Salvador

Salvador is a city of several million people site along the northern edge of the Baia de Todos os Santos. It was founded in 1549 by the Portugese at great cost. The local Caete Indians killed and ate both the first governor and first bishop. The city traded hands between the Dutch and the Portugese a couple times until it was eventualy heald on to the Portugese. The city also served as the capital of Brazil for a period of time.



The early colonial period has resulted in a historic city center atop a hill known as the Pelourinho, which has cobbled streets and plazas and is lined with resaurants, bars, shops and pousadas/hostels. All of the buildings are painted light pastel colors with white trip. We are nto sure if there is a formal building authorit, but it seems that the colors al work very well together and you wil never find tow buildings next to each other that clash. This section of the city is the tourist center and very much feels it. Despite the large numbers of tourists there are a lot of locals as well who are out to enjoy themselves. The Pelourinho is also one giant party every night of the week with very loud music being played in almost every place imagineable. Rebecca and I were not totally into the loud urban party scene and so we kept our tourist activities to visiting a couple of local markets, the Museum of Afro-Brasilian Culture, and a couple churches.

We also found an excellent locals bar with amazing sunset views that you may be able to convince me to tell you how to find...


On the recommendation of Mitch and Taylor and several other travelers we soon left Salvador and headed off to Lencois...

We have discovered that while the big cities of Brazil are interesting, they are not what we want our tip to be about. We have found that we enjoy the smaller out of the way places much more and are going to try and focus on them and only briefly stop in on the larger cities as we head north.