The Tao of Salvador

The Way

The Sidewalk

We're going to start out with the mundane and end with something really less mundane! Yea!

The sidewalks are large tesserae that often have this curvy wavy design. Alida surmised that it was the mark of a particular sidewalk company. I thought it had some kind of meaning, but as usual in Brazil, things are never as they seem...

Time for repairs!

Walking on this stuff in flip-flops was a good workout, especially since you were either going up a steep hill or down one. When I got back from my trip I could open a beer with my toes!

Dogs are omnipresent. This an attempt to keep them out of their garbage.

A common site was some kind of art embedded in the walls everywhere we went. Some were mosaics, some were reliefs, some were tiles. Pretty cool, i thought.

As Alida noted in her web log "liderhosen", there are quite a few citizens employed to keep the city clean. They do have litter baskets, but they are the cutest little things. In the historic district three street cleaners were sitting on towels scrubbing each rock!

I don't know what tree this is. These seed pods are about two feet long. When they mature they become dark brown and quite hard. Here I refrain from the peurile humor that these beg for.

A cock!

Next time: Alida takes me to a Favela

DO NOT PLAY GARBAGE IN THE SEA!

Alida and Dad at Dinha

Oi! yáll - This is a venue to view my photos, but some comments are neccessary `n´shit thus the blog - plus this way I don't have your stinky ass breathing over my shoulder pretending to like them. I say that with love.

Tudo bom, tudo bem! is a phrase that means ``all is good, all is well´´. I´ve used it often during my wonderful undercover spy mission. The natives laughed when i shouted it while a herd of pirranha were attacking me. It was a comical juxtoposition of sights and sounds, I´ll agree.

When I was at the Dallas/Ft. Worth your favorite blogger had the idea of purchasing one of those disposable cameras, but i wanted a digital one. Yes, Alida is still laughing at her father´s dim bulbery. I did pay too much for one that had the word ``digital´´ on it and I´ll process the FILM when I get back to the good ole U.S. of A. Hence the early photos of my trip will not, I repeat, will not be posted at this time. Proceed.

I was staying with a wonderful family - Tereza (Teca), Edmilson (Baixo), Tiago, Rodrigo and
Murilo - that had 'adopted' Alida. She arranged a room for me in their casa.

The view from my bedroom!

Dining area!!

The windows in Salvador were commonly open and without screens.
Notice the bird feeder inside on the right.

My valve opened with approval as I discovered that Salvadorans in general eschewed the evil air conditioning. Wide open screenless windows were the order of the day and night. Compared to Florida, it was like night and day. Our peninsular positioning provided a fairly steady breeze.

Edmilson, the father of the house is a college professor, artist, Marxist and all around wonderful guy. It's interesting that he didn't speak a bit of my normal language but I could tell that he and I would get along very nicely. His paintings decorated the main living area.

Tereza, the mother, works for some sort of environmental agency which I think is code for drug dealer down there. She is a lovely woman that made me feel comfortable and welcome always. She was instrumental in my learning the little bit of Brazilian. Tudo bom, tudo bem!

Here she is with one of her three parrots. This old fellow is 52 years old! Yours truly's age! I, however, can kick that little guys ass in soccer. He won the obnoxious-noise-while-I'm-trying-to have-a-conversation contest. Besides the squawks and portuguese mumblings, he had this screech that crescendoed as if he were in the throes of an orgasm. Amusing, I thought.

Breakfast was papaya, watermelon or pina (pictured). On the outside it looked unappetizing, bulbous and black mold-ish. Inside it was pretty damned good.

Each segment had a shiny black seed. Also with my fruit I had some couscous, cheese, bread and coffee. Not bad for a kid from the projects, eh?

One night Alida and I went to see Rodrigo (one of the sons at the home I was staying in) play at his Monday gig at a shmancy sushi restaurant. If you haven't had any shmancy sushi, check it out. Yummmm! The core of Aguarraz is Rene (guitar), Roberta (vocals/guitar) and Rodrigo (bass). For larger venues they have drums 'n' shit.

After the first set Rodrigo told me that I could start the next set. Awesome? Yes? At one point I forgot some lyrics so I just mumbled some gibberish and inadvertantly bought the house a round of their best sake. How do you say embarrassed in Brazilian? I don't know.

There is a surfing video playing on the screen above our heads! A little something for everyone.

More!