Salvador - Week 29

30th March to 4th April

Salvador proved very difficult to get to, but has been completely worth all the hassle...

When we arrived at Curitiba airport we found that Oceanair had canceled our flight! They managed to get us onto another flight with Webjet and so we waited an extra 2 hours for the flight which was now going to involve two stops and would get us into Salvador 3 hours late but that was fine as long as we got there. It was when we arrived at the first stopover in Porto Alegre and were told to get off the plane that we started getting annoyed... The plane was now broken and would take 2 hours to fix. Then the military air traffic controllers decided to go on strike and were arrested by the military police, practically on the hour of our flight was ready to take off again!!! Then the civilian airtraffic controllers went on strike too. A couple of hours later, with the all the planes in Brazil grounded, the government agreed to give them more cash. 6 hours later at 1am we were on our way again and we eventually arrived in Salvador at 5am, 10 hours later than the original plan. Never mind, look on the tight-arsed backpacker bright side - a night's accommodation costs saved!!

After a courtesy taxi ride on the airline company (I should think so!), we checked out some decidedly dodgy hostels (recommended in both guide books - really going from the bibles!) but eventually found a really nice place, Hostel Lanajeira, right in the centre of the old town and all the action.

We were pretty knackered all day on the Saturday after very little sleep the night before so we took it easy. We did go to a fantastic folkloric show in one of the theaters in the evening, though. It was a display of traditional Afro-Brazilian dance and ended in a fantastic display of capoeira (you know, that dance where they pretend to fight but aren't allowed to touch each other?) which was really impressive.

Traditional costumes

Capoeira in the steet

On the way back to the hostel we took some detours through the streets to soak up the atmos and saw the first of many drumming bands that we would see this week. The bands all practise in the streets so you can hear them somewhere in the city all day. This particular band was all-girls and they were having some sort of drum-off taking it in turns to play solo and whoever lost the beat was out. They were excellent. We could listen to this kind of drumming all day (which was lucky, because we did for 5 days!!).

On the Sunday we morning we had a wonder around the city to visit some of the museums and churches and took the obligatory trip to tourist information (mainly to find out which streets were not safe to walk on as we had been turned away from a couple of streets by locals telling us they weren't safe...). Then in the afternoon, we took the bus to Barra, a beach district 1/2 hour south of the city centre. It was lovely. We had an hour's respite from the oppressive heat in the air-conditioned shopping centre and then walked up the Morro Christo for a great view of the sunset.

That show over, we headed to a great bar recommended to us that had a live samba band playing who were brilliant, really good musicians, great songs but it was watching them enjoy performing that was the highlight. They were constantly laughing and joking with each other. Friends of theirs came up from the audience randomly, picked up a spare instrument and joined in. Then there were people getting up to dance in a most impressive way with the high speed bum wiggling you see African dancers doing. In all it was another example of the difference between Brazil and Brazilians and the Argentinians/Chileans we have met so far - they love to have fun and party. When they laugh and joke with each other they don't just have a little giggle, they laugh and laugh till they are crying with laughter!! This creates a brilliant atmosphere everytime you go out, always lots of laughing and joking all around. Brazil is far more about the people and they way then enjoy themselves than the scenery sights of the other parts of South America we have visited.

Samba band with Peter Kay second right!

Top quality cocktails here - strawberries squished with ice and vodka

On Monday, we decided to 'go tourist' and booked on a boat tour around the islands of the bay (it's the only way you can get to one of the islands...). Most of the people on the boat were Brazilian tourists and being the party people that they were, the caipirinhas were flowing at 10am and everyone was dancing to the samba band on board. It was like a trip back in time to the party boats we used to go on in Tenerife when we were 17!

It was really good fun and the islands we went to were beautiful. We had been told that there was a tour guide on board who spoke english and would take us for tours round the islands and tell us about their history but there was none of that which was a bit annoying. The closest we got to having a guide was a fat bloke at the front pointing everyone to the beach as we got off the boat...! Anyway, it was a nice relaxing day out of the city and on the beach.

That evening we went to a recommended restaurant to eat the local dish of fish and prawns in a coconut curry which was absolutely delicious:

On Tuesday we spent some more time wandering around Salvador. The city has literally hundreds of churches (apparently one for every day of the year) and most of them only have one bell tower to escape the tax on churches to be paid only when they are finished!:

It is a great place to wander round, you can just people watch for hours. There are people on street corners selling all sorts of kebabs, coconuts and traditional food, samba bands, capoeira groups practising and of course, the drummers playing all day and all night. Also, lots of big mammas walking around in traditional costume...

Tuesday is a religious day and therefore the biggest party night in Salvador. We went to the local mass at 6pm because someone said it was very different to mass at home but it turned out to be very similar but in Portuguese so we slipped out after a while. Then it was on to a giant stairway to one of the bigger churches which made the perfect seating arena for the live band at the bottom, the apparently very famous 'Geronimo'! The whole of Salvador must have been there, it was brilliant. Everyone was dancing and cheering and drinking lots of beer and caipirnhas.

The main square on Tuesday night

After Geronimo we went to a little square packed with bars and people and a samba band on a stage in the middle. There were bum-wiggling (ie samba) competitions on the stage and a dancefloor packed with locals. Someone made the mistake of telling Katie that she could samba so she got cocky and had a dance-off with one of the locals... Bad idea, James took a video (just of the arses, of course!) and Katie just looks ridiculous next to a natural!!

The rest of the night involved street food, more drinking and dancing and drinking and dancing, it was great!

Wednesday was VERY quiet. Managed to get out for something to eat late in the day with the people we'd been out with the night before but didn't last long..!

Thursday afternoon we were leaving for Rio but we managed to fit in a final church in the morning and discovered that we'd really saved the best 'til last. It was the most impressive church we've been in and being the sight-seeing geeks we are, we've been in a few! The whole of the inside was handcarved in wood at the beginning of the 1800's and covered in gold leaf so the whole church seems to glow. We weren't allowed to take pictures but we've bought postcards so you can see when we get home.

Then it was on the bus to airport for the flight to Rio - so excited!!

History (with Wikipedia's help!!) Corner with James:

The Portuguese landed on the southern coast of Bahia in 1500, and claimed the territory for Portugal. In 1549, Portugal established the city of Salvador, on a hill facing the Bay of All Saints. The city and surrounding captaincy served as the administrative and religious capital of Portugal's colonies in the Americas until 1763 when it was succeeded by Rio de Janeiro as the capital.

Bahia was a center of sugar cultivation from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Integral to the sugar economy was the importation of a vast number of African slaves; more than 37% (4,500,000) of all slaves taken from Africa were sent to Brazil, mostly to be processed in Salvador before being sent to work in plantations elsewhere in the country. An estimated 1.3 million slaves were put to work in Bahia before slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, double the number imported into the entire United States of America.

African slaves were enslaved instead of the indigenous peoples as they were less vulnerable to tropical diseases and to tropical conditions. The benefits of importing the slaves all the way from Africa far exceeded the costs. After 2-3 years, slaves worked off their worth, and plantation owners began to make profits from them. Plantation owners made lucrative profits even though there was approximately a 10% death rate per year, mainly due to harsh working conditions. The average life span of a slave was eight years.

Gradually the slaves revolted against their master and escaped forming large communities inland. They survived by growing vegetables and hunting, and by also raiding plantations. At these attacks, they would burn crops, steal livestock, kill slavemasters, and encourage the other slaves to join their communities. Obviously they Portuguese were terrified of this uprising and resorted to what any good-ole colonial power would do and retaliated with extreme violence. The slaves found to be planning to escape to join the slave communities were whipped in the main square in Salvador, called Pelourinho. Pelourinho is a stone column in the middle of the square that slaves were tied to and flogged.

These whippings were extreme not like where a person is flogged maybe ten or twelve times as you may imagine. The number of lashes meted out ranged from 250 to 1,250 - at a rate of 50 per day until the total was met. As one might imagine, wounds and sores became infected, ulcering and festering, and the beatings went on nevertheless, day after day, until the lesions became life-threatening. Only then was punishment was temporarily halted in order to give the castigated time to recuperate, before the lashing would again be renewed. Sometimes the slaves never did recuperate.