This was my second time in two years in Fortaleza. I came back for a month to train at a local gym that I really like, work and chill on the beach. Increasingly I find myself returning to locations where there is less to be explored, and more that supports a comfortable life while I am there and Fortaleza is the perfect place for that.
My favorite part of Fortaleza is the upscale gym where I train. It’s located a block from the beach in Beira Mar (“seaside”), and much fancier than the gyms I typically go to. It’s expensive too, but everyone is really nice and happy to see me there, and there are yoga classes too. Even though nobody speaks English (and I don’t speak Portuguese), everyone is really kind and supportive. There’s an attached cafe at the gym that sells me post-workout tapiocas, which I just can’t get enough of. I always make performance improvements while I am training there, and each time I leave Fortaleza I am excited to come back again, for longer.
I like staying in Beira Mar, a central downtownish place alongside the beach. A long esplanade runs along the beach for about 5 kilometers and offers an ideal place to go for a walk during the day or at night, when people gather at the beach bars and restaurants up and down the beach. Another selling point of the city are the direct flights to Europe (Lisbon and Paris for cheap!) which allows me to bypass a USA transfer when traveling from South America. And it’s really near Cumbuco, which makes for an easy Uber transfer if I want to get extra beachy.
Work was slow the month that I was in Fortaleza (June) and I took the opportunity to focus on my health and fitness. After each morning gym session, I would get an iced coffee from a little stand near the beach that has no business having such good iced coffee. Really it’s sort of a marvel since Brazilians don’t drink iced coffee (much to my annoyance), they actively avoid it which is so strange since it is usually hot and sweaty in Brazil.
Anyway, this small coffee stand — great iced coffee — and I would get one each morning and slowly sip it as I sat on a bench on the esplanade getting vitamin from the morning sunshine. I’d bring a Kindle with me to read until the sun got too strong and my coffee was terminated. Then I would retreat to my apartment to work until I took an afternoon stroll again on the esplanade to get vitamin D and read my books. Rinse, repeated each day for a month, that is my daily routine in Fortaleza. I look forward to doing more of the same again, when I return next.
