More Salvador stuff

Our last night in Salvador and we are officially homeless, waiting for our overnight bus. Luckily, our hostel have let us hang about, hogging the internet access.

Church stuff

I (Angie) love all the luscious trees and plants over here. The trees seem to be simultaneously flowering (brightly coloured exotic blooms), have exotic looking fruit drooping from the branches, and, as it's winter here, dropping huge leaves (bigger than Darren´s size 9 foot - I measured!) all over the pavements. I've also spotted quite a few of my houseplants (swiss cheese plant, peace lily etc) scrambling wild up tree trunks. Great to see them in their natural environment.

The toilet seats here are so odd - they're kind of inflatable, a bit like a bath pillow, so as you sit on them you slowly slip down into the toilet bowl!

New club for Positive nights

Just thought I´d clarify that although I said we'd seen parakeets, the most prolific bird here is the humble pigeon! They look exactly the same as English ones but walk in a kinda samba style...

On Saturday night we went to see a folkloric show - these are a tradition of the region and are like a sort of variety performance of traditional dance, singing and music (the English equivalant of these performers would be the humble Morris Dancer who don't really measure up). Somehow we ended up going to one at the poshest theatre in Salvador - which is quite famous apparently - and the show was fantastic. Really outrageous sumptuous costumes (by the end of the show all the women were flashing their nips, not in a tittilating manner mind) and dancers that did triple-time 360 degree flips (just landing on their hands each time) across the stage. We almost didn't get in though - the box office was shutting just as we arrived and we had to haggle with the touts outside. Felt very risky handing over our money for two bits of paper as we had no idea whether they were genuine. We got into the theatre by the skin of our teeth, just as they were closing the doors, and were led to our seats with a great view of the stage. Phew!

Sculpture park

(Darren):

For 3 days we've been watching a mini-festival being set up on the headland of our nearest beach. There was a large open-air stage and speakers being set-up and loads of small marquees with purpose-built floors, a proper pro set-up by the looks of it, they don´t do things by half here I thought. We walked past a few times to see if something had started happening. Finally we asked a security guard and managed to work out that it was all going off on Sunday. We were both really looking forward to having a dance and some free entertainment in the open air so close to our hostel and tried to imagine what type of fantastic show would be going on, probably loads of bands, drummers and samba dancers and hundreds of people partying late into the night. On Sunday daytime we walked past again and could see them still at work setting it up and figured that an ideal time to go and check it out would be about 8pm. After a day sightseeing we went back to the hostel got showered and dolled up for a night on the razz...only to get there and find they were already packing up and the ground covered in glitter confetti! It appears that the show was on for about an hour or two and somehow we had missed this meagre window of opportunity. So, we drowned our sorrows, well Angie drowned hers, I merely bobbed about for a bit. They were still dismantling it today for god's sake!

Slavery in Brazil

We are looking forward now to getting away from the hot, wet, grimy, noisy, pungent party that is Salvador and to a national park in the interior of Brazil for some fresh air and walking.

Yellow submarine