Past Weekend

This past weekend was filled with many different experiences. Friday night was many of the other volunteers’ last night in Salvador, so we all went out to a club/bar called Boomerangue – but our taxis ended up getting lost so only our taxi made it there (within reasonable time), and Boomerangue wasn’t even really opening/starting for a couple of hours so we headed to a bar a couple of spots down. It had a western theme, which was pretty cool. The owner had gone to Hawaii a few years back, and fell in love with America (since Hawaii is obv representative of the greater United States). He wanted to bring it back to Brazil and give the people of Salvador an opportunity to experience American (and western) culture, so he opened up this bar. It had pictures up everywhere of various singers/performers – Elvis, Marilyn, etc etc, and SO MUCH Beatles paraphernalia (including a huge Beatles Love wall art – I think he said it was from the Cirque de Soleil show). The bar/restaurant area was on the main floor, with huge mirrors lining the wooden walls and an open patio extending out of the main restaurant (giving it a very open vibe). Then, at the back of the restaurant, there was an overhang where there was a live band. The first live band was an Eric Clapton cover band, and then the second band played a mix of music – some Bahian music, some random songs in English (some we knew and some we didn’t), and even a couple of Beatles songs – Eight Days A Week and She Loves You (the owner said they were playing them just for me! After I told him how much I loved the Beatles). We had a fun night and got back late.

Esther, Renee, Andreas and I traveled to Cachoeira on Saturday. We had to get up early to catch the bus. We slept during the two-hour bus ride, as we didn’t get that much sleep the night before since we had to keep waking up way early in the morning (4:30 am, and again at 6) to say goodbye to everyone who was leaving. We finally made it to Cachoeira later in the morning. Cachoeira is a small town that produces a lot of tobacco and sugarcane. It is located inland on the Rio Paraguaçu, a river that flows out to the Atlantic (through Salvador!). This helped it, over the past few centuries, establish itself as a huge production town. The town today, though, still looks like a page from the past. All of the buildings look like they are from the 18th century, as if nothing has changed since then. They are old and falling apart, although this gives the town much of its charm. These buildings, though ghostly, are beautiful. And there are so many buildings everywhere – I don’t see how they can possibly all be used – for living or work or both. The population just can’t be that high!

The town was very cool, though. They had a humongous open market running all day Saturday, where locals sold vegetables and fruits (they have many here in Brazil that I had never heard of in the United States), spices, cheeses, meats, sugarcane, woven baskets, knives, etc etc. Tons of random items. And around the town, you saw anything and everything. We saw people carrying round roosters, donkeys carrying huge baskets of items, really, everything (I can’t remember at this point). Across the river was an even smaller town, Sao Felix. We had to cross this bridge made of wood, which I’m surprised still works – I felt like the cars may fall through at any minute. Sao Felix had a cattle area (reminded me of the stockyards at Fort Worth – except it was only one pen, instead of miles upon miles). It also had this cool museum, part of which was dedicated to a big tobacco company, Dannemann. We saw women making cigars and even got to smell the tobacco they use – the leaves smelled absolutely delicious! As previously mentioned, we also saw sugarcane everywhere, as the town is a big producer of the item. They made this drink from the sugarcane by stringing a whole piece of sugarcane through a saw/mower sort of item, which would collect the juice.

Anyways! So I’ll put up some pictures but it was a pretty cool town – I’m glad I went. It was so different seeing a more rural town, as we have only really seen Salvador (the third biggest city in Brazil) and beaches/islands. Very successful day!

On Sunday, Andreas and Renee and Esther went to an island, but I wasn’t feeling too well so I stayed back and slept and later, went to the beach with Anya and Rachel. That evening, we went back down to the beach area (which is only a fifteen, twenty minute walk from our house – it’s just down the hill) and listened to some live music at an outdoor restaurant.