Recife

At first light [about 5:30AM] the entire horizon is high-rise hotels not unlike the Pacific beachfront in Rio. You do not see any old buildings. No churches. Recife is flat; indeed some of it is below sea level. We are docking under a double rainbow that’s been there for almost an hour and only now beginning to fade. We side up to giant white silos that look long out of use. CEAGEPE [?] is stenciled large on several of the flat surfaces. Behind the silos is a double Quonset-type “hanger” belonging to SINDACUCAR. We are never out of sight of the sugar industry. H.Stern tents greet us at the gangplank. We are never out of sight of the jewelry industry. Our bus took us to the center of Old Recife where we visited a Franciscan Museum and the Golden Chapel. I did get a shot of the Crucifix inside the chapel but we were told not to photograph. The interior is carved and gilded and vary dark. There is a side chapel one can see through an ornate iron grate. Some type of catechism was being taught there [poor unsuspecting kids!]. The rest of the museum had tableaux of the life of St. Francis of Assisi. The mannequins are old and virtuous. They are dressed in real clothes. Many are very out of scale as if they were throw-aways from department stores and regardless of the “age” [child, teen, adult] they were painted to look like adults. It was a sad looking collection trying to be maintained on a shoestring budget. We then went to Republic Square to photograph some wonderful old public and govt. buildings. Charming statues of the muses ringed the fountain at the center of the square. In one corner was a good size Baobab tree with some remaining blossoms and fruit. Our next stop was the 5-Cornered Fort, which also housed the city museum. This was fun. They had a blown up aerial photo of the city to give you a good sense of where you were and then there were rooms containing artifacts from the various periods of Recife’s history. The most interesting were the old Dutch blue & white ceramics, early glass bricks and colorful tiles. The Fort is whitewashed so when you are outside you feel like you are in a solar oven. It was only about 90 degrees but the humidity was a killer. I don’t know how some of the older folk do it. Next stop Oficina Brennand.