Rio Grande Do Norte

Hi All,

We´ve been running around the last few days. On Saturday we day-tripped it to Palmares, which is a small town about an hour and a half from Recife. There is a group there that we went to visit with Mestre, CM Gordo and Soldado.



Here´s us stopping for some agua de coco on the way. When we made it to Palmares, there were tons of little kids playing around... the big one is mestre ;)



Afterwards we heading back to Recife... we stopped for some fruit on the way. This fruit is a Jaca, and may be the strangest fruit I´ve ever had... it´s got an external skin, but it´s quite... loose. Inside are seeds encased in the fruit, which is a strange stringy-marshmallowy goo. Yeah.... tasty tho.



On Sunday we travelled to Natal, which is in the state of Rio Grande Do Norte, about 300 kms north. We went to a very well organized capoeira event there. We stayed with some relatives of mestre, who were extremely nice. On Monday we went to see an island where Mestre´s family used to live years ago. Very beautiful.



On the trip we encountered our first interesting insect... check this dude out. He´s about an inch and a half long, and when someone went to flick him off the car he turned as if to fight..



On the way to Natal we also witnessed some more of Brazil that we´ve heard about... we were stopped at a military police checkpoint, and asked for our documents. We had decided to leave our passports at home, as they´re safer there... so we gave our driver´s licences and a photocopy of our passports and Mestre and his brother went into the office to talk to them... there was a heated discussion about our lack of passports, during which we started to get a bit worried. After a few minutes, Waldinho came out, took 10$R (5 bucks) from his wallet and went back in. Problem solved and we were off. At least the bribes are cheap!

All for now,
mike and leanna