A bunch of Berimbaus
After a few days in Rio, we decided head north to Salvador for a bit of African culture. We were originally going to take a 28 hour bus ride, but incredibly it turned out to be cheaper to fly (with Gol, the new low-cost Braillian carrier), although it was a bit of a challenge to getting the tickets booked - another crappy website that doesn't take international credit cards, and fails to tell you this until the very the of the booking process. moan, moan..
Salvador is a city great for church buffs - it has 136 of them apparently. We decided to stay in Barra (pronounced 'Baha'), a little down the coast from the city but with nice beaches and great surf. The area is famous for it's lighthouse, which marks the spot where the Portuguese first landed in 1580. Its claim-to-fame is that it's first lighthouse built in the Americas. Salvador itself is home to Capoeira, a kind of dancy/fighty type thing created by the African slaves in the 16th Century.
The lighthouse
For our first few nights we stayed at the 'Albergue do Porto' (their best room at 50 bucks/night). We soon realised we were paying well over the odds (we had gone for the LP recommendation) and moved to a fantastic apartment on the sea front for the same price. We spent 7 nights there in total, exploring the city a little (although trying to minimise our trips on the public lift that links the lower and upper halves of the city - it's almost a free-fall drop.) Salvador centre is packed full of 'ribbon kids' - swarms of young blokes trying to tie coloured ribbons (or 'gifts') around the arms of tourists. Nice place but that was a bit of a pain in the arse.
The food in Salvador (and Brazil in general, come to that) was great. We found a pay by weight place - great food with large plates of exotic fruit - I covered mine in what looked like a fantastic raspberry sauce. Turned out to be Tomato Ketchup, which didn't add much to the dish. This set Kerry off as it reminded her of a time in New Zealand walking the Tongariro circuit when all we had to eat after a hard days walking was pasta and ketchup - we had bought a huge carton of it thinking in was pasta sauce.
Buildings, Salvador
After a week or so we flew back to Rio and then back to Santiago for our last few days in South America before our final flights back to Sydney. We took a bus to Valparaiso, a famous port town only 2 hours away for a couple of days of culture.
In Valparaiso we managed to land ourselves some free Spanish lessons taught by a kind of Chilean Borat character (who was also our hostel owner). Among other things we learnt that in South America, when a man changes the colour of his eyes with contact lenses, he is gay. The hand-on teaching method meant that we spent a lot of time wandering around the town and local supermarket learning the Spanish for various fruit items, sanitary pads etc..
Back in Santiago we took a day trip to the San Francisco glacier and 'El Morado', beautiful mountain scenery only an hour away from one of the largest cities on the continent. Halfway up we found a natural spring with naturally carbonated water spewing from it. Fantastic. We had lunch in an ice cave at the base of the glacier before heading back to the city.
The next day we flew back to Sydney. This was the final flight of our trip and the start of our new lives as residents in Australia. Next on the agenda is a job and a place to live!
(No photos accompanying the end part of this post. Yahoo has managed to screw up my account, removing all my access/ability to upload photos to Flickr. Grrrr...)
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