July 16

16 July

1. Field trip to modern port
We rose early to go to Suape (50 km fromRecife) which is the modern port area of Recife. It took over an hour in the bus to get there-- in the course of which we took Recife's first private toll road, left the city behind and rode through some coastal rainforest portion. The area between the bridge and the coastal forest is getting heavily built up with upscale residences with houses in the price range of up 800,000 dollars or more.

The public port of Suape is located about 50 km south of Recife and is the first deep water port along the Northeastern coast. Before this port, oceangoing vessels had to go to Rio. On average, it takes ships from here to Rotterdam 9 days and to the Unitec States 7 days. 

Inside Suape is a training center for people to acquire special work skills. ALS is a school training people to work with steel - 4000. People were trained there.

The Suape port has about  88,900 direct employees, so it is clearly a major employment location requiring a lot of manpower. The port is working on infrastructure: there are 32 km of railways for cargo trains, none for passengers. Employees are bussed back and forth by the big companies present here, others rely on long car commutes, most of them from Recife.  

Some numbers:
Oil refinery 230.000 oil barrels/ day--some of the. oil comes from the huge oil reserve off Brazil's coast, some from other countries.
Shipyard 25,000 indirect jobs, 5,000 direct ones
Chemical complex = lots of jobs
45 % of Suape's area is considered protrected.

According to federal  law for the environment = 30% of any acquired land must be protected, so some of the 45% an be expected to be built up in the future. 

There  is competition of places - between harbors of various states.

2. Trip to Porto de Galinhas
Porto de Galinhas was the port where slaves could be bought at a time when buying slaves was no longer allowed but using their labor was. A code was used to market the slaves: the chicken have arrived, hence the name of the port--port of the chickens. Tourist memorabilia are chicken of all sizes with or without babies. The original fishing village is becoming a tourist town fast. Already there are a lot of tourist shops lining more than one street. In close proximity one finds a very modern resort center with a long beach stretching as far as the eyes can see. This coast is seeing a boom in construction since more and more people are purchasing a second home here.