12:58.00S 38:31.00W

 

 

Tim and Chris left us in Salvador just before the carnival really started. A good decision, as the whole of Salvador closes down, immigration and customs included and turns into a noisy, packed, smelly city. Everywhere you go the noise is incredible, starting at ten in the morning, the different bands compete to burst your eardrums and every now and again they manage to cancel out each other’s frequencies and create just white noise. After 3 days of this we had had enough, but the locals kept going for another four.

 

The highlight of carnival appeared to be paying huge sums of money to dance behind a huge truck covered in speakers, wearing a tee-shirt denoting the sponsor of the truck. The band played on the top of the truck with fireworks and huge party poppers exploding as the made their way down the streets. It was an awesome sight, watching up to twenty five thousand people dancing away behind each individual band. The real shame is that there appears to be no traditional costumes and carnival for Salvador is just a beer fuelled jump-up.

 

We did however find some lovely food here, with a gaucho restaurant serving huge slabs of beautifully cooked meat and a wonderfully authentic Brazilian restaurant, tucked away in the old town, with a secluded garden and fountain stepped back from the main street so that you could at least hear yourself think for a couple of hours.