Dancing to a different beat in Salvador

Vibrant Salvador is a feast for the senses, yet its charm does not lie in the colour explosion that is its immaculately preserved colonial district, the Pelourinho. Nor is it drawn from its fortuitous location, perched atop a rugged peninsula jutting out onto the Atlantic Ocean.

Salvador’s true appeal comes from its defiant and indefatigable people, many of whom are descended from West Africans captured and brought to Brazil as slaves to work on sugar plantations over three hundred years. Slavery was abolished in 1851, yet the traditions it entrenched in these people in the face of adversity continue to this day.

It’s incredible how much of their culture Africans have brought with them and preserved in Brazil over the centuries. Salvador, capital of the north-eastern state of Bahia, remains the hub of Afro-Brazilian culture. Most notably, the Africans did not have their multi-deity religion, Candomble, squashed by the Portuguese, as happened to many other indigenous nations throughout Latin America.

Candomble survived because the African slaves cleverly disguised certain aspects of worship to resemble Catholicism, and were thus permitted to practice their religion. It is based around a group of deities, known as Orixas, each with their own unique outfits, responsibilities and a day of the week. Ogum is said to closely resemble Jesus, being the son of God, and has a nemesis that dwells in hell like the devil.

The female Orixas are illustrated wearing head turbans and brightly coloured skirts with big hoops in them. It’s easy to spot women dressed up as various Orixas throughout the Pelourinho, ready to lure unsuspecting tourists into restaurants or to eat at street stalls.

Woman dressed as an Orixa goddess

Another tradition kept alive during slavery and after is the capoeira dance, which has been popularised into a form of aerobics around the world. It was originally just a free fight between slaves, but when their masters beat them for fighting they adapted their moves into a slower-moving, but equally confrontational dance, set to pounding bongo drum rhythms.

Capoeira artists, whether talented or amateur, also prey on tourists wandering around the Pelourinho. Cast even a sideways dance at a mock fight and inevitably you will be mobbed by people demanding money for looking at the performance. The nicest way I can describe it is an extremely pro-active form of busking, bordering on consensual mugging in some instances. Sadly, the pushiest people are often after money for the more average performers.

Salvador is a sightseer’s delight – there are a zillion museums, monuments and churches to check out – but as usual we couldn’t really be bothered with all of this, even though we were disappointed when we later found out that some churches were decked out with gold bullion. We did visit the Afro-Brazilian museum, which catalogued the history of slavery in Salvador and had displays on the Orixas and contained some wooden carvings and intricate metal ornaments (and to Adam’s delight, and anyone who has seen the Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live sketch, a big cowbell).

The Pelourinho is perched atop a hill overlooking the Atlantic, its cobblestoned laneways running parallel to a sheer drop, below which the city’s commercial district sits. Scores of police patrol this hilltop touristy area bordered by disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but apparently this hasn’t stopped large numbers of muggings from taking place.

Ironically, children pose the biggest threat. A guy staying in our hostel was approached by one who threatened him with a broken bottle, and got away with his wallet, camera and phone. Another guy we met in Bolivia had been surrounded by a whole group of them who had promptly relieved him of the contents of his pockets. Sadly, many of these kids live on the streets and some are addicted to crack.

Salvador provides instant evidence that Brazil is a country of dramatic wealth contrasts. Its downtown area is ragged and rundown. We found ourselves on a street leading down the hill from the immaculately presented Pelourinho is lined with dilapidated buildings housing drinking dens and whorehouses, with hookers hanging about on the cracked pavements.

Barra Beach

The neighbourhoods lining the upmarket marina area on the waterfront are also run down and contain many condemned buildings. The small beaches opposite them are lined with rubbish, tents and shanties. But then again, I can think of plenty of worse places if you are going to be homeless.

Further up this coastal strip, the shanties disappear, making way for imposing modern apartment towers enclosed in razor wire fencing with security guards sitting in locked offices at the entrances. But the seediest part of town had to be the pedestrian walkway on the side of the freeway leading to the flashy apartments. Even though there were police stationed at the entrance, about 200 metres further down, groups of people were sitting down against the concrete walls, preparing crack pipes.

We were pretty surprised to see people doing it in public, and not really sure how these people would react to a couple of tourists interrupting them. But to our amazement, they simply smiled and said “Olá.” Maybe it would have been different if they didn’t have any crack left!

Closer to the tip of the peninsula is the affluent beachside neighbourhood of Barra. It is home to a strip of fancy hotels, apartment buildings and waterfront restaurants, but when we strolled up and down the road that hugs the ocean on a Sunday afternoon, the atmosphere was electric. Narrow beaches were crowded with people sitting fading beach umbrellas with stalls selling coconuts, guarana drinks and beer everywhere you looked.

But the best thing we observed about Brazilian beach culture was how liberated people are with their bodies. They just stroll about town in their super-brief swimsuits, men in little more than boy-leg budgie smugglers and women in microscopic bikinis. In short, there is a lot of flesh on display (in some cases a little too much), but everyone just seems so darn…comfortable in their own skins.

A final upside of the African influence on Salvador is its amazing cuisine, made even better by the variety of seafood on offer thanks to its coastal location. A standout is the moqueca, an amazingly rich fish and seafood stew cooked in dende or palm oil, and flavoured with tomatoes, onions and about a million spices. It tastes even better washed down with a few caipirinhas, made with Brazil’s famous cachaca sugar cane spirit, which go for just under $2.50 a pop.

Delicious moqueca fish stew