Salvador

old street of Pelourinho
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Salvador de Bahia is one of the higlights of Brazil and is probably the most visited city together with Rio de Janeiro. It does not have long impressive beaches like Ipanema, Copacabana but it has the charm of an old colonial city. When I walked in the historical streets of Pelourinho, it sometimes reminded me of Prague (of course not as good as (-: ). The other great thing in Salvador is the weather: unlike Rio where it often rains, Salvador seems to be always sunny, even too much sunny for white skin "gringos" like me (I managed to get burned while using sun-block with protection 40 ! )

the internal decoration of the Sao Francisco church
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I arrived to Salvador from Sao Paulo on Friday afternoon and stayed in the Albergue do Porto, close to the beach. I decided to go to the beach to enjoy the evening. Although Salvador is very touristy, the Praia de Barra is used mainly by locals and given my coulour, I could not stay un-noticed. As a result, every 2 seconds someone tried to sell something to me, until the moment when three students took pity of me and told me to sit wiht them to get rid of all the attention. It was a beautiful day and when the sun was coming down, I decided to go for a bath (water temperature was I guess 28 degrees C so no problem getting in). When I was getting out of the water, to my astonishement, all people started to applaud !!! I was not aware that my body would have such an effect on the Brazilians (-: To my disasppointement, I was told they were not applauding me, but saying bye to the sun disappearing in the water...

the street sellers of aqua de coco, a great drink especially on the beach, from green cocos (as opposed to the brown ones that have milk)
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On Friday evening, I went to see the carnival repetition of Motumba, one of the groups playing in the carnival in Salvador. It was quite incredible, the whole hall was dancing like crazy, it was impossible to stay still....I cannot imagine doing this for the whole week during the carnival ! I understand now why my friend Luis from Sao Paulo told me;" For the carnival in Salavador, you need 2 weeks, one for the carnival, one more to relax on the beach."

On Saturday, I went to visit Pelourinho, the historical part of Salvador with Lorraine, an English air-hostess I met in my hostel. The city was really beautiful, in particular the gold decorated Igreja do Sao Franciso, very similar to churches you can see in Portugal, from the time when the Portugese were ruling the world. For lunch we tried Bahaian specialities in a restaurant run by a culinary school....muito bom !

in case you like Havaianas, there is good choice
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On Sunday, I left Salvador for Prai de Forte...