Salvador

Okay. Now THIS is what I thought Brazil would be like. I finally get why I was so confused in Rio, Arraial, Itacare and Boipeba. They weren´t Salvador!

Salvador, the gorgeous tumbling city of crumbling pastel façades and music pouring out of antique windows and people literally dancing in the cobblestone streets. It met all my happy expectations and surpassed them! Afro-brazilian and samba dance and music schools are practicing for Carnaval right now and we were the lucky recipients of their free, public rehearsals. And I found dance classes I could take! A lovely girl from Brooklyn staying at our hostel that Aleah told us about, Nega Maluca, (thanks Lee Lee!) told me about the Escola de Dança. I was able to take a samba class and attend an Orixa workshop, which is dance of the deities of the Candomblé religion brought over by the slaves from West Africa. It was a little different than Monday nights at the Rec Center in PT. Mainly because there were about 40 men and women representing a multitude of races and it was about 100 million degrees and of course, it was all in Portuguese. I loved it.

Salvador is also notorious for petty crimes against tourists so we put on our Rio faces and made careful decisions about where to go, especially at night. We had no problems. We ate at a fancy Churrascaria by the sea and rode the ridiculously tall elevators that connect Cuidade Alto to Cuidade Barra and we drank a bunch more coconuts and I ate a small city´s worth of mango and papaya. It was bliss.

Then we flew to Natal! Domestic flying in foreign countries is new for me, I like it. Now we are in Pipa, another tourist hole but has great surfing a long beach that looks like Oregon/Maui/Half Moon Bay, Ca. Tall red cliffs and nice peeling waves. Today we´re driving to a smaller, quieter spot that is NOT in Lonely Planet. Gasp! We will confirm if it truly does exist but if it´s nice, we´ll keep it´s identity a blessed secret. Let the locals have one pocket of peace.

We´re home in about a week! Yikes and yahoo!

Muito amor.