Salvador
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| Sunset in Barra |
Never mind the rain in Florianopolis; we were soon off to another
beach location - Salvador, which has the reputation of being one of the most
dangerous cities in Brazil. We had booked to stay in an area called Barra,
which is another beachy area, around 10km from the city centre. We had picked
that area to stay because we wanted to dive one or two of the many ship wrecks
in the area.
On our first day we spent time wandering round Barra to
familiarise ourselves with it, including finding the dive shop where we booked
up a wreck dive, a reef dive and a night dive.
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| Baiana de Aracje |
Barra is one of the few places
in the world where it is possible to see the sun rise and set over the sea. People
gather daily next to the lighthouse to watch the sunset, and every night they
clap and cheer to thank the sun for the day.
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| Another sunset |
We spent the next couple of days visiting the centre of
Salvador which is a lovely colonial town, full of colour and music. There were
percussion bands playing in the streets, small arts and crafts markets and the Baianas
de Aracajé ladies; women in
traditional dress selling local food.
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| Historic centre |
We visited the Sao
Francisco church which is famous for its elaborate gold chapel and its
tiled murals depicting life and death.
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| Sao Francisco church |
We headed back towards Barra to visit
the lighthouse
which was about 200m from our hotel. It actually contains the Bahia
nautical museum where we learned about the history of the area from the 16th
century, especially the Portuguese invasion, and saw naval instruments and
shipwreck finds.
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| Lighthouse in Barra |
The next day we were up early to dive. We went with Dive Bahia, based in Barra. The team was great and we ended up going to Remanso
wreck and to the reef nearby on our first 2 dives. A word of warning, Brazil diving is twice the
price of places like Colombia and Bali because they get whacked on tax.
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| Wreck dive |
Unfortunately the visibility wasn’t very good that day at the wreck we were meant to go to, so we were taken to another one where visibility was better. After the morning’s diving we had some lunch and went back to the
hotel to shower. We ended up crashing out for a few hours and it was soon time
to get ready to go back to the dive shop for our night dive.
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| Grilled cheese |
The visibility was much better, because we dived from the
shore and we were protected from the currents by the bay. Baby D managed to see
every type of sea creature imaginable – all of which I missed – but I did see
an enormous trumpet fish which hung around us for a few minutes.
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| Check out the skills of the man on the left |
On our last day in Salvador we relaxed on the beach and once
we were over-baked we headed to a nearby café for some food and beers,
listening to a fabulous band play traditional music, before heading back to the
beach for sunset, caipirinhas and grilled cheese!
Belo Horizonte
Another early start the next morning to go to Belo
Horizonte. We were flying out of there to Buenos Aires that evening, so we
had a good 12 hours to kill. The airport is around 40km from the city so we
left our bags at the airport and took a bus into town. Driving through Pampulha,
which is about 10km from the centre, we were pleasantly surprised as it was
very picturesque with a beautiful lagoon, apparently the largest lake in the
city.
Once we had reached the bus station in Belo Horizonte we were less
impressed. There appeared to be a homeless city right outside the bus station.
As we walked away from the bus station things began to pick up and we saw what
a nice tree-lined city it was. We headed to the municipal
market which sold anything and everything – including puppies, kittens,
ducks and chickens.
We took a cab across to the Museum
of Natural Sciences to look at dinosaur bones and even though it was meant
to be open until 5pm, for some reason it was closing 15 minutes after we
arrived. We whizzed round it (luckily we didn’t have to pay) and the canny cab
driver who had waited outside for us, knowing we wouldn’t be long, took us to a
different bus depot to go back to the airport.
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| Museum of Natural Sciences |
There didn’t seem to be much to
do in Belo, and what was there was closed, so we thought we’d just go and sit
it out at the airport. As it turned out, the bus depot was for executive buses
and not having much cash left, we didn’t have enough to pay, so we started
walking to the main bus terminal where we knew the buses were cheaper and where
we had arrived that morning.
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| Belo Horizonte Americo Renne Giannetti Park |
On the way we stumbled across a huge market, selling art,
jewellery, clothing, bags, food and beer, and with traditional music being played
throughout. Turns out it was the city’s ‘Hippie
Fair’ which was set up outside the city’s Americo
Renne Giannetti park which was also enormous. We grabbed a beer each and
killed a couple of hours wandering round the market and the park, which was a
stroke of luck.
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| Hippie Fair |
And that was Brazil. What more can I say? I loved it. It was
everything I thought it would be. Laid back, chilled vibe, friendly, happy
people dancing in the streets like they are perpetually on holiday, music
playing everywhere you go, (and some decent eye candy for both of us).
Onto Argentina!
#salvadorbrazil #barra #belohorizonte #bahianauticalmuseum #divebahia
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