Welcome to Salvador, now get down and dance!

This bus ride was much more comfortable. I sat in the front row behind the driver. The drivers in the buses down here are completely closed off from all the passengers. There is a door that they close and curtains are drawn too. The curtains are drawn all around the bus so that when the sun comes up it is that much easier to sleep in. I slept better this time around.

Salvador was a good place to be. There was a mural there in the station right if front of where our bus pulled up. That was a wonderful welcome. We took a cab to a hostel in the old part of town called Carmo. It was early and we sat in the hostel and played Farkle, ate breakfast, and more Farkle. Farkle is a great dice game that you play with 6 dice. Very addictive.

We got out into the streets after drinking too much coffee, but taking the moments we needed to rest. This part of town was very up and down from street to street, and mainly all cobblestones. The person at the hostel gave us a map with 'X's down many of the streets so we would know which streets to keep from. There was really only one way out into the city as far as our host would have us go. We heeded her warnings. We made our way around the city from square to square until we came upon a scenic view of the water and the marina. There is so much color in Salvador, from the buildings to the clothing to the sea and the boats. Salvador is said to be the birth place of Brazil. This city has the most African influence in the entirety of Brazil. Some women wear clothing that reminds me of the fabrics I saw in Ghana. They wrap their heads and have matching dresses that cover their petticoats. These women are there as a tourist flavor to the city, selling tradiotional appetizers on the street or trinkets and the like. Their style is quite classy.

We took an elevator down to the lower level of the city. There was an elevator there in the 1800's that was run by slave labor. We found the market infront of us, first an out door market and then an indoor one. We wandered through both. Coconuts outside and then dry goods inside. On the back side of the building was a capoiera group doing some flexible body language that I can't say I have seen before, with real fast upside down-horizontal-back bend-hold-repeat-flip-reverse, etc. You know what I mean, Tom?

We headed back another way, which was definetly the wrong was for most people. We wandered up a street that had been abandoned by most out of towners for some time. There was some nice rusty metal there in the street. I thought of some of my friends. We were not sure if where we were heading would be better or worse and there was really no turn off. Suddenly, I got so hungry that my arms were shaking. I was running on fumes, and it was a matter of the first place being the best place to eat. We played pinball for a while in this neighborhood. It was Sunday and it looked like a ghost town. No one was out, accept for the few guys in the square. Even some of them were not really there. One puked on his feet just as we were about to pass him by. We took a left instead.

The first tent we saw where people were sitting with plates of what looked like food, we sat and asked for beers and a menu to look at. Hurray! We prefer to eat where the locals get down. Local flavor off the beaten path offers the unannounced gem for us to find on our own. And so we did. We got our Farkle on and commenced to drink beers. We had to reward ourselves for not falling into the gutters, right? Right. There was a strange place that shady characters kept funneling from. I thought that it could have been a whore house. Two semi-casual cops came out with their automatic weapons on. Crooked? Eh? Turns out the establishment was for gambling, so our waiter told us.

Our food was delicious! A couple orders of fries, a plate of fish, beef, chicken? I really can not remember. Salads came with them too, I believe. There were beans and rice, right? I know that all the food was gone by the time we thougth to lick our plates. The girl who checked us into the hostel came walking by and we called her over. She sat with us while we had beer for dessert. Her name was..... and she was from Australia. She was nice to talk with. She got us headed home in the right direction, a way which we might have not known to take since we were completely turned around and getting Royal. The sun was going to go down soon, and we headed home.

Once home, we relaxed for a while and showered. There was a quirky Japanese guy there at the hostel who I had spoken with earlier in the day. He made me a little nervous since he couldn't understand me well nor could I fully understand him, but continued to talk to me like we both knew what one another was saying. These anthropolgical studies never cease to amaze me. He meant well and for this I enjoyed our interaction, but what a quack. His phrase of 'domestic peoples' was amuzing to me. He came home perhaps a bit tipsy, as well. He was able to kill the conversation we were having with the Austrians very quickly. It was like when someone lets some demons out in an elevator and everyone can't wait to get off at the next open door.

Josh and Jimmie and I hit the streets to go and find some live music. We headed down one of the two streets that were less than dangerous. At the bend in the road we came to a place that was bumpin with live music. It almost sounded too good to be true it sounded so good. There was a door man who was in his 80's or so. Josh paid for all of us by passing some money through a little mail sized slot in the wall. Before we could get in, a man who had come out to smoke turned right back around and excitedly brought us inside. He was flirting with Josh and I right off the bat, but no matter. It was nice to have a friend right off the bat. As we came around the corner I was convinced that we had come into a gay bar. There were only men dancing with men with a couple transvestites at the bar. Everyone was watching us as we walked in. This made me feel slightly awkward, but what do you do when people make you feel awkward!?! Drink! And drink we did! Josh made up some story to our first friend about how I was her wife, and he told him this so that Jimmie wouldn't get hit on by.... all the gay guys there. I think he was trying to keep all the guys to himself by telling them that I was married to Gina. Isn't that right Josh? Keepin all the Brazilian studs to yourself. You son of a bitch....

Turns out it was not a gay bar at all. Still for a while though I thought that it was a neighborhood pimp shin dig. It was like a David Lynch film with the lighting, the atmosphere, the fantastic paintings on the walls, the odd woman guarding the toilet paper, the tranies, the several children amongst all this, the women skowling on the sides of the room, the groups of men dancing, the old man dressed from head to toe in continuous shiny fabric. This was the pimp of the year, by the way. He was obviously a man high up in the chain of pimps. Men and women would come up to him as he was dancing and/or sitting and offer praises to him. Josh and I also gave him praises as we danced by. Oh yeah. It didn't take us long to get dancing. After 3 or so beers we didn't seem to care that everyone would have a good ol' time watching the tourists get down right sweaty. And this we did. We got down right into the trance.

The band was comprised of several people playing gord shakers, several people playing hand drums of variable proportions, and a couple singers. The singers were loud enough in the mix that the PA system was kind of bursting. This made it sound like there was a choir of people singing. This effect I liked. The songs would go on and on for so long! This was the music of the Candomble!!!!

This was a wonderful wonderful church! I must say that it was the most wonderful church I have ever been to. There was a true sense of spirituality amongst everyone there. We were there for close to three hours, so it would seem. It is difficult to know what time it is when all you have to do is get down and dance.

Eventually, we decided to take off, so Josh said good bye to our first friend that escorted us into the venue. He insisted to walk us home. At first it seemed unnessesary, and when he insisted it seemed strange. When we all started walking it got quiet. This made Jimmie and I nervous. There was another guy following the four of us, and he was not all too far behind. I was ready to get robbed. There were prostitues looking down at us from their first floor windows with the knowing that we were in for it. They looked like they had seen this before. They looked bored.

There was a well lit stairwell leading down on the right from the church on our left so I ducked into the light. Jimmie and Josh stepped into the light and explained to our guide that we would rather go this way. The guy from behind us caught up to them at the top of the stairs. Turns out that he and our guide were not in on it together. Our guide really was looking out for us. Our friend told the other person that he wasn't going to let him rob us. There was even another guy who had popped out of the shadows to rob us too, but we were down at the bottom of the stairs by this point. Jimmie and I still didn't know what was going on. Josh had been picking up their intentions through the busted translator in the Spanish part of his brain. We waited at the bottom of the stairs for our friend, and we continued up the street. This street lead to the same intersection that the first street lead to. We were not sure if the theives were going to try and cut us off at the top of the hill, so we were all still pretty nervous until we got into our hostel around the corner. We all gave our saviour hugs and kisses and we thanked him for his help before we headed in to our safety zone.

Once inside, we opened some beers to relax on. We relayed our perspectives of the events in the street and the wonder of the past several hours in the Candomble ceremony. We were up when our fellow travelers got home. They had shown up to the Candomble just after we had left. Sleep came soon after, as we were exhausted.