Sept 7 - Salvador, Bahia- BRAZIL

Woke up this morning at 5 am to see the sunrise coming into Brazil. It was slightly cloudy but the scen of the major city was beautiful. We officially got into Salvador at 7:15 am. We then had to wait to clean customs and the ship had to clear its inspection. At 10:30 am we were clear to get off the ship. A bunch of us got together and planned to head up to the upper city. Walking through the lower city the smell was awful, smelled of piss, barbage, and dead animals. After a 10 min walk through this very dirty part of town we make it to the elevator to take us to the upper city. Once in the upper city the view of Salvador was breathtaking. The port was full of ships and tankers and you could see the entire city. At first the city was quiet because it was so early in the morning and it was a Sunday which was surprising though because it apparently was their national independence day. We made our way to “down town” which was literally a square the size of a football field. There were some shops, fountains, and street vendors. The shops are somewhat touristy with soccer jerseys, Brazilian flags, havainas flip flops (wicked comfy flops), and the towns art work. The art work is exquisite with paintings of all the old towns of Salvador and pictures representing their religion Candomble (see next entry to learn more). The colors are very bright. The Candomble women were selling there native foods which are made with palm oil, shrimp, and other sea foods. All the guys on the street are trying to sell necklaces and putting all these ribbons on your wrists. I attempted to talk to some of them, they speak very little English because they are Portuguese. Had some lunch at a local restaurant. Walked around some more and went into more shops. Eventually we all got really thirsty  again and stopped at this little placed called Ramma and had the most fantastic succo (juice) called tangerina. We met the owners brother who apparently had lived in Boston with his ex-wife but now is back in Brazil. We got to talking about politics and they are very interested in our presidential elections and asked us who we wanted Obama or McCain, and of course they all like Obama. He and his new wife and father spoke fairly good English and were very excited to have met us. Tired of a full day of walking around town and fearing for our lives because we had heard stories of other SAS students getting mugged and tackled for their cameras while in town, we headed back to the ship to rest.