Salvador

Arriving late into Salvador it became very apparent that so far in Brazil we hadn’t experienced anything like this. Salvador as a city looks very colonial, with lots of Portuguese Baroque-style churches, little cobbled streets and plazas where slaves were whipped and auctioned. The people and feel of the city however couldn’t be more different. As the guide book says Salvador is the darkest city of Brazil in terms of skin colour and by far the loudest. The African presence is still very strong here, basically stemming from the Portuguese bringing Angolan slaves to this part of the coast. There is music being played 24/7, the food is African-inspired and even the religion comes from Africa which is pretty unusual considering how Catholic a country Brazil is.

We went to see an impressive Capoeiro show performed at one of the theatres in the Pelo district – a combination of martial art and dance which is thought to have been performed by the slaves for a variety of reasons - from worshipping their gods of nature, to celebrating the end of the sugar-cane harvest and as a form of self-defence again their owners because it can look very aggressive. With the men literally flinging their bodies into the air and “fighting” one another with such power and speed backed by the female performers singing their hearts out, it was really entertaining and was easy to see how the slaves would have felt some power from performing Capoeiro. At one point one of the men spent a good 20 minutes rubbing fire onto his bare skin and standing in a huge bowl of flaming coals – unfortunately no photos were allowed but “Ow!”

We spent three days in Salvador, exploring more of the city including the affluent beachside neighbourhood of the Barra and the oldest lighthouse in Brazil, before boarding an 11 hour bus journey to Porto Seguro – the place where the Portuguese first landed.