Salvador, Bahia, Brazil – part 3

We spent 12 days in Salvador, in November 2016. This post is the third and last of the posts about that beautiful place on Earth. You can also see parts 1 and 2.

We’d arrived in Brazil and spent a month – a rainy month – until we realized it was time to take matters into our own hands and go somewhere where there were sunshine and beaches and where there were cheap tickets leaving from São Paulo.

The beautiful sunset at the beach of Farol da Barra. We would go there just to watch it.

The first place that matched our criteria was Salvador, and we didn’t even give ourselves the time to think.
Within a day we had everything arranged: plane tickets, accommodation, car, highlights and all. We packed lightly and left.

The moment the plane opened its doors in Salvador, we could feel it: the heat. So delicious! I felt hope and joy and love. So absolutely glorious! We got our rental car and left. The drive ‘home’ was long because I slept, dropped my phone and Angelo missed the exit and well…. We arrived at our Airbnb (click here to receive a discount on your first Airbnb booking – and it also gives us a discount on our next booking!) around 2 hours later.

A night-time walk at the beach – one of the best things to do there

The house was clean, but it missed a few commodities and needed to have a few things fixed. The parking spot was 2 blocks away, which was OK on a nice day BUT kind of frightening on a rainy day. The location, though, was perfect! We could see the sea from our door and just a short walk away from the beautiful beach of Farol da Barra.

Unfortunately, we spent only 2 days at the beach. It was a gorgeous beach, with nice white fluffy sand and gorgeous turquoise water. There are a few rock formations, but the sea was gentle enough to make it safe. The water was a little too cold, even though the day was super hot. I must say I had my menstruation during that week, so I had to skip the water and it was not fun. There are many people there who rent out chairs and parasols just by the beach.

Can you imagine why we loved to walk around at night?

One thing that bugged me a lot was the littering. So much littering all around the beach! I found even a kebab stick pointing up on the sand, so unsafe and inconsiderate. I went there picking up all the litter I could, but it wasn’t near enough. There was a little truck that came around to clean the sand every 2 or 3 days, and if it wasn’t that truck, it’d be a mess.

Another thing that bugged me was the annoying street vendors. The first one that came around said he wouldn’t take any money, gave each of the kids a necklace, a traditional church’s ribbon and then started to ask for money. The kids had loved their necklaces and we didn’t feel like taking them back from them so we paid the guy BRL 10/each, which was a lot more than we’d have paid somewhere else, but less than what he was asking for. From the second time on, we didn’t even let the guys get near the kids. By the end of our stay, we were saying ‘NO’ from a distance. So annoying. And if they weren’t trying to sell something, they were trying to ask for money. I timed 2 minutes between every approach. In a few hours at the beach, we’d be approached around 30 times, enough to make us lose our patience.

The beach was lovely during the day too, you know.

Anyway, it was a great place. We all know that Brazil isn’t the safest place on Earth BUT we were able to go for a walk in the evening, play Pokémon Go, walk at the beach, have fresh coconut water, sit and chat near the museum perfectly fine when the weather was good. We didn’t feel threatened once, although we were always alert.

The street by Farol da Barra Beach is a great place to walk and it gets quite crowded. It has loads of restaurants, street food, coconut water, popcorn, it deserves a walk during the day and then one at night. Just make sure it’s a fine day.

We had 2 rainy days there, the 2 last ones. On one of them, we decided to go to a shopping mall nearby to grab a bite (all the stores around were closed due to the rain for some reason) and we got back when it was already dark. Because of the rain and the wind, most lights on the street were off and we had to walk from the parking lot to the apartment (around 3 blocks). One hooded guy started walking towards us and changed directions when we did. That freaked us out so we started to run. Luckily, we’d dropped my mom and the kids at the apartment before we went to park the car. It took us around 3 minutes running on the slippery sidewalks in the rain. We stopped at a bus station (that was, luckily, full of people going home from work, probably) and the guy gave up and went the other way. Boy, it was scary. I’m grateful nothing happened. That was the only time, really.

The colors, I loved it!

Nearby Farol da Barra, we went to Doce Gelato, a buffet, pay by weight ice cream shop. The kids loved the ordinary flavors (chocolate, strawberry, lemon, mango) but I absolutely adored all the Brazilian fruit flavors, like cupuaçu, mangaba, cashew, cajá and all the other I can’t even remember. It wasn’t cheap, though.

Oxequedoce is another ice cream shop there, but not a buffet and the fruit flavors were also delicious and the size was generous! We only went there once because the kids enjoyed rather too much the idea of the ice cream buffet.

Shopping Barra is a big shopping mall. We went there twice for the food. Outback Steakhouse is one of our favorite restaurants so we couldn’t resist having it within walking distance. The mall has a movie theater, lots of restaurants and many stores. If you want to buy something, it’s a place with air conditioning. 😛

Pousada Noanoa has great pizza and great service at the bar – we don’t drink, but we were treated really well there while we waited for our pizza.

The walkway is one of the best places to walk, exercise, relax and enjoy.

All in all, I loved it.
Salvador is a warm place, with great weather, fresh coconut water everywhere and it’s super colorful. It’s got a lot of beautiful places around it and we didn’t see half of it! You can read parts one and two also, to see all the places we visited while we were there!

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