5 posts tagged “salvador”
Today we said goodbye to Davy, the Belgium guy, we have been travelling with since Rio. He was funny and made us laugh with his strange sense of humour (he must have got that from living in a squat... total anarchist).
We looked around the old city of Salvador at paintings and crafts, before getting on the bus for Belem.
Oh I forgot to tell you, on the way back from the island, we spotted a humpback whale which was quite cool, well Tony spotted it, I was too busy being sick (it was a bit of a rough ride!)
Today we got the bus, an hour out of the city to a small town called Arembeppe. We saw the Sea Turtle Reservation and continued walking down the dirt road to the Hippy Village.
This is a strange place. People settled here in the sixties and well, just never left. You enter the village, and people just sit playing guitar and smoking weed. They ocasionally go and bathe in the river, make bits of jewelry and thats about it.
We bumped into a couple of people from the hostel in Salvador who had stayed there a few nights, with no electricity or running water. Quite a few of the people who live there seem quite mad and crazy... probablly too many drugs, and too much time isolated from the rest of the world. Not many travellers discover this place, but everyone is welcome and it is interesting.
It was Brazillian Independance day today, so there were festivals everywhere. We ended up following a parade in the street of drums. It was quite an atmospehere with everyone dancing and singing in the street.
We came back to Salvador today as it was raining and there isn´t much to do on an island when it rains.
We returned to the hostel and got invited to a candomble ceremony by the local drum teacher. We went along not knowing what to expect....
Candomble is a West African Religious ceremony, which they practice here. We followed the drum teacher into a rough part of town, it may as well have been the favella, and went down into someone´s basement where we were greeted by people sat in a circle singing to various drum beats. We joined the circle and the woman who was taking the ceremony (and also said to be possessed by the spirit of a slave) blessed us one by one.
This was unlike any blessing I had ever had before. The woman was smoking a huge cuban cigar. She would hold the cigar between her toes while touching your body wiith her hands, then she would take the cigar, trun it round in her mouth and blow back the smoke all over your body. She then took some branches and blew smoke on the branches and then kind of beat the badness out of you with the branches. By this point we were kind of gobsmacked. We thought it couldn´t get any weirder, but it did.
The locals started to dance to the drums and then another woman got possessed and then they threw popcorn over everyone, lit some dynamite on the floor, and then it was over. The woman came out of her trance and we all left.
The strange thing was, after the blessing, we all felt light headed and relaxed, but this may be due to hte amount of cigar smoke in the room (she went through three cigars through the ceremony, one after anohter).
We love this island. It is scorthing hot and the sea is like bath water. It is very easy to get a job on the island if you speak both English and Porteguese as they get lots of tourists to the island.
Today we sunbathed a little and then took a short walk to the mud baths. Well a short walk turned into a long walk and sunstroke as Tony got us lost. We ended up in the jungle on the island for three hours. I didn´t mind the walk until a snake decided to cross the path where I was walking. I screamed and ran, although you can´t run very far in flip flops!!!
We enventually got to the mud baths. We were both extremely sun burnt, despite using factor 25.
The mud is part of a rock face on the coast of the island. You took the mud from the rock and smoothed it through your hair and onto your skin. There were different colours, pink, red and yellow. We then walked along the beach and let the mud dry before washing it off in the sea and catching a boat back.
We would have photos but somebody forgot the camera... which reminds me. We have lots of photos to upload and I am sure you are all eagerly awaiting to see them... I am eagerly awaiting broadband in Brazil...
Today we decided we needed some chill out time. We seem to have been constantly travelling and not really had time to relax and feel as though we were on holiday (travelling is more stressful than one may think!!)
We walked down to the water front, hailed a taxi and it took 10 minutes to explain to the driver we wanted to go to the ferry point. He laughed at us and pointed accross to the other side of the road... Doh!!!
We took the ferry to the island Morro de São Paulo, which took two hours. A very smooth ride to a beautiful tropical island.
On the island there is no transport. No cars or bikes, just tractors to distribute supplies and of course wheel barrows to transport luggage....
We found some accomodation for less than 10 pounds a night, just thirty seconds walk from the beach.
By the time we arrived, it was dark. We grabbed an all you can eat meal for five pounds and ate about five steaks each... mmmm.... We then went to the cocktail people... the islanders have little stalls set up on the beach with mountains of fresh fruit. You say which fruits you would like and which shot of spirit and they mix you the freshess cocktail you have ever tasted. It wasn´t long until the cocktails went to our head and we were in bed.
