Fortaleza

Fortaleza is all about beaches, and although it's a big city, it doesn't have a lot else of interest, so this blog post is going to be fairly brief! Yesterday, which was my first full day here, I went to take a look at the modern, and very concrete, cathedral, as well as the nearby central market, with its weird winding walkways.

I also visited the Dragão do Mar, which is a cultural centre with museums, galleries, walkways, restaurants and bars, and even a planetarium. Its biggest draw is the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (Museum of Contemporary Art), which I also went to. It was split over two floors - upstairs they had what I thought were a few fairly pointless video installations, but downstairs was a lot more interesting, with paintings by some big names like Picasso, Miró and Matisse.

I've been to take a look at a few of Fortaleza's beaches, even though I think I've already established that I don't like beaches. The nearest beach to where I'm staying is Iracema beach, which as you can see was deserted when I was there. This morning I went to Meireles beach (below), which is a couple of kilometres east of Iracema, and is where most of the big luxury hotels are situated, so it was correspondingly busier.

These beaches are right in the city centre, and littered with rubbish in some places, so they didn't seem particularly pleasant. I think Fortaleza does have some really good beaches, but to get to those you have to go further out of town.

I carried on past Meireles beach to the harbour and then to the fish market, where you can buy fish and then take it to be prepared at a nearby stall for a few extra reales. I considered buying a few prawns or even a lobster, but then I remembered that I'd paid the price for eating shellfish just before a long bus journey when I was in Peru, so I decided against it. It was near here that I witnessed a policeman beating up a young homeless man - I have no idea whether he'd done anything to deserve it, but it did seem unnecessarily brutal.

I leave Fortaleza tonight, and the long bus journey I was referring to will get me to Recife in the morning, although I plan to stay in Olinda, which is Recife's smaller sister city.