Holiday Inn Salvador

... streets, ornate churches, and colonial facades from centuries past. As we ambled a few blocks along these streets, we were confronted by an all-female drum corps, whose beats turned the street into a party and are still playing in our heads days later. Then, a block further, we ran into a group with drums, dancers, and a horn section practicing for Carnival. Of course, with drums, dancers, and horns, it was basically another party. After a full day of visiting churches and ...

... Barra, 15 minutes away from Pelourinho by bus is the place to take a bath.<br><br>Mary, the american girl, had rented an apartment right in the center of the Pelourinho where she planned to stay for a while. Small place ...

... at one point, the capital of all of Portugal and its colonies. This was only for a few years when Napoleon ravaged Europe and the crafty Portuguese royalty responded by fleeing to Brazil rather than putting up a fight. The Portuguese royalty had a habit of enjoying this colony. So much so, that a few of the Prince's had to be practically dragged back to Portugal. It was in this Bahia, where they ...

... mile away and every time we turned a corner we discovered another fall, each one with It's own unique beauty but at the same time progressively getting larger and more full. Turns out in 2005 there was a massive flood and all of the falls linked together to make one enormously large fall. I would have loved to have seen that.             The entire time we were hiking we were meeting new people which were cool. When we got to the bottom of the main fall, which is ...

... from back in the slavery days. The African slaves and the indigenous Indian slaves were not allowed to practice their own religions under Portugese occupation so a new religion developed. I dont know that much more about it but the evening was certainly facinating. Our guide Luiz picked me up from the Hostel. A very charming and multi lingual man gave us heaps of information about the history of the ...

... br>The bloke told me that Salvador "is not a safe place" and to "be extremely careful". <br><br>He told me that he'd been here twice before and had been mugged on BOTH occasions! <br><br>Blinding. <br><br>By the time he'd walked off and I'd thanked him for his kind advice, Katie had guessed what was happening and received my update in a resigned manner. As we left ...

... of room on either side of the street where you can stand and dance with the people walking by and just take everything in so that?s what we did. This first float was our first real experience with carnival and it was absolutely amazing! We didn?t see any other gringos the whole afternoon, it was all locals so it was exactly the kind of experience I wanted to have. We danced following the float down the street for an a couple hours and that was when we ran into our first and ...

... the carnivale parade, or get a t-shirt that keeps us in a relatively safe, roped off area around the bands but actually on the street. The Camarote was $350 so we decided against that and got the t-shirts which were $140, still steep, but if it kept me from getting stabbed or mugged it was definitely worth it. So we bought the ones that got us into the area around fatboy slim, who is a DJ that we actually knew. Carnivale is ****ing insane. Basically there are all ...

... n *rm *nd leg cuff from *n *wesome designer with the longest *nd most m*int*ined dre*dlocks we h*ve ever seen *nd being *n English spe*ker, he w*s *ble to introduce us to The Psyf*mily, he*ded by * guy we like to c*ll The Alchemist. The Psyf*mily *re * f*mily of six who run * store on the Br*zili*n festiv*l / p*rty tr*il. We visited their store m*ny times to ch*t. Their four children of v*rious *ges were divine children with gorgeous blue eyes who performed ...

Once i finished volunteering i flew souh to salvador to meet up with celia and anna (two other volunteers) we headed inland 6 hours to lençois and the national park, chappada diamantina. from there we did a three day trek through the national park..it was greeeaaat!! tough, we were stinkers, got rained on, slept in caves..but sooo worth it!! our group was great too! even drinking ...