Salvador de Bahia

I think the guy who told me that the bus ride would be 26 hours to get to Salvador must have been smoking a bit too much crack, because it really took over 30 hours. Again, they insisted on showing movies dubbed and subtitled in Portuguese, and ignored my requests to change at least one of the two to a language I can understand.

I arrived quite late in Salvador, and so I was thinking that maybe tourist information would be closed. That would have been a serious problem seeing as I did not have the good sense of booking a place before arriving. Thankfully, though, the desk was open, and the guy working there was infinitely more helpful than the one in Rio (mind you, that is not too difficult to do). He seemed to know the answer to all of my questions, and when I asked him where the bus stop was, he left his post to come show me himself.

The hostel I found - where they say they speak English, French and Italian - is right in the middle of the old city. The receptionist was a bit strange/rude and I am not fully convinced at this point that he can speak Portuguese let alone any of the ones listed above. Still, though, it was late, and they have cheap beds available.

As I was cooking myslef dinner a group walked in and as we started talking, I realised that the girl was from Belgium, so she speaks French, one of the guys was Swiss, so he speaks German. If an Argentinan had walked in at that point, I could have used all four of my languages in about 5 minutes.

The next day, I went walking around trying to explore the city, and randomly bumped into Sagy of all people. It was nice to see him again. We both booked a place here in the same hostel for Carnaval several months ago. This happening only several days before Carnaval, eveyone was starting to make their way here.

Just walking around the city, it is possible to see just how excited everyone is about carnaval. There are many rehearsals in the streets where the bands are practicing. The music is more or less only drums with not other instruments and they sometimes march down the street blocking the traffic. No one seems to care, though. The atmosphere durring the day is great.

At night everything changes. It is not safe to walk alone after dark. Many people had told me this, but stupidly, I decided to do it anyway. I left my friends at their hostel about 200 metres from where I was staying and walked home at about 4 am.

As I was walking up the hill in the pouring rain, I suddenly felt and arm going around my neck. At first I thought it was one of my friends playing a joke, but when I looked over and saw an unfamiliar face, I knew something was wrong. I was not sure what was happening, but my initial reaction was to try to break free from the head-lock I was in. I really thought I was going to be able to break free when, again out of nowhere, four or five more guys showed up. Some of them went straight for my pockets, while others tried to restrain me. At that point it occurred to me that they might be armed and that I might get seriously harmed if I kept struggling.

Once they had torn my pockets and stolen my wallet - containing just under 10 poundes and no bank cards - they ran away leaving me in the rain with nothing more than a few bruises. I suppose it is all part of the South American experience, so in a way I´m pretty happy that it happened, because they did not get much, and I was not seriously hurt.