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Published: August 25th 2007
Nick with a local, Salvador
The fallen cross in the background marks where a colonial church was demolished to make way for a tramway.(Nick)
Monday 16th July - we left on another overnight bus, this time to Salvador. We had heard a lot of good things about the place, not least that it is the ´Soul of Brazil´, so were really looking forward to it.
Tuesday 17th July - arrived at 07h00, hooked up with some other gringos off the bus and bargained for a ride into town in a battered old minibus, listening to AC:DC (let´s rock!)on its battered old stereo.
Salvador is divided into the Upper Town and Lower Town, and the highlight is the
Pelourinho area, which is in the Upper. It consists of the oldest buildings in the city, dating from Colonial times, spread across several squares:
Terreiro de Jesus Square - the key building was the
Cathedral (1672), and although it looked a bit crumbly from the outside, it was light, modern and elegant on the inside, having been restored in the 20th century following a fire. Plenty of ornate gold leaf carvings to be found, and the classical music that was playing contrasted sharply with the loud drumming from outside; Salvador is very much into drums, as we were to find out.
The plaque outside the cathedral said that its style was´remarkably Mannerist Baroque and Rococo´; we weren´t sure what that meant, but agreed that it was certainly very nice indeed.
The
Santo Domingo church on the other side of the same square was the opposite; brightly painted white and with colours on the outside, but crumbly on the inside. Both it and
Sâo Pedro dos Clérigos (1709) had incompleted second towers (see photo), an ecclesiastical dodge on the contemporary tax on newly built churches!
Praça da Sé Square - named after the ruins of an eponymous church, a small part of whose ruins remain in the square. There is also a large sculpture of a fallen cross, marking the spot where a 400-year-old church had been demolished to make way for a tramline. (photo)
Praça Municipal Square - the seat of Portuguese colonial power for around 200 years, it had a couple of grand buildings and the
Lacerda elevator, which we took to descend the 72m to the Lower Town. Not a lot to see, apart from a large artesanal market, in which there was a lot of artesans and their artesanal offerings.
That evening, there was a mass in
Rosario Igreja Sâo Pedro dos Clérigos and Igreja da Ordem Terceira de Sâo Domingus
On Terreiro de Jesus square, Salvador. Both have an obvious incomplete tower, to avoid a tax on completed churches! dos Pretos church, which had been recommended to us for its lively singing. Nick wasn´t feeling so well, but I went along and saw that many other visitors to the city also had the same recommendation. This church, like the one in Ouro Preto, was built in colonial times by and for the black community, and wasn´t especially large. The problem was not that there were too many white tourists (although there were not enough seats to go round), but the way many behaved in taking flash photos during the service, as if it was some kind of show. The local community was indeed passionate about its worship, and it was disrepectful to use that to get an ´atmospheric´photo (I wondered how they would feel if a black person took a photo of them at their church or theatre back in Europe while a service or opera was going on...). However, standing near the back, I enjoyed witnessing this slice of Brazilian life.
Following the service, I went further into the old town to the
Escadas do Carmo steps, where every Tuesday there is an animated live music session, this time it was reggae and absoutely heaving with people
Live music
Tuesday night on the Escadas do Carmo steps, Salvador swaying, buying beer and spirits from vendors squeezing among the masses. (For movie buffs: these steps were the setting for the first Brazilian film to win an award at Cannes:
O Pagador do Promessas, 1962).
Heading away and back up to the centre, the narrow cobbled streets were filled with the sound of drums. There were many groups, each with about 8 people, playing drums of various sizes
VERY LOUDLY!
but in fantastic rhythm, with locals and tourists alike dancing around them, see photo. I rounded the evening off back on
Terreiro de Jesus Square, where the authorities sponsor a samba band every Tuesday, which completed a completely musical day.
Wednesday 18th July - more churches! Starting at the
Third Order of St Francis (1723), we took in its sandstone façade, unique in Brazil and only rediscovered in 1930 - it had been covered and hidden due to someone taking a disliking to the representation of an eagle, a Mason symbol, which featured in the centre of the façade.
Not far away we took a funicular railway,
Inclinado Gonçalves, down to the Lower Town, a ride that the guidebook promised was ´terrifyingly steep´. It wasn´t. It was like
any other funicular. What was terrifying, however, was that it only cost 1.5p to ride - surey not enough to maintain it in good working order??!
Back in the Upper Town, we spent some time in the
Pelourinho square, the jewel in the crown of Salvador in terms of architecture, music and artists. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and ideal to wander around.
Just beyond the
Pelourinho was the seen-better-days Church of the Third Order of Carmo, whose claim to fame was a life-size image of Christ, featuring blood from 2000 rubies, some of which were intact to appear as droplets.
In the afternoon, while still impressed by the sound of music coming from everywhere, I caught a couple of photo exhibitions and that evening we went to a Brazilian dance show. There were six Acts (dances) of around 10 mins each, featuring amazing acts of acrobatics with the participants in brightly coloured costumes, supported by a backing group of musicians on drums and vocals. For me, the highlights were:
* the first Act, where several dancers - each dressed to represent a particular
Orixá (god) in the traditional black
Candomblé religion - performed wild movements as if under
a trance;
* the second Act, where fire was energetically thrown around in such a way to make us marvel at the skill (but also slightly uncomfortable, given that we were in an basement theatre surrounded by wood)
* the third Act, a dramatic dance to celebrate the end of the brutal sugar cane harvest, where sparks actually flew from the machetes that were clashed together;
*the fifth Act, a display of
Capoeira, a slave art of self defence which was disguised from their masters as a dance.
Capoeira was the main reason we came to the show and we were really impressed at how they managed to make almost kicking each other´s heads off look highly skilled and graceful. See some moves! at http://capoeira_regional.vilabol.uol.com.br/index.html)
We had dinner in a cobbled sidestreet where there were a couple of musicians playing, one of whom was jamming on an acoustic guitar and the other a combination of tapping a large wooden box/playing marracas/ stroking a cymbal, all in perfect rhythm.
Each time we finished a beer, the waiter put the empty bottle under the table (from where it always rolled down the cobbles a short distance); this is the system they
use to calculate the bill at the end. We were at a loss to understand just how that was an easier system than writing the number down, but it seemed to work for them.
Thursday 19th July - our final day in Salvador began in the country´s most gilded church, San Francisco. It was a real riot of gold all round the altar, and hundreds of angels were carved into pillars, beams and wood all over the church. The slaves who made the carvings, in an apparent act of protest, had made some of the angels look pregnant! In the cloister attached to the church, a large number of blue & white Portuguese hand-painted colonial tiles (
azulejos) were arranged around the outside (see photo).
In the afternoon we caught the Afro-Brazilian museum, charting the effects of the slave trade on Brazil, especially the north-east (where we were).
Had a haircut.
That evening, we took our final long overnight bus, this time to Recife.
Friday 20th July - Recife has little to attract the tourist, so we headed straight for the nearby town of Olinda, which is more like a suburb of Recife and reckoned by
Azulejo tile, San Franciso Church, Salvador
It is a picture of a man at the doctor's, but the caption is ´Before all, heal thy soul´. all travellers to be the better place to stay. We spent the morning and early afternoon completing our week´s church fest by walking around the streets and taking in a further eight places of worship, two of which we went into - but there was nothing we had not seen before in other parts of Brazil! (With the possible exception of what the other Nick described as a priests´paddling pool). There were also great views over Olinda and also as far as Recife, whose skyscrapers and beach coast were visible in the near distance.
We decided to spend the later afternoon and evening back in Recife, where we saw a couple of colonial buildings and a great Blues bar - but not much nightlife, a bit surprising for a Friday night!
Saturday 21st July - up early to head to a beach called
Porto de Galinhas, supposedly one of the best in the state. Although it was only 60km from Recife, it took 3 hours and 2 buses to get there from Olinda! We were thus hoping for something a little special...
It was an interesting journey, as we gained lots of insights into everyday Brazil: for example, the
Berimbau instruments for sale, Salvador
The traditional musical accompaniment to Capoeira.
driver would not set off until the street vendor passed him some water and a bag of nuts; all along the route, people were grilling kebabs and lounging around in the humid weather; a dog was being washed with a hose at a petrol station; a young woman was carrying a bicycle while being given a lift on the back of a moped; the sweet smell in the air as we passed a biscuit factory, and the malty air as we passed a large brewery...
On arriving at
Porto de Galinhas beach (
Galinhas means ´hen´but was also slang for a slave; the beach was illegally used to bring in slaves after the trade was abolished), we were a little disappointed. Not only was it packed, but was also significantly developed and had no similarity to the semi-deserted sands that we were hoping for. The redeeming feature of our day - apart from the relaxing in little beach chairs, toes in sand - was the opportunity to observe Brazilians in their natural environment of the beach.
It is a different experience to the UK: firstly, many of the many families and friends clustered under large umbrellas were eating freshly cooked fish
and drinking beer from the little stalls at the back of the beach, the fish was sold to them whole and all that got left was the skeleton, just like you see fish-shaped skeletons in cartoons! There was non-stop walking salespeople pushing carts or heaving their wares, hawking everything from stew, to cocktails, to souvenirs and cheese-on-a stick (more of this later). Music came from everywhere, accompanying the people as they sunbathed, swam or just danced around the music stall. The family next to us bought a load of live mussels: the seller prised them open, sprinked salt and lime over them and then they were promptly swallowed by young and old alike! The family chucked the shells on the floor which were then counted up by the salesman and the bill totted up.
Then it rained so we went for big steak dinner & headed back to Recife, where we got soaked waiting for a bus back to Olinda (but the rain was warm), then had a great night out in a stand-up
boteca (local boozer where everyone stands) followed by some more live acoustic music in an atmospheric old street; the evening was finished with some fine roast
potatoes in the last bar.
Sunday 22nd July - flew to Rio, arrived late.
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