The church lit up at night, it changed from blue to red, green, orange etc…

During our last few days at Fortaleza we met Rob, the South African skipper on the neighbouring Italian yacht.  It was fantastic to have a conversation that was closer to home and hear about his adventures and travels, with Kilimanjaro planned for September. Having spent time in Fortaleza before, Rob introduced us to Gheller Churrascaria, a restaurant about a 4km walk from where we were moored. This gem of a place offers a buffet of salads, fresh produce, warm side dishes and unlimited sushi. You are given a cardboard disk on arrival, that you turn over to the ‘Sim, Por Favor’ side. This little green circle has every passing server offer you your choice cuts from their rotisserie selection… steak, rump, chicken, lamb, sausage, chops, quail… You name it, they got it. When you simply cannot fit in anything more, you turn your disk over to the red ‘Não, Obrigado’. This ‘all you can eat’ experience costs a mere R$20.00 (R100.00) per person – on reflection, maybe it was actually goat and roadrunner? Either way this was a particular treat, not only as South Africans, but ones who had subsisted off fish for far too long! We have come up with a number of ingenious ways to eat fish; sure there is the usual like baked, fried, battered and braaied… the exotic, such as steamed, curried, pickled or sashimi… and then just the plain weird – fish surprise a la macaroni and cheese.

Gheller Churrascaria

We also got to see the delivery crew of the Mooring’s yacht that had been stuck in Ascension for weeks on end with engine trouble, who arrived the day before we left. Checking out at customs involves the usual – a perfectly competent, yet entirely unmotivated, snotty customs official, who of course is the only one manning the desk. However unlike South Africa, he only has two people in the queue to deal with, and still manages to make a blind, 3 legged cow look more active. Waiting in the queue behind us were two Canadian brothers who have embarked on an epic kayak adventure, where they are traveling from Belem, Brazil to Florida, a total of 6500km which they aim to do in 7 months. Pity we met them so late as they had been arguing with customs for weeks to get hold of their kayaks, but it was time to press on to Guyane, taking along the hotel’s ice bucket as a souvenir.

>>>>> Check out added pics <<<<<

– Kate