Bahia Othon Palace Hotel Salvador

... tomorrow. I have no clue what to expect, except that with any luck I'll be sitting with my new family in Salvador de Bahia by this time tomorrow night- what a thought. I hope the novelty of this sort of thing never goes away- I'd take being a excitable, naive newbie traveler any day over a weary know-it-all who takes it all in their stride.<br><br>Now I've broken the blog ice, I'm going to sleep through what little of the night remains. A very excited, nervous, grinning goodnight.<br>

... in the rush hour traffic and it is really horrendous. At one particularly bad intersection we actually stop for 20 minutes and crawl along for another 30 minutes just to cover 1 km! We eventually get to the pay car park at 7 pm. It is fairly expensive but is worth it because it is just on the edge of the historic centre. We then get our big shock, the guide tells us that it is 150 reaies for his service. That is about 50 pounds and an awful lot for 3 hours ...

23.02 Carneval! Salvador er et fint sted med sol og strand, og det utroligste folke-carnevalet en kan tenke seg! Vi har leilighet midt i Carneval-gata her i Barra, saa vi er plassert midt i smoroyet! Vi er 12stk som bor i samme leilighet, 4-5 paa hvert rom, saa det er svett og intimt :) Jeg bor med Lene, Magnus, Jens og en svenske som heter Matty! Jeg og Lene har faatt oss skikkelige carneval-masker, legger ut bilder ...

... thought we were going to a Samba De Roda with Ujamha and it turns out I hadn~t understood correctly that he had someother things going on and he wasn´t sure if he could go or not. Whilst we were waiting for him, we went to a local bar (not a tourist one) and... seriously... you could have played the theme song from the good bad and the ugly as we entered. We walked in and just stood there with the silence. Da da da da da...da da da! The host, a woman, dismissed us for a ...

... which case I take the 10 min bus ride. I have two hours of Portuguese class in the morning, and two hours of public health seminar/field research skills in the afternoon. I have been making a lot of Brazilian friends outside of my program, so my free time consists of hanging out with them on the beach or at night, chillin' at home with my sisters and gossiping, or working on various school projects. I have yet to enroll in Capoeira ...

Finally arrived in Salvador after a momentous journey of over 20hrs by bus. The late departure from Belo Horizonte should have been a signal that all would not be right with this particular journey, but it´s all part and parcel of the long distance adventure that is travelling by bus in Brazil! We passed through countless towns in order to ...

... beach was PACKED, with kids smoking and drinking beer (boys will be boys), lots of crusties trying to sell their bracelets and necklaces (one of which got a bit lairy with Katie because she didn't believe that she had no money on her, bloody cheek!) and plenty of locals ...

... still living in the area. We tried different fruity caphrinas there that we absolutely disgusting! Mine was green and filled with a local fruit that looked like grapes but was so sour and Mo´s drink was orange with shriveled fruit in the bottom. Gross, but we tired! Then feeling the effects of the cocktails we headed out to the plaza to pick on the street food. We choose a acraje which is a deep fried bean cake stuffed with vatapa ...

... security area or join the masses and locals and just dance and walk beside the massive trucks that the acts play on. Seeing how I had no money I braved the outside arena! It was amazing five hours of dancing, walking, pushing, shouting, and fending off lots of horny Brazilian men! How well I fended them off leaves a lot to be desired! The next few days were a jolly old time of Afro Bands and samba bands and parades and floats and ...

... up. There were *lso two l*rge Buddh* he*ds on the s*nd f*cing out tow*rds the oce*n *nd * gi*nt h*nd with *n Egypti*n eye on the p*lm plus much more. The toilet *nd showers were ecologic*l *nd ingeniously designed to flush. They were m*int*ined 24 hours * d*y by loc*ls who cle*ned every time you went to one *nd h*nded out the p*per. We couldn´t work out the system but it w*s m*de from b*mboo *nd piping *nd included l*rge blue buckets *top towers, very ...