So it's been a while: Journal entry from Fortaleza (no pictures)

Like it says above, this is my journal entry stuff from Fortaleza. I took only one picture while in Fortaleza, but I'm not going to post it here. Instead I'll just post what I wrote.

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Day 1: Fortaleza
I’ll keep going from here because I think this part at the airport more belongs with the Fortaleza section than the Belo Horizonte section. The line was really long at the airport. I think we stood in line for nearly 45 minutes. No big deal because of course, our flight was delayed for about 90 minutes, maybe even more but I can’t remember.
We had a stop in Brasília, so we had to stop there for probably 30 minutes or so, it wasn’t too long. The only problem with that is Brasília is probably 70 minutes (flight time) south of Belo Horizonte, and Fortaleza is already about 2 hours flight from Belo Horizonte. This was no big deal though, except for the fact I sat in the very last row, which means absolutely no legroom, and I also couldn’t lean my seat back. Because of that I took all I could from that flight, including three sandwiches, four cups of orange juice, and about 10 of those awesome little chocolate and caramel balls they hand out.
Anyway so we got to our hotel in Fortaleza, at Praia do Futuro, at freaking 4AM. We took our stuff up to our room, then we all just passed out. The hotel did have free breakfast so we did all get up at around 9:30AM and take advantage of that. I just had some fruit, some sweet bread stuff and some juice. After that we went out to the big Mercado in downtown Fortaleza and I bought a sweet ass hammock. I negotiated the price from R$80 down to R$40, so I didn’t do too badly. The guy told me the hammock could hold up to 300kg, which if my quick mental math is correct is about 660 pounds. So I should be safe there, at least for the next few years. I’m sure there are few things more exciting than sex in a hammock. I don’t know why I typed that.
We then walked around the downtown area a little bit to see what might be happening that night, but nothing was really going on unfortunately. Once we got back to the hotel though, we all got our beach gear on and headed for the beach. The beach we were at was practically deserted, so I took to the waves and had plenty of fun out there in the ocean. It had been quite a while since I’d been swimming (since February actually).
I wandered around for a bit after I swam and walked through the water towards this little area that had it been surrounded a little bit more would have been like a miniature island. I picked up lots of seashells (that I left at the hotel) and laid down on the sand, stared up at the sky while listening to the ocean and contemplated everything in the world; love, peace, and all other sorts of happy hippy stuff.
After that we all went inside to take a shower so we could get ready to go out to eat. It’s funny because I figured that since Fortaleza is practically on the equator the days would be really long there, but the sun actually still set around 6:30PM. Everything to me looked kinda different from a point so close to the equator. I really have no idea how to explain why I thought it looked different or even how, so I’m not gonna try. Just know that to me things looked very different from that point; the clouds, the sky, the ocean, the land. Very interesting.
So we took the bus to a place we thought we could eat at because apparently Praia do Futuro is the most dangerous place in the world at night, but when we got to the place we wanted to eat at we found out they had already closed up. We all wanted crab and since this place was about 100 feet from the ocean and it was actually called “Casa do Caranguejo” (House of Crab) we figured they had some good crab. So we took a taxi to another place that was pretty awesome. It was fish in some awesome broth with peppers, carrots, and potatoes. It was served with some really good rice and this stuff called pirão, which is a mix of seafood broth, cassava flour and a blend of spices. It, too, was very good.
After that we got some good ice cream and much like the rest of our nights, we sat outside until about 11:30 or midnight just talking and having a good time. I must say that of all the things I have seen and experienced on this whole Brazil trip, one of the most exciting parts has been just talking and getting to know people, especially Rebecca. She is an exceptionally awesome person.
So anyway, we went back to our hotel and we all kinda just hung out, then Keren went to bed and Becca and I watched a movie on my computer. It wasn’t the best movie ever so Becca decided to just go to bed while I stayed up and watch the last 20 or so minutes of it. Turned out she had the right idea; the movie wasn’t all that great (Bicho de 7 Cabeças). Instead we probably should have just watched O Homem do Ano because I know it’s a really good movie. Anyway, after the movie was over I just went to sleep.

Day 2: Fortaleza
Day two started off with me being sicker than I had been in the past few days. I haven’t written anything about it yet because, hey, I’m in Brazil no big deal I’ve been sick before. This kinda sucked though as my brains had been leaking out of my nose and I had been coughing badly for a few days. My throat has been really dry and so just talking too much makes me get out of breath and coughing badly. Because of this I just felt bad, so I took a shower and didn’t eat any breakfast.
After they ate breakfast though we all decided to spend our last bit of time on the beach, so I once again hit the waves and got some incredible bad tasting salt water in my mouth and some incredible badly stinging salt water in my eyes. The current was strong so I would be out in the waves for 10 or 15 minutes and have to come back to shore, walk up the beach again and go straight back to where I started and start the whole process over again.
After an hour or so in the waves I went up and took a shower so I could get that taken care of and finish packing. The girls came up and took a shower a little later and finished packing up their stuff, and after that we went down to pay.
Paying was actually pleasant because they only charged us for one night instead of two. This saved us about R$110. I guess the whole arriving at 4AM thing made them cut us some slack. After paying we had the clerk called a taxi for us and we hitched it on over to the airport so we could make way to Recife. Our flight was once again delayed but only by about 30 minutes so that wasn’t too bad.