Salvador de Bahia

Well, after almost four months we've finally left Lajedo, the little rural town where we were living in the interior of the state of Pernambuco. Although we were glad to leave behind the food, the heat, the mosquitoes, and the boredom, we were very sad to leave behind our friends and our lovely piseag Ceitidh. We had a lovely farewell party with lots of local forro music. Here's the band:

 

On leaving Lajedo we took a 12-hour overnight bus trip to the beautiful city of Salvador where we stayed for five days on our way to Rio de Janeiro where we'll be living for the next two and a half months. Salvador is one of the oldest cities in Brazil and has some very beautiful buildings. It was also the centre of the slave trade, so many of the people here are of African descent. The food, music, and even religion, are all very African. We went to visit the famous golden church of Sao Francisco (St. Francis). All of the carvings were made by slaves, and they say that they made the little angels ugly on purpose, to get revenge on their masters!

The old centre is very beautiful and is called the Pelourinho:

Ezra and Willa say it has great ice cream!

As always, Ezra's favourite thing was looking for animals. The rock pools were filled with beautiful stripy tropical fish:

Best of all was this bright green iguana. We always see lots of lizards, but they're not usually this pretty, and they don't usually let us get this close!

Next stop, Rio de Janeiro!