Maceio, Brazil (continued)

Fri Dec 2

Our stop today was at the coastal city of Maceio about 130 miles south of Recife. This is a considerably smaller city than Recife. We were again met by a native drum corps and dancer.

On our tour we only made three stops. The first was a street market where Mom bought a very pretty green hand-embroidered blouse. We then drove past neighborhoods both rich and extremely poor, parks, churches, significant buildings and monuments.

We stopped at an overlook point with many more vendors. The view of the city and ocean was very nice. A tiny little black and white puppy running around got it's picture taken with us and we had a drink of "milk" from a fresh coconut.

At the next stop we had to walk through another market where we bought nearly a pound of fresh cashew nuts before reaching the beach. There we enjoyed wading in the warm ocean for about half an hour because we were not aware we would be at the beach and did not come prepared with swim suits and towels. There was relatively little surf and Mom found a collection of reef fragments and sea shells.

She also bought fresh mango fruit that the vendor peeled and sliced for us to enjoy and share with the rest of the group as they boarded the bus for the ride back to the ship.