Day 84 - 27 Feb.2012 - Porto de Galinhas

Today is Monday and we did not have the quietness of yesterday's traffic. We learned that straight away when we had to fight our way through Aracaju back to the BR-101. Almost one hour later and we were back on the interstate travelling north.
By now the landscape is dominated by sugar cane monoculture. The harvest has started and workers are cutting the cane by hand using long machetes. The fields have been burned over night to burn away the sharp edged leaves and clear the fields of poisonous snakes and other dangerous animals or reptiles. As the fire travels quite fast trough the fields, all the thin leaves burn away leaving only the black canes.
The sugar cane is then collected at loading stations where forklift trucks load it onto trucks to transport it to the next "usina" - the sugar cane factory to make sugar, ethanol for cars or alcohol to drink. Since the 70's when Brazil introduced a national program to used sugar cane alcohol in cars to boost the agricultural sugar cane industry and be more independent from oil imports - at that time Brazil still had to import oil, most of the sugar cane is distilled into ethanol for fuel. The sugar cane trucks are often 30 metres long with tree trailers and not seldom hopelessly overloaded. It leaves always an unpleasant feeling to overtake them. In between the sugar cane monoculture we more and more see land occupations by landless farmers, forced into cheap labour taking the law into their hands and reclaiming unproductive land back. The northeast of Brazil had in the past plenty of small agriculture farms that were taken over by the big companies to give way to more sugar cane monoculture. The then landless farmers were then forced to work for the "usina" for a minimum salary and, because of the remote locations were forced to buy their food, which hey can not produce by themselves anymore, from the store owned by the usina at high prices.
Since the 90's however, more and more farmers are trying to reclaim land back to start growing for them. The Brazilian land reform, requested by the UNO for years, is long overdue and is most likely not going to happen. However, a Brazilian law states that if a land is unproductive for some time it can be occupied to plant food etc. The occupations are organised in a cloak-and-dagger operation often with logistical and judicial help of organisations like CPT (Commissão Pastoral da Terra) or MST (Movimento Sem Terra). The fight for land can take several years and will be taken to the courtyards to get agreement between the parties. Often the conflict gets violent with loss of lives, mostly on the land occupiers side.
As we drove on through the sugar cane fields we entered our last state Pernambuco where we started our trip almost three months ago. The BR-101 is for most of the stretch duplicated and the last 50 km are a piece of cake.
We left the highway after Escada and drove towards the coast to Porto de Galinhas where we are planning to stay a couple of days just at the beach and relax. The last time I was in Porto de Galinhas is about 15 years ago and I was negatively surprised how it developed in recent years. The small city is famous for its beautiful beaches and marine life and a lot of tourists from São Paulo and Rio are coming here on holiday. As a result it had grown a lot over the years, not seldom without much control. After some unsuccessful attempts to find a nice pousada or hotel close to the beach, which would suit our budget, we decided to drive back out of the city in search for a nice spot.
We fount a fantastic pousada, Marambaia do Porto, right at the beach. We booked ourselves in for three nights and went straight to the beach to have a relaxing walk with the feet splashing through the waves.