Baffled in Brazil

I went on holiday to Recife, Brazil last year having lived there 17 years ago without having been back since. One important reason for going back was to finally sort out some slightly mucky elements from my past which had contributed to my leaving - I had been spurred into action by having read a book called The Velvet Rage last year. I wanted to meet up with 2 Brazilians, Savio and Walter, both of whom I had been in a relationship with, but had lost touch with when I left the country (and was unable to track down on any social networking sites). I thought i would go anyway and somehow try and locate them - totally unrealistic really in a city of a million people. The 2 of them used to share a flat with a 3rd person Adelmo, who had moved to Switzerland 15 years ago, at which point (so it turned out) all 3 of them had lost touch. Walking along the beach on my 2nd day in Recife I bumped into Adelmo - he was also just visting on holiday, from Switzerland, as his mother had died the previous month. I was naturally delighted because I assumed he would know of the whereabouts of the other 2. However, he told me that Walter had died 7 years ago and that Savio had moved to another city in the north east of Brazil and they hadn't seen each other since he left for Switzerland. However, the next day Adelmo went to one of the shopping centres in Recife and ran into Savio, who was in the city on a business trip - he lived 300km from Recife. The 3 of us then met up that evening, trying to work out how this could have been possible and what the probability of this happening was etc etc.