Dificult Brazil. Here all is big, all is far, buildings border the shores, we didn’t had understood that we were entering a very big country, heavily populated, at the same time modern and archaic. Pick-up meet horses, donkeys and mules, the mangrove front tourists hotels, the most sordid poverty insolent richness. Here in Salvador de Bahia the beach of the “cracked” face luxurious houses, bunkers guarded day and night. We eat in the streets or in cheap restaurants, mondanities are not for us. Music, never mean in decibels, fill our nights, we have not to go to concerts, we can enjoy it in our bunks !
Quite near of Salvador the Itaparica anchorage is more quiet and by going up the rio Paraguaçu the Maragojipe market in worth the detour. Poverty is still here but without the violence of the big cities. Peasants come to the market on horses and we load us of so much friuts and vegies that we must take the services of a taxi (a wheelbarrow) to come back on board. There is still some saveiros, dugouts who stay the best mean of transportation to cross the rio.
Bahia Marina, “ultra chic” but very efficient, welcome us to clean our poor Skøiern, she was more of in need and we wonder how she could still move with all what was stuck to the hull. The tropical and ecologic antifouling is still to be discovered ! In spite that we can’t no more hear RFI radio, which we are really longing for, we have some news of our country, we know that we have 40°c of temperature more than you….we know that the election times are at top. As for the news, here it’s more funny : the army has taken the place of the policemen, in strike, in the streets, it’s true that the population took the advantage to loot shops, jewelries, banks…To morrow we sail for Ilha Grande, west of Rio that we will skip as the Carnival is coming.
