Mais Histórias Viajam
This might be a long post since I didn’t get to post yesterday. I forget how hard it is to motivate to write a post and also email in one session.
Yesterday, I got up early, had breakfast, and went for a culture tour of the city. The first museum I visited was the Afro-Brazilian museum, which contained a great exhibit on the history of the slave trade and how it affected Brazil to be what it is today. It was a great exhibit and I highly recommend it to anyone traveling to Salvador. Next, I made my way down to the church of São Francisco. Holy Shit (no pun intended). It is one of the most ornate and beautiful churches I’d been to. There is a convent and monestary attached to the main church and there are beautiful tile murals all around the inside of the cloister. Being raised Catholic and having served as an alter boy in a past life, I know a thing or two about churches and catholicism, so it was very interesting to compare contemporary churches in America with the old churches of Salvador. No photographs were allowed inside, so you’re going to have to take my word for it that it was one of the most incredible buildings I have ever seen.
After the church, I had a delicious little lunch at a cafe run by some candamblé people consisting of a savory pie/torte filled with shrimpy stuff and a sweet one which was a combination of chocolate, cream, coconut, etc. Divine. Two espresso shots later and I was only down about $6.
After taking a little break at the hotel, I decided to take a bus down to check out some beach areas and look into hotels I was interested in staying. I found a great little hotel in the Rio Vermehlo neighborhood called Hotel Catharina Paraguaçu. I took one look and decided I would stay there after that night in the city center.
After that, it was back through town on a bus, through rush hour traffic and made it back to the hotel where I read a little and met up with a man from Holland named Ron and after having a pleasant discussion about politics and travel, we decided to get dinner and check out the town together since there was lots going on with music to be played in the various plazas around town.
We made our way down to the Pelourinho to find a restaurant and it was raining pretty hard. We got to a crossroads and a waitor approached us (as if from a dark alley), but he looked trustworthy and the menu he was carrying looked good. It was for a French/Bahia restaurant. The price was a little high, but we decided to follow him for his Moqueca (seafood stew cooked with palm oil and other spices). He led us much further than we would have gone given the rain and brought us into a restaurant that had a handful of people and plastic furniture. What did we get ourselves into? We look over the menu, the owner is sitting at a table in the corner with his caiparinha and cigarettes and he begins to interact with us. Taking us for foreigners (duh), he asks us where we’re from and he finds out that Ron can speak some french and they launch into discussions about the menu (and other french things) and we finally order moqueca.
Behind me, on the TV is playing a really shitty Brazilian soap opera. To my right are two beautiful Brazilian ladies whom the owner is flirting with regularly and out come our meals or rice, farinha, and moqueca. IT’S bloody delicious! It’s exactly what I wanted. The waitor brings out the traditional Bahian hot pepper sauce. This is the same sauce that’s the candamblé women put on the acarajé. I try a little on my food and it’s not too bad so I put more. The waitor is practically crying at me from across the room, pleading with me to not put too much, pantomiming sweating, but I don’t listen and he’s amazed that I don’t react.
I think us white people are racially profiled and incorrectly stereotyped as to having poor tolerance for spicy food. I say we rise up and create a coalition to stop the racism. We can call it WPFLUP (White People For the Liberal Use of Peppers). Will someone check to see if that domain name is taken?
Despite having our doubts at first, we had a wonderful dinner with great service and would highly recommend the restaurant to anyone interested in a little adventure. I believe it was called La Chett Bott.
After dinner, we made our way up to where the music was being played and had quite an experience at it. But, for now, this story is to be continued…