Sunday 13 March 2016

The end of the road

I've now been home from South America for 2 weeks. I can't really believe it's been that long already but at the same time it almost doesn't feel real that I was ever there. But before I get into that, I've got my last week and a half in Brazil to talk about- I wrote half this post while I was still there so forgive the mixing of tenses...

Please excuse me for using a Boyz II Men song as the title for the post- it was stuck in my head from the taxi I was in earlier. I'm currently on the way to São Paulo; Sod's law that my final bus of the trip is one of the only ones that has had working wifi. I'm flying home tomorrow, or rather I'm flying to Casablanca, hanging around for 6 hours and then I'm flying home. But first I've got to write a bit about my time in Salvador!
The day after Jack left I caught a flight to Salvador, about 2 hours north from Rio. If you ask most other travellers the first thing they'll say is that Salvador is cool but feels pretty sketchy. The lonely planet actually says 'if you're going to be mugged in Brazil, it'll happen in Salvador'. You can imagine my delight then when the taxi driver clearly didn't have a clue where my hostel was and just stopped on a road somewhere in the area and told me to get out. Luckily I found it after 5 minutes of wandering. 
Salvador has a different feel to the rest of the places I've been in Brazil. The history of the city isn't the best; it used to be the biggest port in the Americas for importing slaves and pretty much all of the buildings in the old town area were built by slaves. Nowadays the demographic is 90% African descendants, however my walking tour guide told me that unfortunately there still a lot of racism present in the city today.




The old town, Pelourinho, is where most tourists tend to stick to and the buildings are all very colourful and beautiful. Unfortunately the many shops in the area all sell the exact same overpriced souvenirs and paintings which was a bit disappointing. However a few days into my stay in Salvador I went on a free walking tour called Rebel Salvador, run by a guy named Pedro. While I found him to be a little dramatic at times, the tour was very good at getting out of the tourist bubble and seeing some places you'd never go alone. He also told us a lot about the current problems within the city- despite it holding a UNESCO world heritage site title, which should protect it from development, the government are tearing down buildings they shouldn't be and proposing to evict families who have lived in one street for generations in order to create boutique hotels. A group of locals are appealing to UNESCO and are raising money to help these families but the situation isn't looking good so far. It's a shame because I think Salvador has a lot of potential; if only the government could spend money where it's actually needed.





I also visited the Basilica do Senhor do Bonfim, which is a pretty famous church in the city. The railings surrounding the church are covered in wish ribbons, in about 10 different colours, all tied on by people who have prayed for their loved ones inside the church. I won't lie, I have no religious beliefs myself but it was still very impressive.


There's even a room inside the church with photos of people who have been 'blessed' all over the walls, and there are also lots of replica plastic body parts hanging from the ceiling which are meant to represent things people have prayed for there. Plastic hearts, hips, arms, heads, spines..you name it, it'll be there. It was a bit creepy to be honest!


I bought my own wish ribbon outside the church; you're supposed to make three wishes, tie the ribbon around your wrist with three knots and when it falls off your wishes come true. We'll see; if I ever end up living in a penthouse apartment in New York with a very rich husband, you'll know why...
I also had a popcorn blessing outside the church. Yes, a popcorn blessing. A woman in traditional dress came up, put some sort of oil on my forehead with her thumb and proceeded to say some things I didn't understand in portugeuse to me while throwing popcorn/corn kernels over my head. I have no idea why, I wish I could tell you! I just hope it actually was a blessing and not some sort of curse.



Overall I did enjoy Salvador, despite being very aware that by this point I was running out of steam a bit. My hostel also had a free caipirinha hour every night too which never hurts! Though I dread to think of the damage that almost 2 months of daily caipirinhas did to my poor teeth. I left Salvador on the Tuesday of my final week, which is a bit of a shame as apparently that's the day when all the fun happens! After that I went back to Rio for 2 more nights in Books hostel, where I honestly did nothing of interest. I felt I'd already done a lot in Rio and as I said, I was feeling pretty exhausted by this point. On Thursday I spent the day on the bus back to Sao Paulo where we got caught up in one of the worst thunder storms I've ever seen.

My flight from Sao Paulo to Casablanca was probably the scariest I've ever done. For one thing, it was the oldest plane ever. Secondly, even though the plane was already delayed, when we finally did board we were sat for about an hour waiting to set off. I was starting to get annoyed and try find out what was happening when all of a sudden 6 policemen boarded the plane, went over to a passenger on my row and asked for his boarding pass. Next thing he was being escorted off the plane and the cabin crew were searching all the overhead bins and pulling his seat apart. I have no idea what they were searching for but the guy never got back on the plane. Needless to say I was feeling pretty nervous after that and couldn't really relax for the first few hours of the flight. Much to my delight we landed in Casablanca safe and well, and after a few hours waiting around it was time to board my flight to Heathrow. A few episodes of Sex & the City later and I'd arrived back on British soil, exactly 7 months after I left it. After the standard long wait to get through passport control, I went to pick up my rucksack for the last time, expecting my bad luck to have kicked in and it to have gone missing. Luckily it hadn't and I was free to go meet my parents, where they were eagerly awaiting my arrival with a 'welcome home Hannah' sign and bovril sandwich in tow. We headed back to my sisters house for my requested indian takeaway and I slept in a room by myself for the first time in 7 months. I can't describe how well I slept that night.

As I said, it's now been two weeks since I got back to good old Yorkshire. It's been a lovely (but horribly cold) two weeks- I've been lucky enough to see almost all of my friends in that time and catch up with everyone. It's strange because everything is so familiar and most people say it feels like I never went away. It even feels like that to me sometimes. But at least I know that I have the added bonus of so many wonderful memories with some great new friends to help me through the next few weeks of job hunting, as well as the first tan of my life to serve as a reminder.

To anyone whose been following this blog throughout my little adventure, thank you and I hope you've enjoyed reading! Although I've been quite lazy and some of my blog posts are definitely the result of multiple text reminders from my parents, I'm really glad that I've tried to document my trip and I know I can look back in years to come and be amazed by how brave I was when I was 22. I'm hoping to do a few more posts on things that may interest anyone who is planning their own trip to South America- which I hope will be all of you reading this! For now, I'm happy to be home. I was ready to relax, recharge and eat good cheese again. But I know I'll be back- I definitely haven't got rid of my travel bug just yet...

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