Catching Up

Hey everyone, its been tough to get on the internet only because I try not to use my time to surf the world wide web but since I've been having a great time and moving along up the eastern coast, i'll try and catch up a bit.

I left off in Salvador, a city in the state of Bahia. Its more of the traditional Afro Brasilian cities in Brasil but people have warned me about the poverty there and the crime. But just like Rio, with common sense, nothing happened. After our tuesday night town party and after sleepin in BO hostel, Josh and I gave ourselves the city walking tour. In the day time, Salvador is amazing. Cobblestone roads, rich historical monuments, and friendly people (other than the beggars).

We debated on taking a samba class or an afro drumming class. And since Salvador is about 80% African ancesty, we opted for the drumming class. BUT, funny thing was, we arrived late to the class. We stopped to eat at a local spot and lo and behold, the guy running the joint was a Chinese dude. So I had to stop and talk to him. Straight up Cantonese. We chatted for a bit, feeling good about my cantonese flowing. He said he had been here in Brasil for 50 years now and all 3 of his children married Brasilian. It was interesting that the cantonese people were here too. I think its just common all over the world for cantonese to settle. It was fun learning about his history and having all his workers stare at us while we spoke Chinese.

So, arriving late to the drum class didn't stop us from getting my jam on. This was def one of the highlights of the trip so far. I mean, I've been hearing the locals jam and the music in Brasil just makes your body move. Those beats were always just in my head. So we started off with simple beats. Then everyone split off to different instrumentals, bass drum, bongos, a few snare-like drums and the teacher accompanied us with his bells. We played some samba, and some others. But for a beginer class, we were def jamming.

After the class, we packed up and headed to the bus station for our first over night bus. Its been a while since I've taken an overnight bus. The closest was the overnight ferry in greece with Val. Of course it was painful but with my wetnap bath and donut pillow, in the end, we saved money and time since we traveled during the night. A backpacker's best option!

Right now we're about 11 days into the trip and I have to tell you about our next city Maceio. The random town we picked to go to which turned out to be INCREDIBLE. I'll try my hardest to post some pics cuz we got some good ones.