North Coast beaches tour

Before leaving to South America our friends made us a huge present, a tour through the north coast beaches of Salvador. We started the North Coast beaches Tour with our guide Anne at 9:30 in the morning. Anne is French, lives for eight years in Salvador, specializes in ecotourism and organizes small group tours. We were the only participants in this tour, which made it even more personal. On the way north we had time to talk about life in Salvador, nature, people, music, carnival and many other interesting things you can talk about with a local.

First we headed up north by car to a beach in a fishermen community next to the lighthouse of Itapua. There was a small fish market where you could buy fresh caught fish. Our next stop was Flamingo beach, where we could take a bath in the ocean and had cold coconut water, which was very refreshing in the hot midday sun. After a short stop at Flamingo beach we had a one-hour drive to a small well-preserved village Arembepe further up north. Next to the village there was a small community with very few houses and a restaurant, right next to an empty beach in the middle of nowhere. It was a special environmentally protected area. There we had our lunch, Moqueca de camarão a traditional Bahian shrimps stew with rice, beans and some cold bear. Anne explained to us that the place remained the same for the last ten years. The only thing that changed is, that the small community has now electricity. After the lunch we took a bath in the nearby river. The last stop of our Tour was at a Tamar center. The Tamar projects exists to protect Brazilian sea turtles and to show people in what danger these animals are and how important it is to protect nature. At sunset newly born turtles, which didn’t make it into the water before sunrise and were collected by Tamar project volunteers, had a second chance to reach the ocean. Only about one of a thousand sea turtles makes it to adulthood. The sea turtles reach their adulthood with 25 to 30 years and only then they are able to reproduce.

 We did our tour with Bahia Metisse.

Pelourinho - Historic City Center

We are staying in hotel "Cruz do Pascoal" in the historic city center in Salvador, which was opened shortly before football world championship 2014. The whole city is preparing for the big street carnival, which starts on 12th of February. Wooden plates protect the monuments and fountains, the streets have the typical carnival decorations with flags garlands and many stages are built. Even though the official carnival did not start yet, you can hear drums from early in the morning until late at night. Different drumming schools practice on the streets and present themselves, as there is a possibility to join different groups during the carnival.

We are glad, that we are staying in the historic city center, as it is quiet safe and we have many nice cafes and restaurants around us. When we go out, we only take some cash we need, otherwise you need to take good care of your belongings like cameras and phones and avoid empty streets, especially on Sundays when the shops are closed and when there are less people on the streets. To go to the city center of Salvador we took a bus, which cost three Real, around one Euro. It is a cheap way to move around, but you have to know which direction you have to go, as at the bus station there is no information about that. Everything is more chaotic, even the way a bus driver drives, so you have to hold on pretty strong on something. Our guide told us, that the most robberies happen at the bus stations, so going by bus it is even more important to take less valuable stuff with you. From the airport to the hotel we took a taxi, which is the safest way to go, when you carry all the things with you. It is also important to have some change, as the taxi and bus drivers tend to give you less money back, if they don’t have the change. And usually they don’t have any change.                     

Salvador is the city of Capoeira and percussion and there are many schools for that, especially in the historic center Pelourinho. Capoeira is something for people with more flexibility, so we decided to take percussion lessons. We are taking group lessons once or twice a day for 1,5h. It's nice, that people with different levels can drum together and try different percussion instruments. Our teacher Macambira keeps saying that we have to feel the beat and energy in our bodies, unfortunately the only beat we feel is "Klumpakojis". 

First stop - Salvador da Bahia

What's the plan? Save some money, quit jobs and travel to South America. One friend of us told us, that we are kind of crazy. We were living in the great city Barcelona, had jobs there, sunshine almost every day and great people around us. What more do we need? It's true we had two wonderful years in Barcelona, but we also had a dream to travel. For our wedding we have got a scratch world map as a present, so we started to scratch away all the countries we have been visiting together. Our goal is to visit most of them. We are not getting any younger, so we decided to leave now and travel to South America first, in hope to also improve our Spanish skills.

Our first stop is Salvador da Bahia in Brazil. So we bought one way ticket, to be spontaneous and to be able to travel where and when we want. This plan didn't work out pretty well, as in Barcelona's airport we had to prove that we are leaving Brazil in the next 90 days, otherwise we should have had a Visa. So the lady at the check in counter sent us to a traveling agency to buy the tickets from Brazil to somewhere else, in our case it was supposed to be Argentina. Only by showing the tickets we would be able to check in. She was also so kind to tell us, that Corte Ingles travel agency should be the cheapest one. We never bought flight tickets in an agency before, so we decided to buy them online, thinking that we would safe money in this way. Just for the record, we don't know if we saved some money, but we know that our plan to travel from Rio to Iguazu falls by bus changed to a plan to fly from São Paulo to Buenos Aires. When we arrived in Salvador, the policemen at the border didn't care at all, if we have tickets or not.