25. Along the beaches

Two leagues away from Recife, hectic and noisy, passing by Olinda, the fallen capital city, majestic and peaceful relic of the past, we penetrate an endless forest of coconut trees that lines the white sandy beach. The slashed coconut trees quiver and whisper at the slightest breeze. Sieving the brutal daylight, they interlace and unlace their fine blades. We bathe, enthralled, in a golden-green penumbra, lulled by the murmuring of the foliage and the roaring of the sea that, incessantly, comes to die just a few meters away.

Living in rammed earth huts whose only luxury constitutes of a few hammocks, the families of fishermen live there in destitution and paradisiacal peace of the beginnings of the world.