Salvador

Elias is back in his gas-powered car to take us to Rio for one night and we’re heading back to the Copocabana Beach hotel where we stayed previously. For some reason, Elias waits until we’re all loaded up before deciding to stop for a couple of pounds worth of gas which is pumped into the engine of the car via a metal tube which looks like a dipstick (an oil dipstick, not a stupid person). Back at the hotel, we’re put into a 4th floor suite, same as before but this one has a view, has been recently renovated and has the added bonus of not smelling of mothballs like the previous one did.

It’s costing £600 for the four of us to take a 2 hour flight to Salvador de Bahia, but the alternative is a 28 hour bus, which I’m not prepared to put myself through, let alone the kids. Salvador is known as the African soul of Brazil as here, the African slave descendants preserved their culture more than anywhere else. The African feel here comes from the mix of Brazilians, Portugese and the Africans, most of whom have intermarried at some stage. Our guide book informs us that if we’re going to be pickpocketed or mugged anywhere in Brazil, Salvador is likely to be the place! So we pack away the crown jewels, lock up the laptop, gird our loins and brave the fray.

We’re staying at Studio do Carmo www.studiodocarmo.com.br run by Italians Francesca and Max and they’ve given us a huge room on the ground floor with lovely wooden floors. It takes the kids a few days but they manage to find a couple of holes in the floor which they can peer through, down into the kitchen below and watch our breakfast being made in the mornings. It’s not cheap at £70 per night, but it’s in a great location and it has the added bonus of serving breakfast in your room. We treated to some weird local fruits and fruit juices, some of which we’re still not sure about.

Our location in Cidade Alta or the Upper City is very close to the Largo do Pelourinho, steep cobbled streets where slaves where auctioned and runaway slaves were publicly beaten on a pelourinho (whipping post). A sobering thought. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, the whole area has since been renovated and is full of beautiful colonial buildings, built by the Portugese and now painted in pastels colours. To get down to Cidade Baixa or the Lower City, we take the Elevador Lacerda (236 feet in a couple of stomach dropping seconds), built in 1872 and costing about 2p per trip. There’s not much to see down here so we jump in a taxi to the Mercardo Grande, which we figured was the correct way to ask for the huge local market that’s on everyday. Guess our Spanish still isn’t up to much since we’re first driven to a local hypermarket (well that’s one kind of large market, I guess)! Never mind, we’re onwards to the market….only to discover that today, Sunday, is the one day of the week that it’s closed. Round trip, back to the bottom of the Elevador, R$ 30 (£10), a great way to waste money!

It’s very poor here with lots of favellas (slums), beggars, a huge drug problem (crack is apparently the drug of choice here), kids sleeping on the streets in plastic bags and an average wage of R$ 400 pcm (£130) so we’re understandably very cautious when we withdraw R$ 500 from bank to tide us over a few days. Not a large amount of money for us but definitely makes us potential mugging targets. We split the money between us and put bits into different pockets, just in case. There’s tourist police everywhere which, on the one hand, makes you feel safe and, on the other makes you realise how much crime there must be here. There is always the option to be escorted back from the bank by the police and this will cost you R$20, the same amount which you need to pay to the cashier if you’re paying cash into the bank in order to ensure that it reaches the right bank account…it’s quite tiring being on high alert all the time, not only where personal safety is concerned, but also never taking our eyes off the children. Maybe this is why we all loved Laos so much. Average annual salary of USD 200, yet no violence, few beggars and a very relaxed atmosphere. It couldn’t be more different.

On Tuesdays (Blessed Tuesday) in Salvador, everybody goes to church (not quite everybody…we prefer to worship at the temple of food and wine. If it was the temple of bread and fishes, we may have something to be proud about) and that’s followed by a big music night. There’s live music on every street corner and right across road from our hotel, on the steps in front of church Terça da Benção is a live band. Couldn’t be in a better spot for us to watch from the door of the hotel, but it does mean that, as the streets are so packed with revellers, it’s difficult for us to leave and find a restaurant for dinner. Not to worry as there’s a pizza place just a few doors away and they agree to let us have a take-away, which is when Ruby declares that she feels like salad. Wow, there’s a first for everything!