Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Salvador

The district that I'm staying in in Salvador is called Pelourinho. It's the central historical district that is based on the top and side of a large hill overlooking the water on the west side (facing the mainland). Salvador itself is a peninsula that is hanging down off the Brazilian coast like a pendulum.

Pelourinho happens to be one of those old areas with narrow streets wide enough for about 2 cars to pass eachother and dirty broken cobblestone on the ground. The streets have some grade because it's on a hill. The buildings and the squares are pretty and well decorated. The area looks like it's fit for tourists to walk around in but not too done up.

Taking a few taxi rides out of the area I've seen hills and hills of homes that look like rooms stacked on top of eachother. They don't necessarily look slummy but they don't seem rich either. They look like what you'd imagine in a post-apocalyptic era of humanity from the movies that we see (think mad max). If they were in LA we'd call them slums, but put them in Thailand and we'd call them nice villas. Hehe

There are a lot of poor people here. There are also a lot of Brasilians that have money that are either visiting or live here too. It's not easy to tell the difference when the party is on the street though. I don't think I've ever seen people of all economic backgrounds party so well together. The streets are free and the busses are pretty handy, so you get people from all places here to live it up and share some beers.

Salvador used to be the original Brazilian capitol. Then it was Rio, and now it's Brasilia. The population in this state (called Bahia) is mostly Afro-Brazilian, and so the crowd is a majority of black people.

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