At last, I’ve found time to write about some of things that have been happening here since we returned from Rio.
It’s been mostly hello, hello again and farewell.
The exception to that was a couple of weeks ago at a Saturday “Sabadino”.
It’s been mostly hello, hello again and farewell.
The exception to that was a couple of weeks ago at a Saturday “Sabadino”.
Every Saturday in a square in Joao Pessoa, a small fiesta is held – free of charge! It’s great with stalls of food and drink lining the sides, live bands playing and people of all ages dancing. Chairs and tables are provided along the edge and many people take their own together with their own cool boxes for food etc! It starts somewhere between 12 and 2 and the official music usually finishes around 5.00 when small groups of people start their own playing. It’s a great afternoon out and really good fun. |
About 12 of us met up (some rather bleary-eyed!) at 11.00 am to catch the second to last train to Joao Pessoa. It stops running on Saturdays at 12.30! and we wanted to be sure to get there. We arrived early just as everything was setting up and soon the music was playing, people dancing and to a background of lively chatter.
All at once this was shattered as we heard what sounded like gun-shots and people at the far end of the square started to run. The stall holders were calling “calme, calme” and we thought that maybe it had just been a car or something. Unfortunately not, there were two more bursts of fire and this time everyone scattered. One couple with us had their 3 year-old daughter with them and they immediately disappeared behind a nearby building! Luckily for us this was all and the gunman did not venture any further through the square. Salvatore did see one injured woman being carried to an ambulance and we heard later that a man had been killed. It was thought to be drug barons at work.
Around 6 o’clock our party split up as Margot was flying back to Chile; the other 4 went off for dinner but as we had met up with one of the guys from the bar who was coming back to the marina, I was not abandoned!!!
A very strange day!!!
A very strange day!!!
Since then it has been a lot of farewells; Salvatore and Julie left that week, Magali returned to France, Fonch sailed off, and number of others we have known slightly also left. There is a good possibility though that we see some of them as we are mostly heading in the same direction - the Caribbean via the Guianas.
As I said at the beginning, there have also been some hellos.
I’m sure many of you will remember the English couple, Paul & Rachel Chandler who were captured by pirates off Somalia in 2009 and held for 13 months before being released unharmed. Their boat Lynn Rival was recovered and after working on her for 2 years, in 2012, they were off on their travels again. They had arrived in Brazil last year, traveled south to Uruguay and are now making their way back north. They had been invited by the local yacht cub to give a talk about their experiences which was really interesting and showed quite how strong they both were. |
We also met up with them on couple of other occasions and spent some really pleasant time - talking about good sailing adventures, not their horrendous experience.
Re-meeting people is great –we first met Monika and Herbert on Mon Juan, in the Cape Verde Islands, saw them here before they flew back to Germany and have spent some excellent times with them just recently – it looks as if we will be setting off at the same time but taking slightly different routes still, hopefully we will see them again- perhaps in Trinidad!! Setting off soon also is Kevin (mentioned in my early posts) who has just returned from working in Australia for about 2months – another au revoir we hope!
Rather than complicate this with our plans, I’ll post this now and post again with maps and plans tomorrow or Wednesday.
Have fun - we are!
Have fun - we are!