Pelourinho creeps

I wasn't even expecting something pretty from the old town centre of Salvador de Bahia, Pelorinho. I walked around all day entering the many free exhibitions and museums I found along my wondering path, from an old postcards collection to the Museu da Misericordia, a UNESCO patrimony ancient and pompous monastery hospital; from a modern and macabre art installation to bahiana rustic life immersion.

At the Udo Knoff ceramic museum I assisted a talk about body art among indigenous populations; at Centro Cultural Solar Ferrão I was taken away by the enormous collection of instruments invented and built by Walter Smetak with recycled materials... In the courtyard of the cultural centre I found a modern ritual for the redemption of Pelourinho:

The waters will bring nations together
Africa and the Americas, as a temple, will mingle in space
The gold, used to buy slaves, goes back to its origins
and resumes its role as primordial energy
The power of nature
Waters wash out and wave away all evil
The moment is just perfect
Pilori can be redeemed.

After all this culture immersion, my energy levels were buzzing, so I innocently decided to walk back to the Barra beach for a long evening swim. Such a walk in Salvador after dark may have been a fatal instinct, I was later told off for exposing my life to such risk.

My couchsurfing friend Raphael took me around the same streets after a couple of caipirinha and a traditional Acarajé (traditional deep-fried bean burger with shrimp sauces) in the square. I skipped along the old, dark streets inhaling the stuffy air, like the drunk tourists and the wasted locals, all set out to get wasted on music or drugs… In this atmosphere I could easily perceive the morbid energy of the historical centre as I strolled down the steep road where slaves were tied to a pillar to receive thrashing, leaving their blood flooding the cobbled road.. The modern monument of the broken pillar (in Portughese: pelourinho) comes to make a morbid sense.

We entered a few bars, all rolling live music as happens on Tuesday evenings: Samba, Forrò, Cocò... The highlight of the night was definitely a bitch fight right in the face of the guitarist, a really drunk black woman trying to get with the man of another woman made the whole bar stop, stare and put on an annoyed look for a couple of minutes, before the drums hit our nerves again.

The next morning, I was already keen to the get out of the city. Behind the Mercado Moderno in which souvenirs have replaced slaves as the trading good, I found the direct ferry for Morro de São Paulo. My slight hangover and considerable laziness on that typically burning bahian afternoon made me chose this expensive option to reach the island, fast and easy.