But we still came because the old historic centre is supposed to be very
beautiful and boasts some of the best examples of colonial architecture in
Brazil. This city is said to the have the best preserved African culture in the
whole of the Americas. The descendants of African slaves here still practise a
lot of African rites and cuisine as well as a rich Afro-Brazilian religion
which is a mixture of Catholicism and old tribal customs.
We flew into Salvador from Rio and took a bus to the old town. We drove
through one of the main religious festivals of the year here. It took the bus 2
hours to cover a strip of 1km! We then took a taxi to the hostel and on our way
there we saw our first scuffle. A guy appeared in front of us, chasing another
guy who apparently had tried to rob him. The whole street got involved and
before we knew it we were in the middle of a big fight. Our taxi driver told us
to pull our windows up and lock the car doors.
When we got to the hostel we were told that there were riots going on in
the city where people had sacked a supermarket, a few local businesses and had
even stopped a bus and robbed all the passengers of their possessions! Despite
the guidebook’s warning, surely it could not be like this everyday here.
We learnt soon enough what the problem was: the police were on strike
over salaries and benefits. Obviously they had chosen one of the most crucial
moment (just before Carnival) to put maximum pressure on the state governor who
was not ready to negotiate. And some of the rotten apples of Salvador decided
they could ransack the place unpunished.
The response was inadequate. They sent in the army in heavy vehicles and
armed with M16s but those kids looked like 15 and were not a strong deterrent.
In the meantime because of these events, all businesses were shutting down at
night and all the concerts and music festivals supposed to go on at night were
cancelled. A couple of nice restaurants we had planned to go to had also decided
to close their doors at night.
For that same reason I did not once carry the camera with me in town,
while only bringing a small amount of money, half of it tucked away in my shoe.
Was that being over cautious? I hardly think so judging on the sad experience
of some co-residents of the hostel: a group of some 10 youngsters got mugged
just meters away from the hostel by some up-to-no-good kids. The next day a few
other guys from our hostel were surrounded by a gang on motorcycle but they were
saved by a bus driver who saw what was going on. He drove into the gang and
opened the bus doors so the guys could jump on the bus and leave!
The experience of Salvador was also tarnished by the fact that cash
machines had not been replenished because there was this police strike, and we spent
a whole day trying to find an ATM with bank notes in it. In the process of
trying my card everywhere it got blocked by my bank for security reasons. The
last day we had to take a taxi to the ferry to go to an island and there were
no taxis in the morning at the taxi stand, another sad consequence of this
state of affairs.
The only thing we actually did in Salvador was to visit the Afro-Brazilian
Museum. They had an extensive collection of African art in the form of
sculptures and paintings. They also had a very didactic exposition on African
religions as well as the history of slavery in the world which they linked to
Salvador.
When we actually got away from Salvador we were relieved and a little
bitter to have lost three days there. We will try to forget this wasted time as
soon as possible.
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