I don’t need music, Natal comes with soundtracks playing in the background depending on the place and time of the day.
Sunset is early in this part of Brazil so I head to the beach around noon. I walk for a couple of hours—yay, long beach!—, find a spot, read a bit and walk back. I get a free “sound of the ocean” playlist. If I start paying attention, I almost hold my breath every few seconds—is the wave going to crash loudly… yep. This one too. Oh, this one too. Right, it never stops. You don’t realize how noisy it is until you spend a few hours hearing the sound of rolling waves crashing, lapping the shore and sliding back. The far end of Praia de Ponta Negra by the famous sand dune I packed but voices are muffled and distant. Amateur football players, crêpe (?!) vendors and large families combined aren’t as loud as the ocean.
I leave just before sunset. Praia de Ponta Negra isn’t one of these beaches where you can linger after dark because it gets really, really dark. This is not Copacabana or Ipanema, there’s no famous avenue along the beach, just a series of steep parallel streets that eventually all lead to the main road, Avenida Engenheiro Roberto Freire.
This is where you’ll find the Polícia Militar randomly stopping cars, the city’s favourite restaurants—most featuring shrimp, pizza or a combination of both—, shopping malls and supermarkets like Extra, Favorito or Nordestão. It’s a very, very boring road but a busy one with plenty of traffic and many pairs of legs walking along the… ahem, sidewalk. I mean, it should be sidewalks, plural, because every five metres there’s a different kind of paving—or my favourite, none. There’s always someone walking somewhere in Brazil so I’m not the only idiot hiking to the supermarket after dark, phew. The soundtrack here is traffic noise. For your information, “beep beep” means “I’m coming and I ain’t stopping”—drivers are calling attention to some hazard, except they are the hazard.
And at night, in the Airbnb apartment, all I can hear is the wind. Natal is pleasantly breezy so it doesn’t feel stuffy even though it’s 25⁰C-30⁰C. It’s just background noise, not the sign weather is turning nasty. This is the kind of wind I like, without “chill” in it.
Ca fait rêver ! Quelle évasion cet article… (et les autres), j’ai l’impression d’y être. Ton roadtrip solo a l’air de bien commencer. Quel genre de crêpes vendent-ils sur la plage? Des salées, des sucrées? Ils appellent ça “crêpes” vraiment? C’est un(e) inconnu(e) à qui tu demandes de te photographier sur la plage? Tu ne crains pas qu’on court avec ton appareil? Tu me diras, tu as l’air assez entraînée pour le rattraper 😉 Profite bien!
Ils appellent vraiment ça des crêpes et il y a des salées et sucrées! Franchement, elles ne plairaient pas à un vrai Breton, mais elles valent largement celles que tu peux trouver genre à Paris. Souvent, ce sont aussi des crêpes faites avec du tapioca. C’est… spécial, dans le sens où le tapioca n’a aucun goût.
Pour les photos, les Brésiliens adorent se prendre en photo à la plage, alors je demande! Impossible de faire des selfies avec mon Nikon et j’aime bien avoir des souvenirs. Les gens ont plus l’habitude des téléphones donc ils hésitent de peur de ne pas y arriver. Je ne crains pas vraiment qu’on parte avec en courant… tout le monde a son téléphone à la main dans ce genre d’endroit, c’est safe 😉
What a suspens ! Were Feng and Mark able to take their flight home finally ?
Yep, but they had a “welcome committee” and were questioned for a long, long time :-/