Slept reasonably well on the night bus despite going downhill, at speed, and very very bendy for hours. I had the most testing toilet challenge of my trip - literally falling from one side of the cabin to the other. I had hoped to brush my teeth, but that was too ambitious.

Rest of the day was spent on the bus through the arid interior. The landscape got more lush and with dramatic rock formations as we proceeded to the coast, and there were horses scattered everywhere amongst the vegetation - some looking healthier than others.

We made to stops throughout the day: the first to eat our nutella and banana sandwiches for breakfast, as well as the sweetest cup of coffee that I was actually unable to finish. The second stop we brought two coxinhas for lunch, which was an unreasonably trying experience since we had to order and pay first, thus making the point and nod technique totally redundant. Nearer Salvador we also stopped at Feira de Santana, where the majority of passengers disembarked, including the pylon. Then, somehow and unexpectedly, the bus filled with an awful bathroom smell, which actually left me unable to finish my banana.

A nice taxi driver took us from the rodoviaria to the largo de pelourinho (where the slaves were sold and probably whipped in days passed) where we found our hostel. There seemed to be some kind of carnaval occurring in the pel, and the whole place was heaving with people and music... on a Sunday!

After a shower we walked up to a per kilo restaurant, which was recommended by the hostel-person, but looked like a thing of nightmares... lots of miscellaneous foods and beer spilt on the tables and chairs. We then took our beers onto the street and stood and watched a very fruity singer and samba band play music near the main praca. People of all descriptions were dancing everywhere: together or alone, it didn´t matter! We were there 2 minutes when two separate men had cornered Alex and I separately, trying to get us to dance. In order to throw them off we actually had to return to the hostel, wait for them to disappear, and go back out to resume our evening. We sat out on the street, watching an old lady barbecue chicken skewers and a Brazilian Dale Winton shoo away stray dogs while samba-ing to himself. Once again we were accosted by another dude and this time we just gave up and went home!

Day 21 - amazing breakfast at the hostel this morning - manioc, scrambled eggs, bread, fruit and cake. I had sampled the lot before Alex arose. It was raining when I woke up, but by the time we left the hostel it was humid and hot. We spent the morning walking around the Pelourinho, including the Igreja de Sao Francisco, which has an amazing interior of Portuguese tiles and selection of Catholic cum African statues. You may not be able to tell from the photos but one of Alex´s arms fell off her sunglasses, but she has continued to wear them regardless; today she sneezed and they fell off. We caught the art deco lift down to the lower city, which cost R0.15 and was great fun (I love art deco, and I LOVE new modes of transport). At the bottom we wandered around the market and surrounding area, and got acaraje for lunch - a well-known Bahian snack food which has numerous unknown things in it, as well as shrimp.

Later in the afternoon we went to the sketchiest, strangest ´shopping centre´ to visit the travel agent, which was non-stop busy and seemed to do everything from paying bills to selling sim cards. The transaction took a painful amount of time in the most impressive example of female multi-tasking I have ever seen, but in my finest Portuguese I managed to secure bus tickets to Forteleza for tomorrow (or so I hoped). An hour later we emerged from the shopping centre and were back at the hostel. There we saw our Puerto Rican roomate called Jose, and he came with us for our daily beer before heading off to the airport. It was only after Jose left that it occurred to us that we were being served by the Brazilian Dale Winton from last night! We then nipped around the corner to a restaurant recommended by Jose for a moqueca (better fish than in BH, presumably from the sea rather than a lake) and caiprinha. It was run by the sweetest two gay guys - one in all white, the other in all-shimmery black, and both sporting white crocs. They used a basket out of the upstairs window to transport drinks and food between the kitchen and street tables. No unwelcome boys today!

While writing the blog there was an incident in the hostel when some German girl came in scared of a mouse in the next room. Alessandro, the hostel-person, decided to go and ´kill it´with a broom. Instead he managed to herd it into our room where the German jumped about screaming and it ran over my foot while I sat at the computer. The mouse lived to see another day, although poor Alessandro suffered an injury as he broke his Haviannas in the episode. Mouse beats man.

Day 22 - The weather this morning was the same as yesterday; rain followed by sun. I had been up almost 2 hours and it was approaching 9:30am when I thought I´d better wake Alex up and make sure she was ok. We think she may have got mild sunstroke yesterday, but has luckily slept it off - perhaps a good warning.

Today we caught a bus to Barra - a nice residential neighbourhood that faces the ocean. We walked to the old fort and then settled ourselves under a parasol and on two chairs on the beach. The weather was perfect, but I had but one thought - getting in the sea! There were no waves here like in Rio and I must have spent half the time we were at the beach lying around in the sea! The rest of the time I sat on my chair and waited for vendors to bring me food. We bought cashew nuts, cheese lollipops dipped in oregano and grilled on-site, 2 massive passionfruit cairprinhas and some new sunglasses for Alex. Loved the beach!

We managed to coincide the bus back to the Pel with a marching protest, which meant the bus was moving at a very slowly walking pace. We can´t miss any more long-distance buses so we got off the bus and legged it back to the hostel. No time for dinner but just a quick shower before catching a cab to the rodoviaria. Luckily we had a little extra time there, and luckily it´s a pretty good bus station. We managed to have a buffet dinner and visit the most useless supermarket a bus station has ever seen. When we reached our bus we were greeted by the sweetest bus driver - Mario - and on the bus the two people in front of us were very friendly... one even showed us the seatbelts in case we didn´t have them in our country! The first couple of hours of the journey were mostly spent with Alex hitting me in the face with my pillow while I tried to put my long johns on. First stop looked very familiar - Feira de Santana.