Chickens, Chickens, Everywhere

Seeing that we live on the beach, we decided to get away for the weekend and head to the beach. Really! Since a few friends were in town from Brasilia, we decided to take advantage and head to Porto de Galinhas [Port of the Chickens], a relaxed beach town 70km south of Recife. After anxiously waiting all week for our getaway, we awoke on Saturday morning only to discover incredibly dark clouds and rain and heavy winds beating and swirling at the windows. Keeping our faith in the temporariness of storms here in Recife, we crossed our fingers and headed on our way. Fortunately, the saints of travel and weather were smiling upon us, and by the time we were installed in the pousada and ready for the day, the sun was shining brightly.

Porto de Galinhas earned its name during a rather dark period of Brazil's history. Throughout the slave trade, one of the dropping-off points for boats arriving from Africa was the beach where Porto de Galinhas now sits. Although the slave trade was officially abolished in 1888, boats with slaves continued to clandestinely arrive from Africa in the following years. When the sugarlords of Pernambuco heard that a shipment of “Chickens from Angola” had arrived, they knew what to expect. Even once the unofficial slave trade was finally abolished, the name stuck and the town came to be officially known as Porto de Galinhas.

As it turns out, the town has embraced their name and has managed to turn themselves into a charming beach town which has everything to do with chickens. A local artist started carving stylised chickens out of the bases and trunks of dead coconut trees and an industry was born. The carved chickens are all over town in a variety of different characters – tourist chickens, skateboarding chickens, famous-Brazilians chickens, merchickens [as opposed to mermaids], iron-pumping chickens, bikini-clad chickens, curler-clad chickens, bandit chickens, Japanese-chef chickens, well, you get the idea. Now, while it might seem that this would be quite tacky, somehow it seems to work. The chickens are all very charming, especially since many of them have a slightly surprised or astonished expressions. Here is a small selection of the chickens of Porto de Galinhas. As you can see, I had quite a lot of fun photographing “the locals”.