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Salvador

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Salvador:

When I started this jaunt around the rock commonly known as planet earth I made the pledge to try and do as much of it overland as was possible, so I racked up the miles on the subcontinent and south east asia using planes, trains, automobiles and the odd boat thrown in here and there. In south east asia and especially india this is a really good approach if you have the time because the journey as a wiser man than myself once said is a destination in itself, interacting with locals, seeing the country side drift by either by boat or a train is pure magic is what travelling is all about.

In south America though this is not so much the case, the distances between towns are massive, huge!! Unless you had 12 months where you could take local buses and spend 5 hours out of every 3 days on a bus of some description then its just not practical. You never sleep well on overnight buses so you end up spending most of the day when you arrived too knackered to do anything other than sleep or drink. So with this justification in mind it was with the clearest of consciousness that we booked a flight from rio to Salvador cutting what would have been a 20 hour bus trip down to a 2 hour flight and at 1/3rd the price it really was a bit of a no brainer. (Mathematical geniuses note the mistake in the last sentence – seriously libs hand back that phd if you don’t spot it) 😉

We arrived into salvador at 6 in the evening, it felt like a different world immediately, the warm air greets you like a big warm hug when you exit the arrivals hall door. The second thing that struck us about the place was a strike in itself. Some upheaval by the masses had cut off the regular bus service from the airport into the barrio (neighbourhood) where we had intended pitching ourselves for a few days. After a bit of messing, chasing tales getting translations from Portuguese to  French and from French to English we found ourselves in the back of a minivan crawling through chronic Thursday evening rush hour traffic. It took us 3 hours to get to the centre of town, it was awful. Gimme 6 hours, 12 hours going at full pelt – twould have been better than sitting in the middle of nowhere and going nowhere.

The bus dropped us off in an eerily quiet and quite daunting centre of Salvador, darkness seemed to shroud everything, I dunno whether it was just my imagination but shadows seemed to be lurking everywhere that wasn’t under the feeble street lighting. We got directions from the bus driver to a taxi rank where this auld fella summoned us into his taxi cab. I was glad to get inside the cab, so much so I didn’t take a whole lot of notice of what he was saying or the fact that he was saying anything. Marilyn was steering the ship at this stage. Eventually I tuned in and he yapped away, we showed him the address of our intended hostel and he tore around furiously looking for it.  We stopped to ask other taxi drivers, they pointed us on. A security guard pointed us back which in a one way street sent us around a block or two. Eventually Marilyn bailed out and up a street which matched our address to a number on a door which matched our scratching on notebook but attached next to it a For Sale sign. Bugger!

Our taxi driver was not to be beaten, like a true great he stood up against adversity and twice as quickly as before he tore around the streets, tearing up the rules of the road in the name of getting us a bed. Brakes screeched, rubber burned, curtains drawn fearing the inevitable shoot out. We pulled up outside a large yellow building with the lights on and the letters Albergue (Portuguese for hostel) etched into the side of the wall. We thanked our driver profusely to which he just nonchantly passed us his number and walked off in slow motion into the Salvadorian night safe in the knowledge than another two gringos have been safely housed – all in a nights work!

The hostel was nice, very nice. Situated less than 50 metres from the historical and lovely beach along with restaurants, bars and other historical stuff – Salvador was one of the first cities established by the portugese and also the landing spot for so many black slaves from Africa back in the day a fact that cannot be lost on even the most unobservant of travellers as 80% of the towns population have dark African skin. Our first port of call though was food, and lots off it. Hugo our friend from Rio gave us a few recommended dishes to check out while we were here. Due to the strong African influence the local cuisine also was rather unique compared to the rest of the country. First port of call was the moqueca which is a sumptuous feed of prawns, rice, beans and fish. Man it was superb, it more than fed the pair of us and sent us back to the hostel for a well earned kip.

The next day we took in the great breakfast that was on offer, lots of fruit and then took to the local area. We walked around and found our bearings amongst the most important of our discoveries was the local fish monger who sorted us out with a massive fish which we cooked much to the envy of the pasta and sauce brigade back in the hostel. We hung out with a couple of the guys there, many many of them were superbly cool people. So many hostels can be just full of people who drone on endlessly about DOING countries, seriously how do you DO a country!! I have been hangin around backpackers too long I think, they are on my list of pet peeves. Anyways these guys were cool, we discussed all things musical, alcoholic and onwards we found ourselves having a few beers with a couple of brazillian art students who promised to take us out for a few beers later that night a proposal I was never gonna say no to so we ended up in a barrio close by sitting in a town square drinking bottles of beer while the sea lapped up against the wall a couple of yards away.

We got up the next morning we thought was early enough to get the beach empty enough for a swim, alarm was set for 7 and we made the 50 yard mammoth journey that it was to find a been full to the bring with scantily clad brazillians making the most of the weekends sunshine. So we pitched up and went for a swim. In the afternoon we headed into the old town to stroll around and take in the atmosphere. It really is a lovely town to walk around, much more so than Rio and Sao Paulo. It just seems so much more relaxed and laid back. And there is plenty to see we wound the day down in a central square drinking coffee and walking the other tourists get hassled to buy all sorts of nick nacks.  

During a wander around Salvador it is impossible not to notice the large black women dressed entirely in white with small stalls selling just one make of a snack. The snack is called acaraje. It is basically very bad for you, some sort of bread that is deep fried, sliced then filled with spiciness shrimp onion, tomato, peppers and such things – you then eat it like a kebab. I thought it was okay but my lovely lady friend was not partial to it. Acquired taste me thinks.

The plan for the evening was to hit the local modern arts museum for what was described as a Jazz Jam. Not the biggest jazz fan in the world but we made it regardless. First off all the museum itself is fantastic. Set on the side of the oceans bank it incorporates several buildings and several mind boggling displays, we made our way after an impromptu game of hide and seek to the location of the jazz jam. It was perfect, set off the side of the main building open aired and open to the ocean we sat along the oceans wall, drank some sweaty beer and ate some dodgy food while the jazz played away in the background. We called it a night early enough

The next day we fled Salvador, headed north to the town of macaeio.