars swayed them a bit..). The Brazilian Health Authorities came aboard for a 6 hour health inspection!
The town didn't hold much interest for us, and we headed off to the beach,
where we were serviced drinks, toasted cheese:
There was a lot of other food being sold on the beach (shrimps, oysters...) but we daren't risk getting food poison and being in isolation for 3 days.
After seeing this sign:
we didn't venture out too far!!
Back on the boat by about 4pm:
