The capital of the North East. Recife has great beaches with easy access to the beautiful Olinda (a world heritage site). During carnival Recife is by far the most authentic destination. Less commercial than Rio, Recife also is a short hop from Porto Da Galinhas, Brazil's most stunning beach resort.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recife
www.recifeguide.com/
is just 7 hours from Lisbon direct. Air Portugal have daily flights.
Recife airport is a hub for virtually every city in Brazil and Argentina.

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Tambaba is a beach in the State of Paraiba, on the northeast coast of Brazil. Paraiba affords the same beauty of the most famous neighbours, such as Pernambuco and Ceara, but is still much less explored.

Tambaba is the most important naturist centre in Brazil; for nearly two decades now, naturists from all over Brazil come to meet in Tambaba.

In 2008, Tambaba will host the XXXI International Congress of Naturism, organized by the International Naturist Federation.

For a few days, Tambaba will be the world center of naturism. Thousands of people are expected to visit Tambaba in September of 2008.

www.joao-pessoa.com/en/paraiba/tambaba/

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Recife's main city centre is a baffling and confusing place but I grew to love it there; it's not a conventional place to hang around but since when did travel always have to be about things that are beautiful in an obvious sense? Olinda and Porto de Galinhas are mainly idyllic, beautiful locations, of which Pernambuco state has no shortage, but Recife's main central islands have a strange charm.

At night, you need to be a bit streetwise, but there are the clubs and bars in the Recife Antigo area and the Patio de Sao Pedro and it's a great night out, but in the daytime, Recife city centre's more mundane sights are something that for some reason captivate me. It's not one thing in particular - it's the whole place. At certain times of the day, you get old men selling decrepit vinyl albums lined on the walls of the square to the side of Avenida Dantas Barreto. Near Igreja do Carmo, you'll find men singing Embolada, a mesmeric poetic duel that'll make you wonder how the hell they can summon the power to make you lose sense of where you are using just their voices and a pair of tambourines. You'll find people barbecuing meats and cheeses in unlikely corners and men fishing for crab off the bridges.

The oldest law faculty in the Americas is here, cheek by jowl with some of the best and cheapest lunch restaurants you may ever find; there are some faded Deco-style buildings and plenty of Portuguese colonial-style architecture too, with wrought iron British-designed bridges connecting the three islands, as well as a former prison that doubles up as a craft centre.

Among the narrow streets, men use makeshift sound systems to promote the clothes or radios or cutlery their shop is trying to sell you. This sort of thing would be considered noise pollution in most developed countries, but it makes for a strange sort of music in Recife; "Clothes shop MC on the M-I-C", said my friend.

Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.

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Nacao Zumbi (pronounced Nass-Ow-Zoom-Bee) is a band in its own right, like New Order. I use New Order as a parallel because both bands lost an influential lead singer who, it was believed, was about to make music with his band that would take them on to a world stage. The singer in NZ's case was a man called Chico Science, who died in 1997.

The band, Chico Science & Nacao Zumbi, were basically an accidental clash of two groups: a punk band called Loustal, and an Afro-Brazilian drumming/roots organisation called Lamento Negro. The bands had a jam in which they discovered that regional styles of drum-based music used variously in carnival parades and other folk celebrations sounded amazing when buffering the sound of a four-piece rock band. These styles, Maracatu, Embolada, Baiao, Coco and Ciranda, were regional sounds taken for granted and were, to a large degree, neglected and undervalued parts of the culture of Pernambuco state.

The band that formed from this, together with another local group called Mundo Livre SA ('Free World Ltd') wrote a manifesto in 1991 which compared the dried-out mangroves of the region to the moribund music scene, comparing their reinvigoration with the way the band itself had taken music forms that had been carried on by a few loving locals. The manifesto was called "Caranguejos Com Cerebro", or 'Crabs With Brains' and can be found on the internet in English with little difficulty.

It speaks of ramming parabolic antennae into the mud of the mangrove and communicating with the world, so a computer 'Bit' speaking from the 'Mangue' saw to it that the music form was christened 'Mangue-Bit', which was later altered to 'Mangue-Beat'. Anyway ... after a kerfuffle over the new sound coming out of Recife and its sister city Olinda, CSNZ were signed to Sony Brazil. Their debut album, Da Lama Ao Caos (From Mud To Chaos) and the follow-up, AfroCiberDelia, both showcase the marriage of archaic regional beats and modern electronic music with the confrontational politics of the band.

Chico Science's car came off the road in a pre-carnival accident in 1997, and doom-mongerers in Brazil forecast the group's demise. Their response was to write a second manifesto "Quanto Vale Uma Vida" ('How Much One Life Is Worth') and the band has since released a trio of albums on two labels.

The live spectacle is something anyone who visits not just Recife or Olinda but any city in Brazil would be urged not to miss. While the mainstream press in the UK seems set on covering Mutantes and indeed any Brazilian music whose heyday was over 20 years ago, if you see Nacao Zumbi play live, you would be taking up a chance to see a band who are in their prime right NOW. As well as that, you'll know what the fuss is about when they are booked to play the Barbican in May 2031, and you'll have the night of your life.

www.fomedetudo.com.

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There have been several spells in recent times where shark attacks have been prevalent. This doesn't mean don't go to Recife - in fact DO go to Recife. What it means is, make bloody sure you keep up to date on the current situation by asking in your hotel/pousada. The beaches around Olinda, up the coast, don't seem to have been affected but a magazine called Trip ran a feature a few years ago about surfers who had lost limbs. They did it so you don't have to. Oh - the word for 'shark' is TUBARAO, and 'sea' is MAR. "Tem tubarao no mar aqui?"

Boa Viagem, it seems!

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Brazilians have a peculiar kind of restaurant called Rodizio. Customers stay seated (unless they want to help themselves with the salad and seafood buffet), and waiters keep going around with large skewers, each with a different kind of meat. No other place in the world boasts such a large variety of good food for such a low price (early 2006, price was around US$15 per person).
All staff are highly skillful, from the maitre d' to the person who prepares the meat to the waiters.

Check out the restaurant section of this site about Recife:
www.recifeguide.com/
Plenty of good tips there.

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