I have always wanted to go to Brazil.
The whole idea of them having summer while we had winter was of endless fascination.
The irresistible, exotic rhythms and happy music permeated my soul since childhood. My parents were samba-philes, and I cut my teeth on latin music along with everything else. Making out to Sergio Mendes as a teenager was a tradition.
The vastness of the Amazon and the endless river with its stories of giant anacondas (my first introduction was through Swiss Family Robinson, when the brothers wrestled with one. It scared the hell out of me) has held me in thrall since I can remember. The campfire stories of the candiru catfish, that swims up your urinary tract if you pee in the Amazon River, also helped put this mysterious country in its own category.
And then there was Carnaval. Half naked girls wearing feathers and shaking their fine Brazilian bodies! Endless music and dancing. Bright, blinding colors and synchronized movement. Unbridled jubilation. Good touch. Bad touch! The bacchanalia to end them all. What was not to love?
The word “carnaval” and the Brazilian spelling with all “a”s is derived from its meaning: “goodbye meat”, referring to its being the last bash before Lent. And I gotta tell you, they’re not kidding when they say “meat”.
Jean’s cousin, Carol Cerqueira, and her husband Nelson have lived in Salvador for 22 years, and have two children, Patricia, 20, and Daniel, 17.
Every time they would come to the States, I would swear to them that we were coming to Salvador for Carnaval. Last year, we cemented the plans for a trip that we figured we’d better take now, before we’re too old. Good thing.
Carol Cerqueira
I gawked at the architecture, and marveled at the way the Brazilians embraced their structures, regardless of the style. They seem to be more free to experiment with modern and retro-modern designs that were functional as well as beautiful. My father, also an architect, had the same opinion of the Brazilian sensibility after a trip to São Paulo in the late 60s. He was not only smitten with the culture and music, but the architecture and great acceptance of the cool designs by the people was totally endearing to him.
If there’s such a thing as a “picture postcard” view, this is it.
We headed in only to find out that the inside was closed. It didn’t deter us from gawking at the buildings that spilled down the hill, halting short of the water.
This place was breathtaking, to say the least. Even though we couldn’t get inside, the art outside was stimulating.
The iron gates, by Argentinian born, naturalized Brazilian artist 
By this time, after hiking up and down the various paths, I was sweating healthily, and the blousiness of the pants was doing nothing to belie the fact that I was quickly becoming galded. If you’re not familiar with the term, “galded” is what happens to you when you take a long walk on the beach with a wet, sandy bathing suit on. Being galded makes you walk bowlegged. It also makes you wish you had an industrial drum of baby powder handy. My college roommate, David Franklin, introduced me to the term, and it best describes the condition.
Here’s a great shot of Daniel and Patricia in the parking lot. Daniel originally had a great looking prom-night- quality zit, but I Photoshopped it out. Notice Carol’s SUV in the background.
Spliff by the sea in Bahia.
I’m sure that in the picture below Carol is explaining something about how the boats used to land there and have to get up the rocky cliff or some other historical nugget. She was a geography major at Indiana U, with a masters in urban planning, but her love of history is one thing that stands out. She is a font of knowledge that made every visit a learning experience. And learning is FUN!
To the left was a grotto with Statuary of Maria, the Vatican (I would assume? please correct me).
After I had made it up the stairs, I discovered that there was a service going on. It’s always weird to me to see modern usage of old churches. I ripped off a couple of surreptitious photos, but in one, the priest seems to be glaring at me. I guess that may explain the fact that right after, I fell down the stairs.
We got to the gate guy, and Carol (using her flawless Portuguese again) explained that Robo was a professor, so we got a discount on our admission. By this time, I was completely at ease with my camera being there, because there were a couple of guards hanging around, and I figured that a ruffian wouldn’t pay the admission to come in and MAYBE steal something. Nope. Safety. But, quite frankly, the guards were probably about as effective as old Asa on Andy Griffith.
There was a wall of ships in bottles, which are amazing. Who has the time? Patience? I suppose it’d be perfect for a laid-back Bahian to have as a hobby.
I’ve always liked these little turret things. It’s quite easy to imagine some little grunt Portuguese navy guy standing in there all day or all night, watching for something he hoped he never saw.
Nelson had joined us from work, and we ran through several rounds of several things that were delicious and heady. We really weren’t starving, per se, but managed to order a bunch of different tapas, and spent a couple of delightful hours in the beautiful lighting with beautiful company. I couldn’t tell you what we ate, but it was great. Carol might can.
It was bedtime.
We had an incredible breakfast, and this is the picture of that breakfast, which I lied and showed in an earlier post as “the first breakfast”. Okay, so this is really the second breakfast.
We proceeded on through the market, stopping to gawk at the likes of the octopus (above) and other stuff so exotic, so unfamiliar, and so utterly common to the people who were speaking the language I couldn’t understand.
In the next picture, Ian is helping to pick out and weigh a 
How crazy are these flowers? The ones on the right look like those things you use to dip honey out of a jug. They are so unreal looking, but symmetrically perfect and beautiful. Nobody tops nature. Of course there was a dog, and of course I began to pine for our two papillons, Zoey and Spike. They’re unbelievably obnoxious, but are so entertaining to Jean and me that the downside is worth it.
Strolling back inside, we hooked up with Carol, our assistant and Robo. I was hot and I was thirsty. What a great time to run across this next item–tobacco, I think.
Woo! Needed some water bad. Carol bought us all drinks, and I chugged mine while explaining in my fabulous virgin Portuguese to the guy that sold it to me how I was sweaty. I can’t spell it properly right now, but will correct: estoy suado is what I heard when Patricia told me how to say it. So I would go around Salvador telling everybody that I was suado, as if they couldn’t tell by looking at me. Of course, they probably had no idea what I was saying, and just wondered what the sweaty guy was babbling about. But when I was saying it correctly, it would usually get a giggle out of the girls.
Of course there’s no “checkout,” since you buy your stuff from each vendor, so when we were through looking, we were ready to go. Ian took all of Carol’s stuff out to the car, and in what became quite a production, another guy joined in to make sure that Carol got out of the parking lot with no mishaps. I think she tipped our assistant about one Real (plural, Reais), and maybe even gave the parking coordinator something, too. Maybe some change. But as she explained to me later, it’s a good thing to have these people looking out for you and your car, not only for security reasons, but also because they will always find you a place to park.
I took a couple of shots whilie we sat around after lunch, with the highlight being the proper homage to Our Lady of the Ping Pong Table by Robo and Daniel. Perhaps I should have joined in. Maybe it would have helped alleviate the tiny knot in my stomach.
Arilda’s modus operandi is to use an eclectic array of not only local materials, but many recycled materials, and incorporate them in an artful fashion with as much of the original interior as possible. Some stairs were colonial, but the ones that weren’t were treated differently, one with a random adornment of tiles.
In the pictures above, you see the entrance viewed from the aerobics studio that is above the pool. The pool and aerobics studio above are shown on the right.
Here are those stairs I mentioned, and here’s Robo not only making me feel bad about myself with his fitness, but being in a terrible backlight situation. It’s just like him to do that.