Day 45: Um Conto de Duas Cidades

Day 45
Today I'm in: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Some of the computer issues are resolved and I'm back with some photos today.  My laptop is still acting funny - refusing to wake up from sleep, keyboard randomly freezing, etc. - but I can connect to wi-fi again and that helps a lot.  Of course, I had to move hotels to do it.  My first hotel (where I stayed last night), in addition to having no English-speaking staff, no hot water in the shower, and a lumpy bed, didn't have functioning wi-fi.  So this morning I transferred to a different pousada a few blocks away that's much nicer and more convenient anyhow.  I have to go back tomorrow morning and argue with the English-speaking owner of the old place to get a refund.

So a bit of background on Salvador.  This is Brazil's third-largest city (after Sao Paulo and Rio) and is located in the state of Bahia, where Europeans first landed in Brazil hundreds of years ago.  Bahia's ports also handled millions of Africans brought to Brazil as slaves (slavery wasn't abolished in Brazil until the 1880s) and today this region, as well as several neighboring states, houses the majority of the country's black and mulatto population.  White faces aren't nearly as common here as they were in Sao Paulo, and African traditions have seeped into everything in Bahia - food, music, religion, even language.

Salvador is situated on a V-shaped peninusla between the Atlantic and the Baia de Todos Os Santos or All Saints' Bay.  The oldest part of the city faces the bay (more on that later) but the nicest neighborhoods line the beaches on the ocean side of the peninsula.  I'm staying in one of them, Barra, which is pronounced Bah-hah due to Brazilian Portguese's omission of the letter 'r' from pretty much everything.  Barra is a tightly-packed warren of high-rise apartment buildings right at the tip of the peninsula.  It's the home of the first lighthouse in South America, which marks the entrance to the bay, and the city's busiest and most popular beach.  It's a pretty nice area with a lot of restaurants and bars facing the ocean.

The biggest draw in Salvador, however, is the old city, which is a 15-minute bus ride from Barra.  It's divided into the Cidade Alta (high city) and the Cidade Baixa (low city), which are separated by a very steep and weedy bluff.  Connecting the two are the Elevador Lacerda (a very Art Deco elevator built in 1930), a funicular railway, and several narrow, winding streets called ladeiras that are reportedly too dangerous for tourists to use.  I saw them snaking around below and they mostly looked empty, which I guess is what makes them such a risk for tourists walking around with cameras and watches and all sorts of other goodies that might be attractive to a potential thief.

The Cidade Baixa is home to skyscrapers and businesses as well as the city's port.  The Cidade Alta is the original town and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It's centered around the Pelourinho, a square that was once used for slave auctions.  Locals use the term "Pelourinho" to describe pretty much the entire old town, which is a maze of cobbled streets, brightly-painted buildings, very old cathedrals and large, shady squares.  The whole area was crumbling until the 1980s, when it was massively restored, and today it's full of shops, restaurants and pousadas.  Unfortunately for me, the city is preparing for the Festa de São João this weekend, which means thousands of little flags have been hung above all the streets.  I'm sure it makes for a great festival atmosphere, but it took away a lot of the perspective from my pictures.  Can't win 'em all, I guess.

It makes for a great place to wander, and that's what I did today.  I took a break for some açai and passion fruit ice cream, and for lunch I tried a bowl of moceque, Bahia's unofficial dish.  It's a stew made from coconut milk and spices, including the malagueta pepper (most Brazilian dishes aren't very spicy, but Bahian food is the exception) and served with rice, beans and farofa, which is fried cassava flour.  It's normally made with shrimp or lobster, but since I don't like seafood I was able to get them to make me one with chicken.  

Coming home from the Pelourinho I had a minor adventure when I got on a bus that didn't go back to Barra.  Fortunately I realized it pretty quickly and was able to hop off and walk home.  After three weeks in English-speaking South Africa it's definitely a little more stressful being back in a country where I can't speak the language.  Since I can speak Spanish, I'm able to read just about everything - Portuguese looks very similar to Spanish - but speaking the language is a much different ballgame, and there is very little English spoken in Salvador.  I've found that by speaking Spanish, I'm able to make myself understood (Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish with little difficulty, but the other way around is almost impossible) even if I have no clue what people are saying to me in return.  So my communication has been a little one-sided, but I'm getting by. 

Tomorrow I have another full day in Salvador and I'm hoping to check out some more of the beaches here.  The title of the post, by the way, means "A Tale of Two Cities" in Portuguese.  Boa noite, all.