published on August 06, 2024 in Quick Update

In Salvador da Bahia, sea, songs and a whole lot of spirit

“I was dreaming of fruit.”

So proclaims a bleary-eyed Brazilian friend at breakfast one day in Sao Paulo. I’ve just spent nearly a week in Salvador da Bahia, on the northeastern coast of Brazil, so it makes perfect sense to me.

To be honest, I never thought I'd get to Brazil. But when my friend Kathy asked me to go with her while she researched a novel, I happily tagged along. And Salvador turned out to be a great place to get to know that kaleidoscopic country.

After all, Salvador came first: before Rio de Janeiro, the country's center of beauty and bikinis, and long before Sao Paulo, a late bloomer that is now one of the world's largest cities. Salvador was the colonial capital for more than 200 years and was for a time the richest city in South America. It's also unusual in Latin America in that about four out of five of the city's 2.5million residents are of African extraction.

And then there’s the food. No one had warned me about the cuisine of Bahia — the state of which Salvador is the capital — which is distinct from typical Brazilian fare. So it’s a revelation.

On our first morning in Salvador, a huge tray of coffee and fresh fruit is brought to our room. Apart from the papaya, I’ve never seen any of the fruits before, and I may never see them again. Many apparently never make it to Sao Paulo or Rio, much less out of the country, because they’re too fragile to travel.

In the days to come, Kathy and I will be happily introduced to, among others, umbu, seringuela, acerola, jabuticaba, pitanga and acai, a tiny purple berry that is now enjoying its eat-this-and-you-will-live-forever moment in the United States.

All I can say is, seringuela, mon amour. And acai. And little umbu, too. Now I understand why many of Salvador’s phone booths are painted to look like coconuts. Fruit is king in northeastern Brazil.

After breakfast, we walk from our guesthouse to the Pelourinho, the colonial core of the city, awash in pastel-painted storefronts and centuries-old gold-covered churches.

Amid a major restoration in the 1980s and '90s, the Pelo, as it is called, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Along the cobblestone streets, hoop-skirted women fry the local snack favorite, bean and shrimp fritters, in huge kettles in the open air. In the squares, young men perform capoeira — part martial art, part dance and 100 percent stunning.

Just beyond the old city is the Baia de Todos os Santos, or Bay of All Saints, where Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailing under the Portuguese flag, arrived in 1501. Within about 50 years, Salvador, strategically built on a cliff overlooking the bay, was declared the capital of the new colony.

Today, churches from the colonial era are everywhere, it seems, grandiose and somehow brooding. One of the largest, the Igreja de Sao Francisco, positively shines from the inside out, laden with more than 200 pounds of gold leaf.

The main source of these faded riches? Sugar, the local “white gold,” and the Africans enslaved to cut it. In all, an estimated 3million to 5million people were forced onto ships, headed to a life of servitude in an unknown land.

Slaves also were among the builders of the Igreja de Sao Francisco and other churches. The neighborhood’s name, Pelourinho, is testimony to its tragic past. It’s Portuguese for pillory, the instrument used to punish errant slaves in a central square.

Today, the area represents the exact opposite, a celebration of Afro-Brazilian culture. But just at the moment when it begins to seem like a prettified stage set, you see a side street unreached by renovators, a small legion of patrolling police officers or a child urging you to buy a “wish ribbon” to tie around your wrist.

Depending on your perspective, this injection of reality is either the saving grace or the downfall of the Pelo. It’s a place that feels shaped in roughly equal parts by phantom wealth and by a sense of tropical decay, a slow-release entropy in which the sun bakes the centuries-old buildings and sends them slipping slowly back into the earth.

These days, the Pelo is no longer where most locals would live and shop. To find those places, we turn to Everaldo, a receptionist at our guesthouse who also leads tours of the “not tourist” parts of Salvador. And the historic city comes alive.

First, we must get to the bottom of the cliff. Salvador has an upper city and a lower one. The lower city is where you’ll find the commercial downtown, but it has only a few tourist spots, including a crafts market and a modern outdoor sculpture fondly nicknamed “the butt.”

From the Pelo, the three of us walk to a funicular in the nearby neighborhood of San Antonio. As we descend, we pass a few shanties clinging to the side of the cliff. The number of such makeshift shacks has only grown in recent years, as people from rural areas seek work in the city, at least tripling Salvador’s population in the past 30years.

Down by the bay, we ride two city buses to Mercado Sao Joaquim. It’s a huge, smelly, labyrinthine market where hundreds of people are buying fresh fish, housewares, parakeets, religious trinkets, raw tobacco and more. Down a chaotic alleyway, a very large man reclines in a barber’s chair as he gets a manicure. A woman walks along another, casually carrying a live chicken in each hand. I wouldn’t rush to go back there, but I’m glad we went.

Next, we take a bus a mile or two to Igreja Nosso Senhor do Bonfim (Church of Our Lord of the Good End), better known as Igreja Bonfim, a colonial-era Catholic church that the faithful believe has curative powers. In the Room of Miracles hang replicas of arms, legs and other body parts, offered either as thanks or as pleas for the restoration of health.

As we finish our tour with a bay-side seafood feast, Everaldo tells us that his favorite activities are soccer, dancing and singing, which puts him in the company of millions of Brazilians. But though it didn’t make Everaldo’s list, it looks to Kathy and me that the sport of choice in Salvador is capoeira. On the beach, in the street, on the broad steps outside a dilapidated church as the daylight recedes, we see boys and young men practicing the art.

It starts with a cartwheel. And then it graduates to flips and lightning-swift kicks in an arc over the head of a partner, and in other acrobatics that make the contortions of yoga look like child’s play. Think of it as ballet with gusts of up to 90 mph.

Scholars still debate whether capoeira came directly from Africa or whether Afro-Brazilians added their own touches. But the martial art, which was outlawed from 1890 until the 1930s, is one of the most visible manifestations of a renaissance of Afro-Brazilian culture that has blossomed in recent decades.

And perhaps no other place in Brazil has led the resurgence as much as Salvador. Candomble, a West African-inspired religion, has been practiced here for centuries, but probably never as openly as today. The Bonfim church is not only a famed Catholic sanctuary; it’s also where followers of Candomble worship the religion’s most hallowed deity. Many Afro-Brazilians consider themselves devotees of both faiths, having blended them during the long years when they could not openly practice Candomble.

From the same African roots comes much of Salvador’s and Bahia’s world-famous music. The bossa nova pioneer Joao Gilberto, along with tropicalia leaders Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, hailed from the region. Salvador may get only the bronze medal in Brazil’s population sweepstakes, but its cultural influence is huge.

But enough already with the culture. Isn’t it time for the beach?

On a rainy Sunday morning ferry to Itaparica, an island in the bay about 45 minutes away, we happen upon a group of 20-somethings signing up a storm. We don’t know sign language, so we’re unable to communicate with them, but they invite us into several group photographs, arms draped around our shoulders. And each responds to our quizzical glances in the same way, with an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up.

This might seem odd if we hadn’t run into the same thing dozens of times. Of probably 100 people we interacted with over five days, precisely one was not demonstrably friendly. After only a few days in a new land, this warmth seems to me like Brazil’s signature.

The rain stops as the ferry approaches the island. By the time we reach the beach just a few minutes later, the place is packed. In Salvador and on the long coastline beyond, the beach is more a way of life than a weekend respite. No surprise in a place where the average daily highs hover in the 80s year-round.

Back in the city the next day, we hop a bus to Porto da Barra (pronounced “Baha”), a beach about three miles from the Pelo. Salvador has more than 30 miles of beaches within its borders, and Porto da Barra is the most renowned, a beautiful stretch that ends at a lighthouse where the placid bay meets the open ocean.

Not long before sunset, we settle in at Barravento, a restaurant with a profile that looks like a sail. Get a table on the patio, ask for the tropical-fruit caipirinha of your choice and, trust me, you’ll be all set.

Until, that is, you’re ready for dinner. After the tropical fruit, here’s what sealed my culinary conversion: the moqueca. It’s a stew flavored with various choices of fish and seafood and a strong dose of dende oil — an orangey oil from a type of palm fruit that’s blended with coconut milk and cilantro — and typically served with a side of mashed yucca. The result is seriously rich and elegant at the same time.

Dende oil, which is also used in parts of Africa, lends a saffronlike note and a depth of flavor and is used generously with a variety of foods. Along with yucca, black-eyed peas and an array of fruit and seafood, it’s a key ingredient that distinguishes Bahian cuisine.

It’s not until I pull out an unread magazine as I leave Salvador that I realize that I’m hardly alone in my dende fervor. An article in Food & Wine details how chef Daniel Boulud fell in love with Bahian food, going so far as to say that Salvador’s moqueca is “flirting with bouillabaisse,” the famous French fish stew. High praise, indeed.

My bus to the airport traces a dozen miles of coastline before veering into more-industrial terrain. The ride is like a greatest-hits collection of Salvador: gorgeous beaches, colonial architecture, palm trees and music, music everywhere. It doesn’t take long before I, still quite awake, am dreaming of fruit.

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