Salvador

The JeTZ would like to apologise not only for the tardiness of this blog but also for the fact that despite our best attempts we cannot write it. Since we published the last blog, both of us have tried in vain to put to words the amazing time we had in Salvador and have failed dismally.
As such, we offer this: A selection of our best pictures and snippets of what we have written thus far. As we are now more than 2 months behind in our blogs and only two weeks away from leaving South America, we will in the meantime move on to the next blog.
Should you have any questions, queries or any theories of your own as to what our pictures mean, feel free to contact us. Or even better, feel free to complete our blog for us!
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When we arrived in Salvador we though the bus driver had taken a wrong turn and that somehow we had landed up in the heart of Africa. We had known that as one travels north from Rio de Janeiro the darker the people became, but we didn't realise that it culminated in Salvador where the majority of the locals are descendants of Africans brought across to the Americas as slaves...
We were unable to find any relevant photos for this introduction. We liked this one but actually it is a photo of an Indian, not an African.

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On our first night in Salvador we ventured out into Pelourinho - the old city. Here we were enticed into a reggae bar. Jez was trying to communicate in his limited Spanish with a stoned, drunk, and toothless local who naturally only spoke Portuguese. The local was dumbfounded when he dropped his beer and then looked at Jez in the most perplexed manner. When Jez replaced the guys beer with his own the two became friends for life, and solidified this pact by swaying on the spot to the sounds of reggae.
In real life, this was a really funny story! But it turned into an epic ramble that was not in the least funny, maybe you will find the teaser more interesting?
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TZ: What was the name of the museum we went to?
Jez: Not sure, we will have to check the diary. Where is the diary?
TZ: It is in our main luggage...
Jez: Should we just leave this blog for today, its not working...

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Near to our hostel was the beach Porto de Barra made famous by being ranked the 3rd best beach in the world according to the Guardian newspaper. As such we expected to see plenty of English at the beach, but in fact it was...
Not sure where Jez was going with this sentence, I think he has forgotten too...
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Meanwhile, in a separate blog attempt, TZ tried to describe the scenario of us having no idea what food this was even after we tried it. When Jez read the following sentence "Later we discovered it was sugar cane. Oh the humiliation" he said something like "why was it humiliating?" And that ended our blog attempt for the day.
 
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Salvador is the capital of capoeira...
We had various discussions on whether to explain what capoeira is which came to a dead end.
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This is a poor attempt to unblur a photo of an amazing capoeira performance we saw. We thought if we made it smaller it wouldnt seem so blurry. I think at this point we threw the laptop against the wall.

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Today capoeira is widely practiced by Salvadorians and you can see performances just about anywhere. But most impressive are those dedicated souls who practices their moves on the beach.
There are 4 photos in this series but apparently seeing all 4 is overkill...right lets leave the blog for today.

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Not content to be mere spectators, the JeTZ took up capoeira themselves. After day one we could barely walk but we loved it so much we went back for more punishment for the next 4 days. There are no photos of us unfortunately but let's just say we were quite far from looking like pros!
We were not able to capture just how amazing our classes were, how inspirational our teacher was and how jealous we were that 10 year old kids could kick our arses!
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As you now know, you can get just about any product or service on the beach. So when the masseuse came around with his watering can and oil Jez gave him the big thumbs up. Whilst working away the pain in Jez's bruised feet, he serenaded us with an impressive collection of corny American pop songs.
BIG FAT LIE!! This photo was taken way before we had done any capoeira  classes. But he did sing to us which was funny.

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At this point we ran out of photos and after a big discussion on our word to photo ratio the blog was left unfinished.