Things to do in Salvador de Bahia

The Olympic Games will be kicking off soon and if you're one of the lucky ones to be on your way to Brazil, you might want to check out these five cool things to do in Salvador de Bahia.

• Wander around the historic streets of Pelourinho

With its colourful buildings and churches, hidden squares and not so hidden squares such as the Terreiro de Jesus which is overlooked by four churches. the historic heart of Salvador de Bahia, also known as Pelourinho is a wonderful area to walk around. It's usually full of live with vendors, street artists and capoeira dancers. Excellent people watching opportunities guaranteed.

Photo by metamorFoseAmBulante off Flickr

• Hit one of the nearby beaches

Easily reached on foot from the town centre, there is either Praia Porto de Barra Beach or Praia do Farol Barra. Both beaches are popular among locals as well as tourist and they're fantastic city beaches to soak up some sun or find a shady spot under palm trees.

• Learn the Capoeira

Is it a dance? Is it a martial art? Who cares, because it is beautiful to see the flips, cartwheels and sweeps. If you want to try it yourself, you can sign up for lessons at the Associação de Capoeira Angonal.

Photo by alobos off Flickr

• Attend a candomblé ceremony

This Afro-Brazilian religion originated in Brazil and is still widely practiced throughout the country. Even if you're not a believer, you can still attend a ceremony at Candomblé temples which are called casas. It's quite a fascinating event as the women in the ceremony fall into a trance while the priest-spirits dance and the lead-priest leads songs.

Photo by Alex de Oliveira off Flickr

My Favourite Travel Meal

It's blog link up time again with Runaway Kiwi, Adventures of a London Kiwi and 80 Pairs of Shoes and this month's topic is favorite travel meal. All week I've been trying to think of where and when that was exactly, but there have been so many.

I've had some of the best and oddest fruit juices in Brazil. Every morning I went down to a local juice bar where they are pressed right in front of you and tried a different one, ranging from the more mundane pineapple and papaya juice to cashew and graviola juice. Mixing a couple of them together is also very yummie.

My favourite food is Indonesian Padang Padang food. So good they named it twice is also applicable to the Sumatran cuisine that is widely available outside of the island of Sumatra. You can recognise the Padang restaurants by the many stacked bowls filled with delicious spicy dishes ranging from chicken legs to cassava leaves and eggplant. It's very spicy so lots of ice cold beer is advisory.

Photo by P3rSeUs off Flickr

My second favourite food is Italian and travelling to Italy is like dying and going to food heaven. When I was in Sorrento I had plates full of pasta every night, eating everything on my plate till I could eat no more. The morning meals were a feat as well as I discovered that the Italians are masters in creating breakfast pastries as well. Not so great for the ole waistline though.

I love tapas and the best ones are to be found in the Basque country in the north of Spain. Here the tapas are skewered on a piece of bread and range from succulent pork or omelet on bread to the more daring urchin and liver paste on bread. Do watch the teeth as the bread can be a tad hard sometimes. I'm speaking from experience here.

But to be honest there is one thing that just beats all of these meals I had while travelling around the world. The best meal I ever had was one I had at home after I'd been away from Holland for three months on an internship in the US. The first thing I did was drop my bags at home. I looked for my shopping bag and headed to my local supermarket for some fresh sunflower seed bread and spreadable liverwurst, aka Dutch pate. Never ever have I enjoyed a meal as much as that simple sandwich in my Amsterdam kitchen. So as much as I like to dabble in foreign cuisine, there's just nothing like a simple homemade sandwich. 

Piranha Fishing in Brazil

To me fishing is  the most boring thing I can think of doing, but when it involves trying to catch piranhas from a small wooden boat that’s floating among hundreds of caiman crocs, it gets a lot more exciting. That’s exactly what I did when I was travelling around Brazil a couple of years ago.

                  This photo of Pantanal is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Me and my travel buddy had booked a three day wildlife safari through the Pantanal Nature Reserve a few years ago. The Pantanal is the largest wetland nature reserve in Brazil and even one of the largest in the entire world. It is spread out over an extremely large area in the south of Brazil stretching across the border into Bolivia and Paraguay. The Pantanal, which means swamp in Portuguese, is home to an enormous number of organisms and for that reason is a fantastic place to do some wildlife spotting.

On our tour we walked through impressive wetlands, hiked across stretches of grasslands and rode on horseback along riverbeds. We saw an abundance of bird species, a couple of cute capybara and even an anteater. Our knowledgeable guide informed us of pretty much everything there is to know about the flora and fauna of the Pantanal.

                 This photo of Pantanal Wetlands is courtesy of TripAdvisor

The highlight, however, was the fishing trip on the river. For piranhas! And if that wasn't exciting enough, the waters we were fishing in, were filled with some very hungry looking yacare caiman crocs staring us down. It did take a good while before I actually caught one, but I felt pretty proud of myself when I did. Especially so when I saw my catch fileted and grilled on a bed of rice and beans on my dinner plate that evening back at the lodge. I can assure you, dinner never ever tasted so good as that night.