salvation, salivation, salad bar

salvador! we arrived at 6 in the morning and sat around the bus terminal waiting for lautaro (one of our argentinians) to generously pick us up and take us to the campsite, 1.5 hours out of town. staying there meant that we didn´t see very much of the city by day, since we got stuck lazing on the beach. there´s little motivation to take a bus when you wake up with a view of the sea and beautiful shiny sun and when there´s a little restaraunt right in the campsite sellig feijoada (beans and meat and rice) and hamburgers.


(can´t figure out how to turn it...)

the argentinians (three to four now, because of a brother and friends) were here to watch caipoeira (a mix of martial art and dance), so thanks to them we were forced to leave our dear campsite and explore more of salvador. we went to a caipoeira performance in the city, and learned a little more about the origin. the dance has angolan roots and was developed in brazil. when the slaves were brought to brazil and weren´t allowed to practice martial arts, caipoeira was a way to continue the practice by packaging it as a dance. lautaro practices the orginial angolan version, while most public performances dance the regional caipoeiro, which is more active and more fun to watch.

our next exciting happening was sm´s birthday! we planned to wake sm up with cake and candles, but everything went wrong. firstly, she kept mentioning how much she hates most cake, so we never picked up the cake we had ordered. secondly, when we went to wake her up, she wasnt in the tent, so the sparkles were out by the time we found her. :( it was still a cool morning though, because we had made a delicious cake made with only fruit and chocolate sprinkles, and lautaro and the others put on a puppet show using plastic bags. in the evening we went into town, saw lots of bands, danced samba, and then went to a gay club. we thoroughly enjoyed being able to dance without fending off ravaging brazilian men, and even met a very sweet laila who we hung out a lot with the next few days.

for new years eve we went to a part of the city called barra, where there was a huge public concert and lots and lots of people. many were dressed in white, and threw flowers into the ocean, to please the candomble goddess of the ocean and protect fishermen (and make the next year a pleasant one, i suspect). we danced to loud music and watched an impressive display of fireworks, before sitting on the beach to people-watch.

the rest of the time in salvador we wandered our pelourinho, looked at churches and museums, went to an independent movie theatre, visited a turtle conservation beach with laila and her friend ale, listened to lots of live music, ate a lot of beans and rice and drank a lot of fruit juice.