NATAL, BRAZIL
Today, we arrived at our first South America port-of call, Natal in Brazil.
My first impression, as I glanced through the windows entering Marco’s bistro at breakfast, was that it looked like a building site. Further, subsequent, glances, however proved this not to be the case. We were moored alongside a couple of large container ships, in what looked like a small commercial port. Looking out from the bistro to the left, containers were piled high, waiting to be transferred to waiting ships; to the right, a modern-looking terminal buiding confirmed in large blue letters that we were in Natal; between them was, indeed, what looked like a small building site.
After breakfast, we took a brief tour around the deck to get some idea of how hot it was out there. Answer; very.
A short while after that, we went ashore and caught the complimentary shuttle bus that would take us to downtown Natal. Although it would be quite feasible to walk the relatvely short distance from the ship to the city, frequent announcement and notices in the daily program were quite explicit about deterring this sort of behaviour on the grounds of the locality not being safe to walk through.
We were dropped off by the beach and, it being Sunday, it seemed most of the population of Natal were here for the day. Beaches are something that Natal seems to have a lot of, and those we saw – actually, we couldn’t because of the sheer numbers of Brazilian sunbathers, volleyballers and picnickers.
We walked along the beach for a short way, but then turned in towards the city, following a route on Maps.Me towards a nature reserve we’d seen. It was a slow day in Natal… a real Sunday if ever I’ve seen one. Other than the throngs of people we’d left behind on the promenade, the streets were near deserted. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that any other day of the week, the streets we were strolling along would be heaving with traffic and people going about their business. Everywhere was shut – they clearly don’t do Sunday-Trading here.
After walking for about an hour in the searing heat towards our intended destination, our map told us that there was still another 45 minutes walking to go. With the prospect of having to walk back the same distance, common sense kicked in, and we adjusted our goals accordingly.
We diverted along some side roads, and to a track that led us up a modest hill where signs told us that we were now entering Dunas Ecological Park. At the top, the track split into two, so we checked both options out; both forks in the road finished at a dead-end. Each had a large telecommunications mast, and neither afforded us with anything like the views that I’d been hoping for. Tracey saw a rare bird, though, and the trees alongside the road were home to iguanas and other smaller reptiles, and a few other birds and butterflies. We even saw a humming bird!
On our return journey, we stopped off at a small park, which was equally as quiet as everywhere else we saw, and when we finally arrived back at the sea front, we treated ourselves to a sit down and a cold drink before boarding the bus back to the ship. We were even treated to what must be the world’s worst bar serenader, who sang Beatles songs in Portugese, and with the screechiest voice that was so awful, it was actually quite hilariously funny.
The other good news of the day is that we managed to find me a suitable sun hat for the princely sum of 12 Brazilian Real (about £3).
Much to the entertainment of the passengers, we had two tugs to assist in our leaving of the port at 5:30pm. With one pulling and the other pushing, the Marco Polo was spun around in an impressive one-point turn, so that we were facing the right direction to sail straight back out into the Atlantic, where we are now heading for our next destination tomorrow, Recife (pronounced Ress-eef-ee). Tracey and I will be on tour escorting duties, so it’s an early night…
