Salvador was an amazing place to finish off a fabulous time in Brazil.We´d heard very mixed reports about Salvador (also known as Bahia) and didn´t quite know what to expect but the energy, the life and the amazing feel to the place made it one of our favourite places in Brazil.Salvador was also the previous capital of Brazil and over 4.5 million African slaves were shipped to Salvador by the Portuguese centuries ago making Salvador a melting pot for African, South American and European cultures and creating a totally unique city.

We stayed in Santo Antonio which is an area just up from the historic centre with old cobbled streets and colourful colonial houses. We were just a few minutes from the Pelourinho which is steeped in history and centred around a square where the slaves were tortured and sold. The whole area is really beautiful and there are so many churches its unbelievable, plus apparently all the churches in the historic centre are connected by under ground passageways between each other and also with the port. There are many theories as to why these passageways exist but I guess we´ll never truly know!

Outside of the historic centre houses line every visible spot in an array of bright colours. The whole place is so colourful and so its really fitting that one of the main symbols of the city is Bonfim ribbons in a rainbow of different colours on which you´re supposed to make a wish. We visisted the Bonfim church and made our wish tying the ribbons to the front gates. Hopefully they´ll all come true The women of Bahia are beautiful and really vibrant too, not only the touristy ones dressed in the tradition costumes of the long full skirts they were made to wear by the Portuguese but also the real women with their dark African skin, huge hair and loud colours. A sight to behold!

We visited one of the local Sao Joaquin market on its busiest day and was it ever an experience.Alleys lined with small market stalls, women carrying huge bags full of goods on their heads unaided and us the only two tourists to be seen. The alley filled with butchers displaying every imaginable cut and type of meat on tables with no covering and no refrigeration was disgusting and really made you wonder where the meat we were eating came from! But worse were the cages crammed full of live chickens, turkeys and goats. A man came strolling towards us pushing a wheelbarrow with two live goats in it covered with chickens and turkeys and one of the goats looked straight at me and bleated - poor wee fellow! Horrible conditions.

We arrived in Holy week on Good Friday and our stay was indeed filled with religion, both the Candomble ceremonies and Easter celebrations. Saturday night we headed out into the sticks for a Candomble ceremony to honour Oxum, the god of lakes and rivers. Candomble is a religion which the African slaves created from all of the beliefs of each of the African tribes who had been moved to Brazil and it´s survived centuries of criminalization by Brazilian governments. Basically they believe that each person has a guardian angel, or an Orisha, of which there are about 30 and they can become possessed by their Orisha when they go into a trance during the Candomble ceremony. The ceremony involves huge drums being played while believers dance around in a circle for almost an hour until some of the believers start to go into a trance. In the trance the persons body is used by the god to dance and communicate with the humans in attendance. Essentially it involves lots of way out there dancing, involuntary muscle spasms and screaming out and making animal sounds (sounds like normal behaviour in many clubs in London!). When the people enter the trance the leaders of the ceremony take them off and dress them in really flamboyant costumes to reflect the particular Orisha, in our case lots of hunting symbols, mirrors as Oxum is linked with vanity and yellow as that´s his colour. While they were dancing in their trance they´d often stop and hug spectators in a very loved up way (again similar to many London clubs ). Some people who weren´t involved in the dancing started to go into trances and the leaders would remove their shoes, roll up their trousers and wrap them in scarves before letting them join in the dancing. The time to leave came all too quickly and just when more and more locals were turning up for the remainder of the ceremony. It was an amazing experience and I think we were very lucky to see a real ceremony instead of a staged one. At times it was a bit scary but at times you weren´t sure if you really believed what you were seeing but all in all a truly different aspect of Brazilian culture and very interesting.

Yet more religion but this time the Catholic variety! We got to see a huge Good Friday procession with bands, hundreds of brothers and nuns and priests and locals re-enacting the stages of the cross and gunfire to mark each of the stages scaring the living daylights out of all the onlookers! An Easter egg was found for Easter Sunday morning and we attended the longest mass in the history of the world, an hour and a quarter and all in Porrtuguese but thankfully in a very beautiful and ornate cathedral. An open air concert in the main square was held to mark Easter Sunday, so different to home, with all the locals drinking caiprinhas and dancing samba. I´m still in awe at how they manage to move muscles in places I just didn´t think you could!

Our last night was spent at a folkloric show with the most amazing Brazilian dancing, samba, capoeira, candomble dances, traditional fishermen dances and an incredibly violent dance the slaves used to perform to celebrate the end of the sugar cane harvest. The speed and energy of the dances was amazing and totally awe inspiring, a fabulous end to a wonderful time in Brazil.

One of the main thing that also hits you about the dances, Brazil and the people is how happy they look doing the dances and just being, even in Candomble there is no sin or final judgement, the whole of Brazilian culture seems to sit on happiness and having a good time. Plus there is no racial divide, black and white live happily side by side with the only visible racial divide being between those who have and those who have not (which is pretty huge given that Brazil has no welfare system and a ridiculous minimum wage given the cost of living so they have lots of work to do there!) But they definitely have some things right and somethings many other countries could learn from.