Today is our last day in Penedo at the mouth of the São Francisco river. We head for Maceió this afternoon and then onto Porto de Galinhas to spend New Years on the beach.
Penedo is a pretty little colonial river town in Alagoas State. It used to carry a lot more river commerce, but with the Dams built upriver at Itaparica, Xingó, Paulo Alfonso and other places that I can't remember, much of the river traffic slowed or stopped. We met an interesting man in his 80s the first day we were here who had lived in Penedo most of his life - he told us about how the city changed with the damming of the river. Movement on the river slowed a lot and the towns started to decline. Rice farming which had been common because of the flooding and receding of the river stopped since it was no longer easy to plant rice and wait for the river water to rise in the season. That was about all I was able to catch, Ana understood much more and she'll probably write about it at some point.
We came to Penedo via Paulo Alfonso - a much more modern city in the Bahian Sertão where a large hydroelectric dam was built. Paulo Alfonso has had way more investment than Sobradinho from a variety of sources, and it shows. When they built the dam there, they built a bunch of lakes that surround the city which helps to keep the temperature down especially in the evening. Outside Paulo Alfonso the temperature regularly reaches the high 30s (Centigrade) but inside the city it stays a few degrees cooler. For Christmas we took a nice river cruise up some of the now mostly flooded gorges of the São Francisco - they were still pretty and the boat ride was relaxing.
Ok, the bus ride to Paulo Alfonso… We left Sobradinho on the 7.30 am bus for Juazeiro. We caught the 9.30 bus for Paulo Alfonso (non airconditioned) which started our trek across the Pernambucan Sertão. One of the nuns, Cida, almost missed her bus for Feira de Santana since she had missed the 7.30 bus leaving Sobradinho and had to catch the 8am - all the nuns Ana knew were leaving for the Christmas/new years holidays the same day as we were. By the time the bus left Petrolina, just across the river, it was standing room only. By the time we reached the 3rd city just after lunch, the bus was completely packed and I gave up my seat to an old man who would never have been able to stand for the rest of the trip (another 6 hours). So I was standing just behind our seats in the second row. 3 guys got on travelling together and were forced to stand in the front - one of them took a picture from the front looking back. I counted 21 people including myself and little children in the first two rows. I'm guessing that there were more than 80 people on the bus as it flew down the road. Safety first. I just put on my neuros and tried not to think about it and hung on.
It took about an hour before one of the guys who had been taking pictures asked if I was a foreigner. Then came the barrage of questions some of which I had a hard time answering. I pulled Ana into it and we got pegged as the American couple. He said I looked like John Lennon and wanted me to sing "Imagine." Ana was having a great time laughing at me - I can't sing for shit so I kept refusing - Brazilians will sing anything whether they can sing or not, but I was way too embarrassed and shy. Later Ana also gave up her seat to an older woman but luckily we only had to stand for another 30 minutes or so at that point as people shifted around and some got off - so we grabbed seats. 3-4 hours of standing on a bus gets brutal. By the time we got to Paolo Alfonso at about 7pm we were pretty destroyed.
Looking forward to that Pinga Litoral (coastal drip i.e. the slow bus that stops everywhere) that we're getting on today for Maceió - luckily only 4.5 hours. But then another Pinga Litoral heading north to Ipajuca where we get off for Porto de Galinhas. We splashed out a little on our hotel in Porto and we're both looking forward to it.
