Friday 7th Feb 2020
Salvador, the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, is known for its Portuguese colonial architecture, Afro-Brazilian culture and a tropical coastline. Originally the capital of Brazil until 1763 when Rio de Janeiro was given the title, it is now the third most populous city in the country.
Salvador is comprised of an Upper Town, where the cathedral and other important buildings were built for safety, and the Lower Town some 90 yards below.
Salvador holds the world record for the biggest party on earth. Each year, the Carnival of Salvador da Bahia sees almost four million people take to the street to take part in the festival, which features street parades, dancing and live music for a full week.
Today berthed just adjacent to the business district of the city in the Lower Town. A morning rain shower, soon cleared up.
Time to get ashore to take the shuttle bus to the Upper Town, the touristy part. Slow progress, just so much traffic in crowded streets, and pretty much just one endless street market all the way. Very noticeable as we drove through the. City the amount of heavy iron fencing, razor wire and electric fences, must be a sign of the state of security here.
After drop-off a bit of a walk round to view just a small part of the city, hot, crowded and not overly inspiring, good views over the lower town to the harbour.
Very noticeable however all the different faces of the people reflecting their different origins. Many being descended from the slaves brought to the area from Africa.
Looks like preparations are underway for the Carnival, seats alongside the roads, scaffold towers all around, glad we missed that particular week, it would be manic I suspect.
So it’s back on the bus for the return, a much quicker route, or has the traffic cleared in this part of town?
Back on board. Fortunately didn’t need the first and most important Portuguese phrase we were given, “Nao Atire”, this one given to us by a Brazilian entertainment staff member, perhaps more useful in Rio, it means “don’t shoot”, we trust he really was just joking. He also ran a short series of introduction to Portuguese lessons, for some reason not till after Manaus, better late than never seems to be Cunard’s policy for most things, perhaps that should actually in their case be better late than early! Unfortunately he didn’t mention one word which could have been useful to one of our new friends, who while walking through town and being told “Peligrosa” by some old boys playing chequers thought they were trying to sell him something, he turned back and only later found out this was a warning of danger, lucky he did turn back.
This evening the show is a rock and roll band called The Bluejays. Excellent show, good selection of songs played really well.
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