The 2 hour flight from Vitória to Salvador on a twin engine prop was a much more pleasant way to travel, and as an added bonus was cheaper than the 20 or so hour bus trip would have been. The airport was a fair way from the centre of town however, and it took us close to 2 hours on a crowded public bus, plus about 20 minutes walking up and down cobblestone streets to reach our accommodation with our Airbnb hosts, Christopher and Rafaela.

Their house is in Santo Antonio, next the the Centro Histórico part of town. The house is built on the edge of a steep hilltop, and our room had big sliding doors leading to a balcony overlooking the port below. Not only did we have a great view, but the room was huge and had a big comfy bed.

We then went for a walk to Pelourinho, the historic centre of Salvador, which was the first capital of Brazil. As such, the city has some really old buildings, cobblestone streets, and pleasantly doesn't allow cars in the central areas, though this rule only seems loosely adhered to.

After some lunch and a couple of hours exploring, we headed back home for a siesta. Christopher had explained that on Tuesday nights they city puts on live music on a few stages around the place, the best of which was on the steps up to a church near their house. Wanting to make sure we could take this in, our siesta would allow us to stay awake past 8pm when it kicked off.

We set off shortly after 8 and watched a few tunes from behind the band, where we could see the crowd dancing away on the steps above them. We wanted to grab some dinner, so thought we would do that, then return to watch the rest of the show.

We set off back into Pelourinho and went in search of an affordable restaurant. After searching for some time, with people trying to coax us into their overpriced touristy restaurants, we eventually decided on a more local looking establishment that had a stroganoff on their menu for 2 people at a reasonable price. Every restaurant in Brazil makes strog so we figured we couldn't go wrong.

As we waited for our meal, we saw people arrived, eat and leave at the restaurant next to us. We kept looking over at the staff here, and the fact that no one else at this establishment was eating, only drinking, we got more and more concerned about what we might receive.

Over an hour later, a sloppy, dull coloured stroganoff was placed in front of us, with some rice, and tomato and onion, apparently the salad we had ordered for the side. The only saving grace was that the whole thing was relatively tasteless, so whilst it wasn't remotely enjoyable, it wasn't so offensive that we couldn't feed our starving selves with it. When the waiter cleared our plates, he asked how the food was in a way that made us think this was the first time anyone had actually ordered food there. We just made a so-so gesture and said, mmmm, ok.

We then made our way back to watch the rest of the concert, but unfortunately given our lengthy dinner experience, it was all over by the time we got back! A disappointing end to what should have been a nice evening.

In the morning we set off for Feira de São Joaquim, some markets Christopher recommended we visit. We walked warily down the hill as he had warned us that the area can be a bit dodgy around the markets, but we reached them without event. This was, by far, the most authentic and interesting market we have visited so far.

It was huge, and apparently no where near as big as it used to be. The first thing we saw was the live bird area, which was a horrible sight and smelt awful. There was everything from chickens and pheasants to peacocks and budgerigars. We moved through that part as quickly as possible, and entered one of the buildings. This contained stalls of clothing, dried herbs, pottery and various other things. It was probably the least interesting area for a pair of wide eyed travellers.

Next, we walked through a narrow laneway, not really sure if it led to anything, but seemed to be a direction people were heading in. It opened up into another large area, mostly outdoors. This section contained mounds upon mounds of dried prawns, and as we walked further, pieces of animals that were both expected and unexpected. Carcasses, cuts of meat, tongues, offal, entire cow hoofs with the fur still on and who knows what else, all just hanging by hook or strewn on benches in the sun. One guy was cutting up some meat as we walked by and had, with good hygiene practices, put some cardboard down to cut the meat on. Lindsay regretfully wore thongs to trudge through the unexpectedly muddy and soggy grounds of the markets.

We weaved in and out of areas with fruit and veg, stalls selling rice and beans for lunch (which we fortunately decided to avoid after contemplating them for lunch), salted fish, olives, just about anything really. Being the only turistas in the place we did get some looks, but mostly people just went about their business or took naps in wheelbarrows. Eventually we decided we had covered a fair bit of ground without wandering to the far end that Christopher had warned against (apparently that's where the drugs are sold, literally a market that sells everything!), and started making our way back towards town to find some lunch.

We arrived at the other markets, Mercado Modelo, which were quite the opposite of the local markets. These were in a nicely restored old building that used to be the slave markets, complete with holding cells still underneath, though it seems the access to those had been blocked off. All the stalls here sell every form of handicraft and souvenir you could ever want, as well as more that you would never want!

The restaurants in these markets looked much more hygienic but were severely over priced, so after a walk around the markets we had subway instead.

We were now in the vicinity of the "famous" Salvador elevator. This elevator, for 15 centavos, takes passengers from the street level by the water, to the street level at the top of the hill upon which the Pelourinho district sits. For the equivalent of 7 cents its much better than walking up, plus it's "famous" so we had to use it.

Unfortunately none of the 4 elevators provide a view, though from the platform at the top you can look out the windows over the markets and marina area below. We spent some time in the square at the top of the elevator looking out over the view and taking some pictures, and chatting to a guy who told us where "cracklandia" was so we could avoid it.

We came across an inclinator, which was also to transport passengers between the top and bottom of the hill. There was one a few doors down from the house we were staying in as well, though neither of them were operational despite appearing to be in a pretty good state. Christopher said that they open and close now and then depending on whether the government can afford to operate them.

We made our way back down one of the main streets of the Pelourinho to a cafe where we had seen Brigadeiros when passing previously, each having one with a coffee. We then headed home, grabbing a couple of beers on the way, so we could watch the sunset from the balcony, however as we sipped on our beers and the sun reached the horizon, the clouds had come over too much and the sunset was no where to be seen behind the rain crossing the horizon. That was one of the last appearances the sun made in our time in Salvador.

That night we went to a restaurant we knew would be a little more expensive than we would like, but where the food would be good as it was on a list of recommendations Christopher had given us. The vegetarian curry was enticing for Lindsay, but unfortunately they didn't have that. Instead, we both ordered Carne do Sol (Meat of the Sun), which is salted and dried in the sun and absolutely delicious, to eat in the balmy night air at our street side table.

Unfortunately, about 30 seconds after our meal arrived, we felt a few spots of rain, and along with everyone else made a dash inside. We managed to get a spot at a bench looking out the window, but only one stool so Fergus stood, though it was still a great meal with some delicious fruity caipirinhas watching the rain pour down. When there was a break in the rain, we high tailed it home.

The next day was pretty miserable. After a breakfast of a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and coffee at Christopher's recommended bakery, we spent some time in the morning catching up on research for the next phases of our trip. In the afternoon we visited a couple of museums, the Museu Afro-Brasileiro and Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia. For the former, they gave us written guide in English, though there wasn't one for the second museum.

The Afro-Brasileiro museum talked about the history of Africa, slavery and how the African culture has influenced the state of Bahia. It had some interesting art and artefacts, and explained the significance of these items and their production practically and culturally.

We had dinner that night at a bar a few doors down from where we were staying. Carne do Sol again, Fergus with Aipim (puree made from manioc root) and Lindsay with beans, tomato and onion salad, and farofa, which is also made from manioc but is like a dry bread crumb stuff that comes with just about everything in Brazil. We still aren't sure how to eat it but the meals were otherwise nice, and big.

On Friday we wanted to check out Barra (Ba-ha), a beach side suburb in Salvador. Unfortunately the weather was still crappy, and a bit rainy in the morning. It didn't rain while we were there, but it was super windy!

We got off the bus near the shopping centre and had a look inside. Being a more affluent suburb it was a pretty fancy shopping centre. We then walked down to the beach front, walking up a bit of a hill to a lookout spot, then along the water in search of another of Christopher's gastronomical recommendations.

This restaurant opposite the beach had a reasonably priced lunch menu including Moqueca, a seafood stew from Bahia, though only their prawn version was on the cheaper menu and neither of us are big on those! Lindsay had grilled salmon with passionfruit sauce, and Fergus a parmigiana, both were delicious.

Following lunch we walked the rest of the waterfront to Farrol da Barra, a fort and lighthouse. This fort had a really good museum with English, with details of the types of ships used in Brazil, attempted invasions, old navigation contraptions, the transport of slaves to Salvador, and artefacts recovered in the 70's from a ship that had sunk coming into the bay, from memory in the 1700's.

For our last night, we wanted to check out another bar in town that Christopher had recommended, and as Rafaela was at a course that night, he joined us. When we first arrived, the place was quite packed, and we had to wait, about 2 beers worth, to get a table in the restaurant bit out the back. Christopher's favourite dish was prawns, but fortunately he had some other recommendations for us, including the Carne do Sol (we are really liking this dish!) and a dish called Kibe, in this case beef, which is encased in a type of flour and deep fried. Served with a spicy tomato and onion salsa, they are really yummy!

We also tried a speciality of this bar, Cachaça distilled with a variety of flavours. Christopher ordered us one with clove and honey, and another with ginger. They were very strong, but delicious and we only had 2 small cups shared between the 3 of us, though we could see why one tourist was leaving in a state where he could barely walk. We saw him rolling around in the square outside afterwards with taxi drivers looking on a laughing, though fortunately he had a friend with him.

After dinner Christopher went home but he directed us to one of the stages that had live music playing that night. This particular one was a reggae band. If you joined every dreadlock in that place end to end we are sure they would have reached around the globe!

The band was really good and we danced and watched on until they ended the show about half and hour later. We are pretty sure we left a little stoned from all the passive marijuana smoke around us too!

We found another stage in a tucked away square when that show ended, but we had found that one on their last song at around 11pm, so we headed home as the nights entertainment was coming to a close.

Our bus to Fortaleza on Saturday wasn't leaving until 7pm, so we had pretty much another full day. We had a bit of a sleep in then packed our bags and moved our things out of the room to make way for the next guest arriving that night. Since we were leaving, the weather had decided to improve again, with a bit of sun and a lot of humidity.

We had a look at the Forte do Capoeira, which has a wide open square in the middle with various capoeira schools around the outside, though they were all closed on our visit.

We then wanted to have a look at the Igreja e Ordem 3o de São Francisco, a church, which we had read had a very elaborate interior of wooden carvings coated in gold. It was stunning inside, and the gold glowed in the small amount of sunlight inside.

We are unsure how it was related but there was a display of old currency from Brazil, which goes through several iterations, where the notes and coins start in small denominations, then they get bigger and bigger until the name of the currency changes, the notes go smaller again, get bigger, then the currency changes again. Who would have thought one country could undergo such inflation so many times!

With only a couple of hours remaining, we still had a couple of items on Christopher's list of food to try. One was a Acarajé a ball of bean paste, deep fried, and served with a few toppings such as tomato, what tasted like mashed sweet potato, and if you wanted them, dried/salted prawns. The place that served these didn't start serving them until 4pm, so we filled in some time by having some Kibe at the recommended place, then went back at 4pm for our Acarajé. Both were yum!

Once we finished our last delicious bites, we had to make our way to the bus station. We collected our bags, said our goodbyes, had one last look at the view, then caught a bus to the terminal. Where we got off the local bus, we had to cross a pedestrian footbridge to the terminal, which was crowded with people selling loads of junk, which was concerning as the bridge didn't feel remotely safe under our feet. We weaved through them, and the sellers on solid ground, and got into the bus station with time for Maccas before boarding for our 20 hour journey!

Salvador had been an interesting place to visit. A city with a long and important history, it's full of street sellers, people trying to give you "free" ribbons to tie to the church fence when you pray for something, young beggars and street cats. Beautifully restored old buildings sit next to buildings that are uninhabited and completely falling to pieces, just like the one right next door to where we stayed. Even beautiful old buildings right in the centre of the Pelourinho look like they haven't been touched in years.

Whilst the music and entertainment funded by the city government is a great idea, it does leave you wondering whether money could be better spent restoring a city with an enormous potential back to the splendour it most definitely once possessed. Either way it has a charm and culture that does kind of grow on you, not to mention good food! No wonder our host, from the US, found himself living there for the past 5 years!

LAPFWT