February 19 – Recife, Brazil

February 19, 2017 – Recife and Olinda, Brazil
We arrived today at 8am. Linda and I had signed up for a ship’s excursion to see both the city of Recife, where the ship docked, and Olinda, the old town. It was rated as a strenuous excursion so we were surprised when we saw people with canes getting on the bus.
We were driven from the port to Olinda. Recife is very flat so when the Dutch first founded the city they moved their homes to Olinda which has 7 hills. They felt this provided more more security. Olinda has narrow cobblestone streets. Buses are not allowed in so we had to go into the town in 3 micro buses. We visited 2 churches and took pictures looking back at Recife. We were given time to shop and told to meet at 11am at the other end of the street. When we loaded up the micro buses, we were missing 2 people. After looking for them for 20 minutes the guide sent us back to the big bus. We were still missing 2 people and the ship’s representative realized that it was the Captain’s mother-in-law and her sister. OOPS! The guide said she had all the representatives of her company hunting for them.
Our bus proceeded to leave and head to the beach. We were told that since they did some changes to the shoreline that sharks had shown up. All 57 attacks had resulted in the death of 57 young men. So we were told that the residents believe the sharks are gay. Very strange people.
Final stop was an old prison which now has handicraft shops in each cell. Right after we got there our guide found the 2 missing people standing with the Captain. They realized we left and they took a cab to the market and contacted the ship.
They tour itself was pretty boring except for the missing mother-in-law.
We were back at the ship by 1pm. We have been told that 2 passengers were robbed at knife point today. Our next stop is on February 21 and is Fortaleza which is the 12th most dangerous city in the world. We are still deciding what to do there. Tomorrow is a sea day.