Recife

[trilingual]

It's mid-day and I'm beating the heat at a cybercafe in a fabulously air-conditioned bookstore not far from my hotel. Afterwards, I'm heading downtown for some more sightseeing, to be followed by additional research on behalf of M4M readers. It's hard work, but somebody's gotta do it!

 

Recife is a very big city (about 3 million in the metro area) and has grown a lot since my last visit years ago. The southern beach area in Boa Viagem now stretches on into the adjoining town of Jaboatão. If you like South Florida, you'll like Recife. The beach is similar, a miles-long strand of sand lined with palm trees and modern high rise hotels and apartments. North of downtown is a new forest of high rise offices and apartments mixed with a huge complex of new modern hospitals. Recife has developed into the second largest medical center in Brazil, servicing the entire Northeast, and offers just about every specialty. Given the low cost of living in this part of the country, this might be a place to check out if you need any extensive elective work done that isn't covered by your insurance, like dental work or plastic surgery! You can recover quite nicely in a nice seaside hotel or resort. . .

 

I'm staying at the Best Western Hotel Manibu, which I found on the Decolar site (for which you need Spanish or Portuguese). Although you can't make airline reservations on the Brazilian Decolar site using a foreign credit card, you CAN make hotel reservations, and I'm paying R$120 for a very nice, American-standard room in the new wing with two double beds, excellent air-conditioning and good plumbing with plenty of hot water! The desk staff is English-speaking and eager to please. The rack rate is R$200, so the saving from booking on-line thru Decolar is considerable. You can also check out Best Western's own site. It offers lots of web specials at comparable low rates. The Manibu is a block from the beach, with a very nice restaurant and a rooftop pool and health club. However, I did notice a sign on the beachfront at a modern-looking hotel (I think it was the "del Sol") advertising rooms from R$59! As you can see, things don't have to be expensive here. However, with the real back around R$3.50 to the dollar today, my room is running less than US$40 a night.

 

Adjacent to Recife, to the north, is Olinda, the original capital of the state of Pernambuco, a colonial UNESCO world heritage site. A lot of restoration work is going on, and it's become more touristy than when I was here years ago, but it's still very much worth seeing. For those who saw the Brazilian exhibit at the Guggenheim in New York, or heard about it, the towering gilded altar that was the centerpiece of the show is back home in Olinda, at the church of São Bento (St. Benedict's). The Church of St. Francis is almost as lavish, with a staggering wealth of blue-and-white Portuguese azuleijos (tilework) dating back to the 1500's.

 

Last night I checked out the Blue Thermas, at r. José Domingues da Silva, 147, here in Boa Viagem. The street is a small residential one, and at first my cab driver didn't recognize it, but when I told him it crossed Barão de Souza Leão, a main street running inland from the beach near the Praça da Boa Viagem, he knew where it was. The sauna is on a corner, in a converted house painted (you guessed it!) blue. Physically, this is one of the nicest saunas I've been in here in Brazil. Everything is modern and up-to-date, with an eye to design and decor, excellent air-conditioning and ventilation, a really nice bar area, good steam and dry saunas, etc. The desk will call you a taxi if there isn't one waiting outside when you're ready to leave. The place was busy when I arrived, but it seems to be a kind of "mixed" experience. Working boys wear blue towels, clients wear white ones, and for the first time there seemed to be more clients than escorts. There clearly was interaction going on between clients, many of whom are obviously regulars, as well as with the working boys, and the escorts were lower-key than at other such establishments. I must not have been in the mood (I've been very mildly under the weather the last couple of days) but with the exception of about three of the working guys, the quality wasn't what I've come to expect in Brazil, and I ended up just hanging out, enjoying the facilities, and going home without scoring. DON'T let this keep you from experiencing Blue Thermas yourself, because it's extremely pleasant and you may find exactly what you want here. Weekdays it's open from 3:00 until 11:00, and until 5:00 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, so those may be the nights to go.

 

This afternoon, I'm going to check out the Thermas Boa Vista, which also come recommended. It's located in the older Boa Vista neighborhood, near downtown, and close to the new medical center. Before that, I'm going to old downtown Recife which is starting to be restored. It's full of ornate old buildings, in bright tropical colors, and it's becoming a nightlife center again. Auntie Semitic can stop reading now, because what follows will probably start him spewing again: one of the major "new" attractions in old Recife is the Jewish Cultural Center located on the recently rediscovered site of the first synagogue in the Americas. Recife had the first organized Jewish community in the New World during the Dutch occupation of northeastern Brazil in the late 1500's/early 1600's. When the Portuguese reconquered the region and drove out the Dutch, the Jews had to flee back to Holland. One of the ships, which ran into bad weather, ended up instead in New Amsterdam ( now known as New York) where they stayed, establishing the first Jewish community in North America. That was in the 1650's, as I recall. The Brazilian connection, as you can see, goes a long way back!

 

On to São Paulo tomorrow, and more "research." A new sauna with escorts seems to have opened downtown there, so I'll check it out while I'm there. Then it's back to the U.S. next Wednesday. . .

[Guest Gringo]

TRI---I think you will like Boa Vista Sauna. But my personal favorite is still Spartacus. Try to get there if you can. And say hi to the gang at the Savoy on Av. Guarranapas. God I love Recife!!

;-)

[Guest Deweywop]

Trilingual, thanks so much for the reports of the northern coast. I had hoped to hit Salvador, Recife/Olinda, Jericoacoara, and Fortaleza this Carnavale season, but it was not meant to be ($$). But that's sure to be my next trip. Glad to hear there will be places where I can find boys to "comfort" me.

[trilingual]

Well, I don't know what you'll find in Jericoacoara (it's a small place) but you certainly won't go "friendless" in Salvador, Recife or Fortaleza!

 

Speaking of which, I went to the Thermas Boa Vista last night and had a good time. It's almost, though not quite, as up-to-date and luxurious as the Blue Thermas. TBV is located in the inner suburb of Boa Vista, at r. dom Manoel Pereira, 63. The sauna is in a converted house, painted a tasteful apricot color. There were also what seemed to be as many clients as guys, and the place is clearly a social hangout for local clients (they offer multi-visit discount tickets) but for my money the guys were much hotter than at Blue Thermas, at least the night I was there. I had a delightful encounter with Carlos Eduardo, who is one of the sauna's poster boys. About 5'8", good looking, good body, good dick, and a talented masseur. If I hadn't had to get to bed early in order to arise at 5:00 a.m. to catch my early morning flight to São Paulo, I'd have stayed longer and sampled some other guys. One thing, though, either I'm going blind or TBV has the darkest steam and dry saunas I've run into in many a moon. For my taste, a bit more light in there would be nice! In every other way, I highly recommend it (and, as I said before, Blue Thermas is also extremely nice; I just may have hit it on one of its less-stellar nights).

 

Getting to either place by cab was a bit of a challenge. Evidently a thorough knowledge of local streets isn't a qualification for getting a hack license in Northeastern Brazil. Both in Salvador and Recife, when I gave the address of the sauna, the driver didn't know the street. I had looked up the streets on local maps, so I had a general idea of where the places were, but it was a bit touch and go, with considerable stopping and asking for directions on my trip to TBV. It's useful to know landmarks: For Persona in Salvador, it's on the street that runs alongside the Shopping da Lapa. The street Blue Thermas is on intersects r. da Feirinha (also known as Souza Leão). The street TBV is on is in front of CELPE (the electric company headquarters). That seems to make a big difference in being able to get where you're going.

 

Blue and TBV have nice websites, and they include maps you can print out and bring with you to show cabdrivers. Blue is at http://www.gaytour.com.br/blue and TBV is at http://www.gaytour.com.br/tbv in case you want to take a vicarious tour of the places before actually getting to Recife. Enjoy!

[Guest Deweywop]

There may be a cultural thing about addresses and locations. When I was trying to find the sauna in Curitiba, nobody, not the hotel staff, their friends, the delivery guy who dropped by the desk, people on the street, knew where that street was. I figured it must be way out in the boonies. I turned out to be only in the next neighborhood over from my downtown hotel. In some countries streets are renamed with every "regime change" and people just give up trying. Wonder if that's the case in parts of Brazil.

 

I've only heard rumors and seen photos of Jericoacoara. No one I know has actually been there. But getting laid in such a remote, paradise-sounding place would be a fantasy challenge.

[trilingual]

As is common in many parts of the world, street names tend to change as they go from neighborhood to neighborhood in Brazil. Worse, there are frequently several streets with the same (or very similar) names in the same city, located in different neighborhoods. (It's kind of like all the different Peachtrees in Atlanta.)

 

Big Brazilian cities are sprawling, and I don't expect cab drivers to know every single street, some of which are only a couple of blocks long, but main avenues tend to keep the same name as they traverse the city and I certainly think it's reasonable to expect cab drivers to know the names of streets that major shopping centers are located on, for example. Also, there are maps and city guides in most Brazilian cities. Assuming a driver is literate (and presumably they have to be at least basically literate) I'd expect a driver to carry one with him to help find unfamiliar locations. Oh, well, just treat these little things as adventures and voyages of discovery, and you'll be fine. Eventually you should arrive at your destination, just not in a split second. . .