We were both starting to feel like we were just on holidays and not actually travelling anymore with all of these beach towns so it was great to get to Olinda and a bit of history and culture again.Olinda is a small town which was previously the capital of Brazil and it has the most amazing architecture, all tiny cobbled streets lined with beautiful historic houses in the brightest colours. Plus some of the houses have amazing murals on them, our favourite was one with a mans face taking over a whole building, very cool.

We were lucky enough to find a Forro party (close to Brazilian country music but with a very fast beat to it too) in Olinda and headed down with a good crowd we´d met from the hostel and some locals we picked up on the way.The crowd was really mixed but they all looked like they were having the time of their lives.Forro is very hard to describe and the dancing is even harder to describe in fact it´s hard to see what exactly they are doing before you´re up there doing it too as it´s all so fast and so close together! I´ve had to turn to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forr%C3%B3) for help and it says that "Forró is danced in pairs, usually very close together, with the man's left hand holding the woman's right hand as in the waltz, his right arm around her back and her left arm around his neck; in this style, the man's right leg stays in between the woman's legs, following the African tradition of a close pelvis."So anyhow I got up to dance with one of the locals who wanted to show me how it was done and you can imagine my surprise to find his leg firmly wedged in between mine and our hips moving forwards and backwards and swaying to the fast beat all at the same time!Good thing Gareth was still at the bar! I retired quickly after just one dance but it was fun to try.

Coming out of the party we discovered that the locals were also throwing their own street party with massive speakers in the boots of cars providing the entertainment as well as some local girls dancing very provocatively! The usual drink stalls with the uber strong caiprinhas and caiprioskas may have fuelled that. And as per usual we could recognize the songs but everything was in Portuguese, very strange they seem to take all the English songs and have a Brazilian singer sing them either in English badly or in Portuguese - weird!

Olinda was one of those places where you meet a crowd of people who you feel like you´ve known for years and that you´re sorry to say goodbye to.On our last day we all sat around for hours just playing cards and chatting about everything and anything before we headed into Recife (the big town nearby) for a wander through the old centre before catching our night bus on to the next stop… no rest for the traveller!

P.S. We also got to taste roast potatoes for the first time in months! I was in heaven