Out and about

Just to prove there is life in Brazil outside the little pocket universe that is Ponta Negra we took a ¨Brazilian Buggy Tour¨to the region`s outback. Just me and The Caipirinha Queen in the back of a four wheeled dune buggy driven by a local lunatic who was in all probability stoned on something. The idea was to stop at places of interest in a sort of convoy of said buggys. However, our guide was obviously bored with the pedestrian approach and overtook his comrades at every opportunity (it didn`t matter what side of the road we were on). The only thing slowing him down was the speedbumps the Brazilian Government insisted on putting on their motorways every kilometer. (A fact that would have confused me had it not been for the buggy tour itself.)

Having grown bored with that our guide decided to leave the road altogether. I must admit, the race across miles and miles of empty sandy beach alongside the Atlantic surf was quite exilarating. The sight of our companion buggys in wide formation behind us prompted an attempt to get a picture but all I took, bouncing madly on the back seat, was sky. Our driver, ever bored with routine, tried to take off using a sand dune as a ramp but his poor little engine couldn´t take it. As one of our companion tourists said afterwards, ¨You disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke; I was sure the head gasket had gone!¨ I nodded sagely as I normally do when talking about cars and football to other males of the species.

The regional area outside Natal seems to consist of miles and miles of sand dunes and fresh water lakes. We stopped at one of the latter for an hour where we ordered the obligatory beers and strolled out ankle deep in the water to drink them and survey the peace and quiet. This was followed by a short visit to a local distillery at which point I was going to boor the pants off you about alcohol and caipirinhas but Mr Tompkins has done his homework and beaten me to it. ´Nuff to say that the Caipirinha Queen is happy with the chief product of the sugar cane industry over here. It would appear that some 40% of the alcohol produced ends up in cars (some 20% of cars run on alcohol rather than petrol) and 60% ends up in humans as described by Steve (some 100% of tourists run on caipirinhas). The big advantage is that it is cheap. The average price is around 4R$ (around£1.30); a bottle of local Bohemian or Skol beer is around 3R$/£1 (although it does get cheaper off the strip). In terms of vfm, you get more ¨bang for your bucks¨with a caipirinha than a beer, the downside being that the Caipirinha Queen has to go and have a lie down after four drinks.

Lunch was a frightening affair in a posh restaurant in an old railway siding. Our hosts presented some starters followed by what we thought was the main course (a sort of shepards pie of flavoured mince meet and mashed manioc). Then the food just kept coming, and coming. Great chunks of meat; spaghetti; vegetables; fried potatoes; beans; rice; chips - you name it. Then, for a laff, our lunatic driver took us over the sand dunes in an effort to dislodge the bloody lot. Racing across the sand wasn´t so much of a problem, it was the disappearing over the clefts between the dune tops only to find sheer drops the other side! It reminded me of some of my dodgier skiing holidays where, alone, I would get lost and find myself at the top of a black run I really didn´t want to do! Linda screamed a lot (I sorta growled in the back of my throat) and told the driver off for scaring her. He grinned and did it again.

Our last stop was at the world´s biggest cashew nut tree (well, someone´s got to have it!). Not much to say about that other than it was weird, as in ¨landed from outer space¨ weird. The branches (or roots, I´m not sure) just keep growing like the alien from The Little Shop Of Horrors.

And with that, we´d had enough. Too tired even for a beer (okay, just a couple) we had an early night. Tomorrow its back to the pool.