You gotta be kidding me.

There’s a sauna in my building. It’s right there, top floor—”Academia, sauna.”

It must be a local joke. Recife is a sauna.

The temperature is about the same as in Natal or João Pessoa, 30°C at night and higher during the daytime, but Recife is stuffy so it feels hot. It reminds me of Beijing. Your typical coastal city’s pleasant sea breeze gets lost in the maze of skyscrapers and never reaches you wherever you are. There’s plenty of shade but there’s also plenty of traffic overheating the city. Your only hope of cooling off is the giaant Shopping Recife mall—great air con and the only place to hang out after the 6 p.m. Nordeste sunset.

Maybe it’s a good thing there’s no wind, actually. It doesn’t always smell good in Recife, especially around the canal. Brazilians are great engineers but they don’t do canals very well, hello, Santos.

Not that I’m complaining about the heat, of course. I’ve just talked to Mark and Feng, who are dealing with another 40 cm of snow topping a previous 40 cm of snow three days ago. I’d rather sweat than freeze but take my word for it—it’s hot and occasionally stinky in Recife.

The heat isn’t the only challenge in Recife. I questioned my own sanity when I booked my Airbnb for a week.

Recife isn’t particularly safe, clean, or easy to navigate.

But it’s also an interesting city so I figured a week in the modern suburb of Boa Viagem wouldn’t kill me.

As long as I didn’t swim, obviously—Boa Viagem’s endless beach comes with real sharks and real attacks.

Yet, this is where I ended up today, not in a shark’s belly but at the beach. I weighed the pros and cons but it was the most obvious option for a (hot) sunny Sunday. After a few days exploring hilly Olinda and the historic centre (more on that later), it was relaxing to just walk on part of the eight-kilometre stretch of sand and watch people drink, eat, play football and—gasp!—swim.

Fun fact, Boa Viagem is the only Brazilian beach I know where, on top of the usual grilled cheese and shrimp, you can buy caldinho (soup) on the beach! If I hadn’t been in the middle of the day at 40°C, I would have bought some. I love soup.

After the beach, I had the choice between the shopping mall or the Pracinha de Boa Viagem, a tiny public square with an old church, occasional live music, food stalls and souvenirs. I followed the locals in the quest for tapioca, skewers, giant slices of cake, and church services (… I skipped the latter).

A typical Boa Viagem Sunday, basically.