Blogs from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, South America - page 19

It takes 32 hours to bus it from Rio to Salvador...that sounds like a horrible journey I know, but the comfortable air-con buses mean it´s not too bad, plus we´re used to the huge distances by now. We decided to go so far north in one go for a couple of reasons...Rio state was forecast yet more bad weather, so we´re hunting sunshine, but also we realise that it´ll be Christmas in 3.5 weeks and we need to get to where we want to spend the holidays before all the hotels fill up. We think we want to be around Trancoso, which is in the state of Bahia, about 400kms south of Salvador, but there´s plenty of other places we want to stop at in between. So we´re going to spend a couple of weeks exploring ... read more

Vous avais-je dit que nous étions en quête d’aventures pour notre dernier tronçon de tour du monde ? Et bien nous n’avons pas été en reste pendant nos premiers jours au Brésil, tant le choc culturel a été, encore une fois, impressionnant. La beauté de la ville de Bahia est le fruit de son passé tumultueux, et se voit notamment à travers le riche héritage culturel laissé par de nombreux esclaves africains et leurs descendants, venus sur les côtes du Nord-est du Brésil au XVIIème siècle pour travailler sur les plantations de cannes à sucre exploitées par les colons portuguais. Il faut savoir que c’est au tout début du XVIème siècle que les portuguais découvrent le Brésil en accostant dans… la baie de Bahia ! A l’époque, les portuguais nommaient chaque point d’implantation par le nom ... read more

Nach 3 Monaten sind wir nun tatsaechlich in Salvador, dem letzten Ort unserer Reise, angekommen (ja, ein bisschen Wehmut schwingt hier schon mit...). Salvador wird auch die "afrikanische Seele Brasiliens" genannt und wir erleben eine Stadt voller Kuenstler und Ueberlebenskuenstler. Letztere machen Salvador sicherlich auch zu einer der gefaehrlicheren Staedte, ca. die Haelfte aller Traveller wird hier beklaut oder ueberfallen - wir gehoeren gluecklicherweise zur anderen Haelfte, treffen aber auch alle moeglichen Sicherheitsvorkehrungen, achten genau darauf in welchen Strassen wir uns bewegen, haben die Kamera per Karbinerhaken an der Hose befestigt... Unsere Unterkunft liegt in bzw. ueber Pelourinho, dem historischen Zentrum, und auch unsere letzte Hostelwahl war mal wieder ein Glueckstreffer - von der Terrasse im 7. Stock haben wir einen umwerfenden Blick ueber die Altstadt und den Ha... read more

We have decided on your behalf to nominate you as the official recipients of our blog. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we will. Please feel free to add any comments you would like to make or to send us an email in case you do not want to be part of the list (none of your emails will be displayed anywhere). You do not need to regularly check our blog. You will receive an automatic email each time we update it. We will try as much as possible to keep this blog in English to allow everyone to follow us and our feelings in our explorative trip in South America and Australia. We apologize in advance for all the mistakes our limited English level will create. Pour les Francais, il va falloir ... read more

Hello all! I’m sitting on my bed right now (8/29/08) on the MV Explorer and it is our first night aboard the ship. I got on board this morning at about 8:30 and found out that despite the fact that Michael and I wanted to have separate roommates so we could meet some new people, we had been assigned to the same room. What are the odds of that? Anyway the Bahamas were a blast. I spent a lot of time on the water slides and the “not so lazy” river that floated you around on a tube through rapids and waves and down slides. I also spent a little time on the beach and went SCUBA diving, which was awesome. On the dive we saw lots of coral and small fish as well as a ... read more