On Friday morning I explored near my pousada, which is right in the center of town. Nearby is the town hall.
The building is pink and has some cannons in front. The road down from my pousada is very rough and paved with rocks. Downhill from the town hall is a bank and the church.
Down from there, the road forks and to the left are some beaches, while to the right is an old fort. Before you reach the becahes, there are some ruins.
The beaches are separated by stone outcroppings. The view is the one at the top of the page, or from a lower level, that shown below.
The fortress stand on a hill right by the water, so you have to climb up from the level of the church. The picture below was taken from the town hall, which is high on the town hill.
There were a lot of cannon in the fort, some just stuck in the ground, which is bizarre. The one below wasn't buried, and a detail shot of the date on it is shown to the right. It says 28-9-15. What century?
Below is the view of the town from the fortress. The church is on the lower left, the town hall on the middle right, and the town is barely visible above the church.
After my tour of town, I had some lunch and went SCUBA diving. Lunch consisted of very familiar food. I had rice and black beans, and boliche (Spanish for a roast). Actually, there were a lot of different foods but I didn't want to eat too much. The price was 8 reais, about $2.50 in US dollars.
Because of the good recommendation in Undercurrents (a diving newsletter), I went with Atlantis Divers (two tank trip). Their office is located near the church, but the boats leave from the harbor (shown below). I took a few dive boat pictures on Saturday, so see next page for them.
The dives were nice, although the fish weren't as abundant as in the Caribbean. The first dive was to a very large cave. There was a large ray sitting on the bottom, but not too many other fish around. The second dive had a lot of fish, which looked like the Caribbean varieties that I'm used to seeing.
They dropped us off (long step off open areas on the sides of the boat) and the boat would travel to pick us up. Recovery was by two large ladders at the stern of the boat. They didn't use the buddy system. Instead, we went in a group of about 8 accompanied by two dive masters, one leading and one trailing.
Friday dinner was at the place shown below. The pizza was very good, an extremely thin crust.
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