I officially pass as Italian

I met an Italian who explained to me that virtually the whole country shuts down and goes on holiday for the month of August. Many of them travel, and many travel to Brazil. So now, most people assume I'm Italian, and that's their lead-in to sell me something: "so, you're Italian?" This happens a lot on the beaches here in Salvador, which are lined with strings of identical restaurants, all devoid of customers, and all desperate to pull in an obvious foreigner (I guess I'm not in Buenos Aires any more, where I was local as long as I wasn't wearing my hiking boots or talking). Walking down the beach, I attract a flock of would-be waiters, trying to explain to me why their restaurant is the most tranquil, with the best food, and special prices. Even though you can't even tell where the plastic beach tables of one restaurant end, and the next restaurant begins, somehow they are convinced of their uniqueness. Anyways, it's 10am and I'm not ready for lunch, or for beer! Fuck off! That's the attitude I can't help but have. I don't yell at anyone, but I seethe inside. It's that old fight-or-flight mechanism.

Right now I'm in the downtown of Salvador, the old city center that is called Pelorinho (which is the word for the big pole they used to tie thieves and antsy slaves to before the whipping), and it's almost as bad as Cusco. The architecture is really nice, but I've seen so much colonial architecture now that I'm totally over it. And otherwise, I don't know what appeal there is: it's just row after row of chinsy stores with a slight edge of neediness trying to sell racially insensitive statues of olde tyme black folk (you know, with the exaggerated lips and eyes) and leather goods and googly-eyed walnuts and t-shirts and stuff. In the plazas, the capoeira dancers aggressively seek money from anyone trying to film or take pictures, and young boys laugh and play before quickly putting on the Sad Puppy Face to solicit money from someone with their micro-fiber travel shirt tucked into their Bermuda shorts. The only saving grace is the towering monolith of quadruple elevators that carry people 150 feet up and down the cliffs from the Upper City to the Lower City. It's all giant and marble, and going down you can feel your stomach in your throat. It was built in the late 19th century, and is always busy. Cool stuff. There's a Valparaiso-style ascensor that runs the cliff, too, but there's only one and it seems wannabe so I'm not that impressed.

I did get to see some real capoeira, from a school that was performing, and that was really fun. There was a lot more interaction between the two people playing (you "play," not "dance" capoeira), and less showboating than the stuff done for money. It looked more fun, more like something I could do and would want to do. Capoeira is based on a fighting style developed by African slaves in Brazil, but isn't an actual fight. Sometimes it's a pseudo-fight, where players show how they COULD have attacked an opponent, without actually completing the attack; other times it's more like a dance, where the players complement each other and move together. But when I was watching the school, there were two guys who got up and looked really different: they were much more squared off, and didn't look like they wanted to play, but like they wanted to fight. Sure enough, maybe 30 seconds into the song, they attacked each other. We were in a public square, the police got involved, capoeira was over. Shame.



On the plus side, I had a great time walking down the street on the way into Pelorinho, which is where the locals shop for cheap clothes and electronics and there are multitudes of yummy street vendors selling a variety of tasty treats. In fact, my walk through that part of town was yesterday, and I never made it to Pelorinho, 4 blocks away, so had to come back today. Today has been much more disappointing, but yesterday I got to eat: brigadeiro, a kind of extra-thick dulce de leche with chocolate and sprinkles on top, the size of a large bon-bon but with a weight of about two pounds; acaraje, a traditional snack brought from Nigeria that is a large ball of chick peas fried in palm oil, cut open and filled with a spicy paste, lentils, some sort of okra concoction (recognizable by its snot-like consistency - no, it's good, really), something akin to pico de gallo, and salty, dried shrimp; I stopped at my regular ice cream guy (who now recognizes me and greets me with an "aAaah!"), who really serves up something closer to frozen fruits mixed with milk - I like the coconut varieties best, either straight up or with guava mixed in; caxinha, a fried ball of dough filled with meat or cheese; rambutan, little red hairy fruits some of you may know from Thailand; boiled peanuts, another favorite of mine from Thailand that I was excited to find; and fried rolls of tapioca coated in cinnamon and sugar. The last are called boledo sedanje or something like that; sorry but Portuguese ties my tongue in a knot (and however you're trying to pronounce it, let me just tell you - you're wrong).



Portuguese is very, very difficult. I still feel like people are talking backwards to me. There are no hard and fast rules about pronunciation, and every region does it different, to boot. An H at the beginning of the word is silent; in the middle it makes what in English would be a Y sound (ya). An X is for us an SH; J and G are pronounced in a whole variety of ways I don't know the rules for and am always slaughtering in my own pronunciations. T makes a CH sounds (obviously). I met an Argentine at the hostel I stayed at when I first arrived (toting a grocery sack of mate of course), and when I spoke Spanish with him it seemed so easy and fun, I could actually understand and respond, and my Spanish is honestly not very good (and I'm forgetting more every day, I'm finding).



I have just enough of the language to muddle my way through normal day to day operations; that is I can get everything I need to survive (read: food, water, lodging). Other than that, I feel like the two year old who can't voice the words he feels, like I was at the beginning of my trip in Spanish. It's making me feel lonely and homesick, and I'm wondering if Brazil was the best way to finish off my trip. When language is dropped from the equation, relationships between people seem to devolve to pure ego, ie what can be extracted from the other: money, sex, simple entertainment (hey ma, look at that pale skinned feller! He talks funny!), whatever. This idea becomes distilled and intensified in places like Cusco and Pelorinho, which is what makes them such a drag to visit. There have been so many times that I have been so tired of being a tourist, and just wanted to sit down with someone in these places and just talk to them, but first I would have to get past the idea that I would be eventually buying something, difficult enough - but then I would have to contend with the fact that I just don't have the language skills for a serious conversation. Even with people who speak good English, there is still a cultural barrier that is difficult to cross (I've found this even when economics is taken out of the equation, ie with Europen backpackers). And joking around in a way that I can do with other Americans is damn near impossible. It will be a strange relief to be home in a couple weeks, I think.



Still though, there are good times to be had here. Making your way down the streets of Salvador, dodging the rain created by AC machines overhead furiously trying to scrub moisture from the air, you can find lots of cool random stuff. I have seen several quality vinyl shops, with new stuff, autographed stuff, old stuff, local and international stuff. Whether you want the Smurfs in Portuguese or an autographed Led Zepplin, it can all be found in the shops of downtown Salvador. I wandered into a book store one day, too, which was fun - international bookstores always have an interesting variety of books in English. This one had the usual assortment of cheap thrillers and romance novels (including a whole dime-store series from the 60's), but also a bunch of weird stuff that I wonder the history of: "Anglo-American Rules of Categorization," "Atlas of British Social and Economic History since 1700," (don't these sound like fun reads? You can see a graphical layout of pubs per 100,000 in the UK), "Design of Educational Exhibits," "Journeys of the Mind" (this one appeared to be bad short stories interlaced with pictures that looked like they should be airbrushed on the side of a van), "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding." You could tell it wasn't a tourist bookstore - there were no Lonely Planets, and everything was hardcover (backpackers hate hardcovers). Everything had a healthy layer of dust on top.

Important things to know about Brazil:

The thumbs-up is widely used here, which I love. It basically just means "OK," and can be used to signify understanding, or thanks, or just acknowledgment. Like if someone stops their car to let you cross the road, flash them a thumbs up.

Motels in Brazil are exclusively for short-term stays, are usually pretty nice (I hear), and often have a round bed and a porn-only TV. They often include well-kept amenities, like hot tubs and saunas, and there is no stigma attached (like in other Latin countries, young couples live with their parents and need someplace to go). Motels advertise on TV (I saw one for the "Love Motel," which looked nicer than anyplace I have stayed my whole trip. $10 for 3 hours), and on Valentines, there is a line to get in.

Go to the beach or go home. Or go to the beach and then go home, and shower. Beach mist coats your skin with crud, and gives your hair a life of its own.

In Brazil supermarkets, they allow installments on everything. I saw a sale on Johnny Walker, which could be picked up for no money down and 3 easy payments (can they honestly tell me no one abuses this system?).