The Pipa Experience

P1000220
Originally uploaded by BlockStackSteve

After Natal some of us went on to a historic town called Olinda We didn't do that as we had more of a beach craving so we decided that Pipa was the answer as we'd heard such good things in Natal from the hotel people and from our lonely planet and rough guides to Brasil.

Skipping back to Olinda for a moment. If you do even go here, get money in advance as part of it's historicalness seems to include no bank machines. We received a text message from Wayne Davey to this effect and this also partly swayed out decision to hit the beaches of Pipa. I think I'd heard that some of the GB Mixed team hit Olinda as well when speaking with Anna Shipman. The odd person (Caesar) headed straight to Maceio on the overnight bus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olinda).

We took 2 taxis for R120$ each from our Natal hotel straight to our new hotel in Pipa (www.rivasdream.com). Note the url. It was just that. A beautiful little dream land on what appears to be a rather nasty little road. If you're looking for it, turn left at the big pile of garbage as you leave the city centre.

So we were in Pipa! (http://www.pipa.com.br/conteudo/informativo/english/conheca.html) What to do? We dropped our bags in our rooms (R120$ for a three person room) and walked into town. We did a great interview with Dale you can see here as well. He summarised the experience thus far rather nicely.

We roamed about the shops, saw yet another creepy nativity scene being overlooked but what appears to be a nightmarish sailor with a possibly broken neck. We head down to the main beach which had about 10 feet of actual beachyness rammed with parasols. The food was great and the restaurants plentiful. What was immediately noticeable about Pipa was it's lack of tourists. With that was a lack of random people harassing your to buy more crap. Great success. After dinner the highlight of the afternoon was wading across the water with bags over head ( mr sensible me decided to just walk around on the boardwalk rather than risk dumping £1000+ worth of camera related treasure into the sea. Arrr.

You can see in the picture above where the destination was. A small outcropping of beach about the size of 6 ultimate frisbee beach pitches, had a bar and for some reason, nobody was on it. So we had a quick game of friz there, splashed about in the sea and enjoyed some Mojitos at the rustic bar there owned by a guy names Marcus. What's odd about this is, Natalie had read an article in the Guardian about a guy who was an IT consultant in Notting Hill who gave it all up, left everything behind and came to Brasil to open a bar. Living the dream you might say. Well here we were at his bar. I took some video of Marcus I've not had time to edit and unfortunately I did realise I did not get a photo. Arrrgh!