3rd February... Maistarde, talvez!...from Meg

Hello!
So Salvador lives up to its reputation!
There is some sort of a party or festival literally every day, we went to a hare krishna festie the other day with Chuck one of the Israeli guys and Orion and Ashlee, this stunningly lovely smiley couple from Canada.
It was fun, dancing down the street and pulling the colourful float. Then music and dancing at the end. The people there were lovely, and I could just imagine Kerriann being there, that would have been perfect :)
The chanting though I wouldn`t join in with, partly because I`m not a Hare Krishna devotee, obviously, and partly because I just have a thing about chanting, it gives me the shivers. Never mind though, it was really fun to dance all afternoon and evening. It was really fun at the party afterwards, they were playing some clasic music (not classical, just some really classic old tunes) but with the words replaced with hare krishna hare hare hare rama... like over the top of Pink Floyds the wall ande things. a bit weird but it made us laugh.

Yesterday there was another festival, for the lady of the sea, where teems of people went down to the sea to put flowers on little boats that were sent out to into the water. There was a huge parade down the street with a huge lorry pretty much made of speakers, and a very very good samba band. The streets were absolutely packed out (both me and Ash felt a hand in our pockets at least once (I want to get some monopoly money and print a little message on it to keep in my back pocket fro when people try and nick it!) ) , just hundreds of people, many dressed in white; people at the sidelines would just wipe their cool cans of beer on you as you went by as a sort of sales technique. It was so so hot!
I actually went home after the main parade, it was fun while I was there and nice to hear some samba even if it was too crowded to dance, but I felt a bit overheated and just felt I`d rather be at the hostel for the afternoon and lie in a hammock or something. I pushed my way through the crowds, asked some various helpful looking people where I might be able to get a bus to somewhere I at least knew how to get home from, and was back within half an hour or so, with some help from a friendly Chilean couple I met at the bus stop.

I made some more of the highly successful chocolate and banana ice cream we did at Ouro Preto for when the others got back, but only just got in the freezer when they came back, turned out they`d just relaxed in a coffee shop and on the beach since I left anyway, I might as well had stayed!
Ash has practised her Portuguese with Diego from the hostel who sort of took us to the party, I need to do some catching up. We are getting there.

We had a blissful evening! Both me and Ash got a scrummy massage off Diego, I made some ratatouille and then we all ate the ice cream yum yum!
Ashlee amazingly brought watercolour paints and watercolour paper postcards so we sat in the morroccan corner of the hostel and all painted little postcards they all turned out really pretty :)

So we are staying another night because we only just made our minds up what to do, and will go up the coast slightly to Arembepe and then to Praia do Forte (where we have a hug to deliver!) over the next couple of days, then probably to Capao (yes yes yes), the hippy valley with circus school etc :) I think it will be good to have the time limit of coming to Salvador for Carnaval when we go there, I can imagine it might be the sort of place to get stuck for a while :)
Tchau amigos! (thank you for your help Dutchy!) :) x x x x x x x x x x xxxxxxxxxxxx