Natal, Brazil

How do you have the most fun in a city where you don't speak the language?

Hire a taxi, where the driver doesn't speak your language either!

Now this might be a bit of an exaggeration because he did speak about 6 words of English and between us we spoke about 6 words of Portuguese.

We had originally thought that we would do our usual wandering around the town today, but Natal is a city of about 820,000 people, and it is quite large-land wise. Plus, as Molly would say, parts are quite sketchy. They are just starting to attract tourists and there is a lot of building going on, so right next door to a new 50 story high rise is a lot that looks like its been used to dump garbage for ages. Well ,long story somewhat shorter, we decided to take a one-hour taxi tour with Lorraine and Yitz who are from Manchester in the UK. The man at the tourist office negotiated our price and we shoe-horned ourselves into the tiny taxi.

Our driver (whose name we still didn't get after 4 tries) we dubbed "Messi" because he was wearing an Argentina football jersey with "Messi" on the back. According to Yitz he's just about the best football player in the world today! So off we go with the windows open so that the very hot and humid air could blast us, and Messi pointing out important building after building. The four of us would have a debate about what the building was; school, government building, church (ok, so we could manage those) museum, court house, etc.--any three votes out of four became the verdict!

We did stop and get out at a couple of places. Then the real excitement began. Messi is apparently a photographer, when not driving a taxi, and he insisted on posing us for photos. This would have been fine, except he wanted us standing in the foreground while he got the right angle on the subject, and this involved standing directly in the line of traffic in the middle of fairly busy roads. Amazingly no one honked, they just waited patiently while he composed and then took multiple shots with both of our cameras. He had us scrutinize each one to ensure that it met our standards. Little does he know that we snap and go and if we happen to get both the person and the building in focus we count it as a win.

After visiting churches, the downtown shopping district, and a stop at the new cathedral he then drove us out of town to the beach. At a stop light he was centered on the white line that divided the two lanes (his lane right out of the middle as we say). When the light changed the car on the left didn't move away fast enough for him, so he honked. This would have been fine, except the car was Policia! We were amazed and expressed in our very best mock-Portuguese how this would not have been a good idea in Angleterre or Americano! Clearly traffic rules are "suggestions" here in Brazil as he drove "Monte Carlo" style out along the waterfront to the Ponta Negra beach.

At the beach he really put his photographic skills to work by posing us with a beer bottle, which appeared out of the trunk. Actually, we love these photos and think he really does have some talent. When we got back to the Tourist Info center he grabbed the camera and showed all the other drivers and the guy who had negotiated the deal. It turns out that these photos are copies of postcards that they sell here.

We had one last stop on the way back--the coconut stand, where for 5 Real ($2.50) five of us had fresh cold coconuts with a straw--delicious! Lorraine even had hers chopped open so that she could scoop out the middle!

We all agreed that it's a good thing that the clock is not as strictly adhered to here as at home. Here our one-hour tour turned into two and a half hours of the most fun we have had in a long time! We think "Messi" enjoyed himself too as there were lots of smiles and vigorous hand shakes all around as we departed!