Fernando de Noronha
We finally have WiFi again, so I’m belatedly posting a few blogs I wrote during our passage…
We made it!
Fernando de Noronha is a small, 10 sq. mile island (even smaller than St. Helena!) about 200 miles off the Brazilian coast. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s home to about 3000 people and limits tourism to 460 visitors at a time to preserve its diverse and fragile ecosystem, pristine beaches, and national marine park. English-speaking people, we learned, are a rarity, as it’s primarily a Brazilian vacation destination.
We motored slowly into the anchorage just after midnight and fell into bed, relishing a night with no wee-hour watches. The next morning we took our dinghy to the small harbor, greeted along the way by a pod of 100+ dolphins! As with each new country, the first stop upon arrival is the required check-in with Customs and Immigration (and then, at least for us, the next stop is to find WiFi! 😊). We communicated with the local harbormaster through a combination of hand signals, spotty Spanish, and Google translate – we certainly would have loved to have Priscila, our former Brazilian exchange student, or fellow Balance owner Helga with us to translate to Portuguese!
The police processing our arrival in Noronha were the friendliest ever. Policia Christina (also a model) and Costas (a family man and an avid diver) provided us a ride from the harbor to the police station and later to the restaurant they recommended for lunch. From them, we learned that their monthlong postings in Noronha were much-coveted spots rewarded to well-deserving police from the mainland – in our opinion, these two certainly were worthy!
We enjoyed free WiFi in Noronha, courtesy of the Brazilian government. While somewhat faster than that we experienced in St. Helena (I was finally able to make video calls to my kids and my dad!), its reception was spotty and limited to certain areas on the island. As in St. Helena, we had times when the four of us parked ourselves at a restaurant and sipped our frosty beverages without conversation -- each of us focused on our respective screens, eagerly trying to reestablish contact with the outside world. It was nice to reconnect with friends and family, although uploading blogs took forever, and sadly, there wasn’t enough bandwidth to support downloading books to replenish my depleted online library!
At two-thirds of the way through our journey, my freezers were far fuller than anticipated thanks to all the fish Pete had caught, but we were eager to replenish our perishables. Thankfully there was a far better selection of fresh fruits and vegetables in Noronha than in St. Helena, and I stocked up accordingly. Now we have the makings for more ceviche, Greek salad, caprese salad, fresh fruit smoothies, and more for the final leg of our journey.
We had some delicious meals in Noronha, including sampling the Brazilian seafood specialty, moqueca, at several restaurants. As we were seated for lunch at one out-of-the-way spot favored by locals on this out-of-the-way island, I happened to look over and see several colorful ceramic pitchers shaped like fish. I rushed over to take a look, and sure enough, they were Gurgle Pots crafted in Seattle by the Ellisons -- friends of ours who live on Lake Tapps. Now, THAT’S a small world! (If you’ve never seen a Gurgle Pot, check them out -- like the Glassy Baby candleholders my friend Renee gifted me, they’re quintessentially Seattle!)
We also went scuba diving, exploring some underwater caves and seeing beautiful corals, a huge variety of fish, a 6-foot barracuda, eagle rays, lobster, and more. Exiting and entering the dive boat was kinda dicey with the boat bobbing in surprisingly rough, washing machine-like seas, and our 12+ person group of divers, guides and photographers was far too large, but the dives themselves were incredible.
On the final day of our 3-day stay, we rented a car to explore the island. Dave chauffeured us around, expertly navigating the huge potholes in the cobblestone streets in the old part of town. We stopped to swim at some gorgeous beaches and relaxed seaside, enjoying a local cocktail of lime juice, sugar and cachaça (exclusive to Brazil and a “cousin” to rum, cachaça is made from freshly pressed sugarcane and is barrel-aged in hardwoods indigenous to Brazil which gives it a very unique taste -- my vote is for rum!).
After dinner and one last Noronha sunset, we set sail for the final leg of our passage. Grenada here we come!
