Salvador

As soon as you arrive in Salvador you know there is something special about the city - there is an electric vibe rising up from the streets from the moment you step off the [twentyfuckingseven hour] bus. music emanates from every car, van, bus, house, restaurant, bar and hotel. The sounds of samba, salsa, reggae, bossanova and frevo fill the air. The first night I took a stroll around the pelourinho (old city), just following my ears to the closest music source. It turned out to be an all female drum ensemble - Dida. The girls ranged in age from 8-15 and they were all amazing drummers. They played their hearts out for ages, all the time with infectious grins on their faces. I reckon my arm would have fallen off after about 5 minutes. During one piece all the girls had to come to the front to do a little dance around their drum. To be honest I have never seen such self confidence in a 10 year old before. They danced around their drum, jumped up on the the drum, posed, did some cartwheels and generally strutted their stuff. I think any western girl that age would have been mortified to be put in front of so many people to dance, but no, these girls lapped up the attention.

That was basically the sum of Salvador - sleep late (cos there was no going to bed early with all the music being played), read a little, wait for sundown, grab a beer and head out to the nearest music venue. Most of the drum bands would do a procession through the cobbled streets, so it had a bit of a mini-carneval feel to it all. I will never forget one night the procession stopped outside a barberīs shop where a man was getting a haircut. The barber proceed to dance around the man, taking a snip out of his hair everytime the bass drum sounded. The victim customer took it all in his stride and was even bopping around in his chair a bit. I didnīt wait for the end product, but it was definitely a hair cut with soul.

In between times there were always some blokes in the squares around town practising Capoeira. Some not so good - pissed blokes pretending to fight, but some were breathtaking, kicking each other and missing each otherīs heads by milimeters & miliseconds. One guy was even doing some backflips over his opponent. Salvador is a wonderful place, music in the air, street parties every night, beaches, cheap accomodation, great food & men pretending to kick the shit out of each other. Now why canīt we have that back home?