Blogs from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, South America - page 10

so i have already completely lost all concept of time and date, but i know that i am offically rubbish at this and am determined not to be lazy and get into writing this thing- promise! i am currently in salvador made it here after a long and at times bizarre 29 hour bus journey from rio. Rio by the way was a bit of a blur and i didnt really get to see the city all that much apart from a excellent but useless trip to the city bus station, imagine those of you from sheffield a hybird of sheffield interchange and castle market and you will have a fairly good idea what it was like. After Rosie got her bag delievered as it didnt arrive with us (long story) we decided to wait to ... read more

Sorry sir but, 'There's a first time for everything', is not going to convince me to participate in buggery Bloody deviants. This last week has been an eventful one but not so much in terms of having done anything out of the ordinary; asides from work I attended one Capoeira class, went to the beach and finished 'The Da Vinci Code' Portuguese edition, to the relief of my extremely well-thumbed diary. My near homosexual experiences tally however has increased fivefold. I can only think of one close-call before now, at a gay club in Leeds. Some friends from Arabic and I had made a poorly thought-out promise to a colleague (those that know him would agree that colleague is far more appropriate than friend) and accompanied him to a gay haunt in town. There, a once ... read more

Yes really, I have found some Brazilian cupcakes! So I thought this mini adventure was worthy of a blog! I'm starting to get used to things after my second little outing on my own, this time to the shopping centre. I have everything I need to survive now. I was reading a book last night by a Yogi, Max Strom, called 'A Life Worth Breathing', and it said how we subconsciously notice things that we think about, so for example, if we buy a new car, say a Golf, then suddenly we will notice all the new Golfs on the road and so today, hidden in the back of the supermarket, I found my cupcake!!! And for the bargain price of 35p. It's all about The Power of Thought! I'm sure it won't be as good ... read more

My most terrifying experience yet. Trying on a Brazilian bikini in the bathroom, with 5 Brazilian women waiting outside. First of all I thought they had given my the sized wrong bottoms, or that I was supposed to floss with them or something, but fortunately Yvonne had warned me last minute about the dangers of the Brazilian Bikini, the now immortal words which were repeated in my head in that bathroom in Salvador. Back or front, it's a choice. I really wasn't up for that choice and did contemplate climbing out of the window but there was no where to go. So I crept out with my hands over my butt, to which everyone turned around a showed my how much they were showing, so I thought I would go with the flow and am now ... read more

Miles was in the school computer room, shooting the bull with Bill Robinson, a computer room boss in the Jerry Garcia mould: hairy, venerable, big, erudite. They were talking about Macumba. Macumba is big in Salvador. Macumba and Candomble. As the discussion ranged over their panglobal experiences of Juju, Voodoo and instant Karma, Bill said, "I was reading a paper last week that said about 80% of people in West Africa who believe they are dying as a result of 'Voodoo', die of kidney failure," and as Bill talked about rat poison, Miles drifted to Nigeria, where everything suddenly made sense. Teaching at the Chief's Complex was a complex business indeed. It was the most expensive private educational establishment in some part of Africa or other. Miles had a lot of things to worry about, being ... read more