Salvador, Brazil

So I finally left Rio, after a good 12 days!! It is longest I have stayed anywhere by a multiple of 4. Whilst it was nice to chill out and have no where to go / no where to be in any hurry etc, it was also nice to leave and I am enjoying being on the road again!!

I met up with my tour group last Monday, there are 12 of us including the group leader and they seem like a really cool group of people, so I am looking forward to the next 6 weeks with them, it should be awesome.

Salvador is cool, there is music everywhere and the streets are really pretty, paved in cobble stone, with loads of artsy little shops selling all sorts of useless things. We have been to the markets by the peir, where I bought earrings (I think I will come home with earings from every town we go to coz they are lovely and sooo cheap!!). We also went to a folk show which, despite my misgivings becasue of previous ones (which were crapp!!), was really really awesome. It included some folk dancing, some stick fight dancing which was really impressive, some Capoeira fighting / dancing which was amazing (includiung really high kicking / summersaults and the like) and some Candoble ceremoney which was also cool. Also the men in the show were very fit and very hot, dark skinned and toned chests and stomachs and they were obviously very good at what they were doing. Unfortunatly we weren´t allowed to take pictures though, which is a shame but I will make do with the memories!!

Yesterday I went out with Helen, a girl from our tour group, and we visited Praia do Forte, a villiage a couple of hours bus ride out of Salvador. It is a small, very pretty, touristy town where the is a turtle reserve and a small beach (where the water was super warm). The reserve was fasinating, we got to see some adult turtles (which were huge) and some babes (which were tiny and oh so cute). We also learnt alot about turtles and about the TAMAR project, a project in Brazil to protect the turtles as they are now an endangered species and it was a very fun and interesting day.

The bus ride back to Salvador from Praia do Forte, however, was not as fun - our mistake was getting on the mini bus and not the public bus. But the mini bus was going now, it was the same price and it was a mini bus so it was blatently going ot be faster and to top it off we had no idea when the public bus would arrive as they only go once an hour and the one this morning had been really late. So, with that in mind we got on and paid our seven reals. But, when we arrived at our destination, we had apsolutly no idea where we were, and I think we felt lucky we were actually in Salvador. It turns out we were right on the edge of Salvador, near the airport, which had taken us a good 45 minutes in a minibus on arrival, two days before, and now we were there which no clue what bus to get on and a load of portugese speakers on there way home from work (yes thats right it was also rush hour). So it was exceptionally lucky that there was a freindly english speaking guy on the mini bus, keen to both practise his english and to advertise his new tour agency to us! He was a great help - I hate to think what we´d have done if he hadn´t quizzed both the surrounding people and three bus drivers (after chacing the first bus down the road) in order to find the right bus for us and get the bus driver to tell us when to get off. It was a little bit of an adventure to say the least.

Today is our last day in Salvador, next on the list is Olinda, further north up the coast. Remember, if you want to see the route I am travelling with the tour go to: http://www.gapadventures.com/tour/JAR

Hope you guys at home are doing good, thanks for all your messages etc. it is good to know people are still reading despite my tendancy to babble on.

Loads of Love to you all,
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