Tour of the Righteous City

On Friday we took a tour of Salvador, the city of our home away from home. Our tour guide Frede pronounced Fre-jee first took us to the first fortress built in South America by the Portugese to protect the city from attack, be that from other colonial powers or angry indigenous. The Fortress, named Santo Antonio, built in the 16th century, was situated on a cliff overlooking the rocky Atlantic coastline (which made for some decent waves) and was a in a very easily defendable strategic location. The fortress was also the main site of Carnival, the reckless but fun party that dwarfs Mardi Gras ten fold. We boarded the bus again to head towards a church dubbed Sao Francisco. On the way to the church Frede spoke to us about the "two Brazils" which he named the "Poor Brazil which is from the province of Bahia and consists of northern Brazil. This part of Brazil is populated by descendants of slaves or Negras (the chosen politically correct term from African Brazilians) and the few remaining Indigenous. "Rich Brazil" if from San Paolo and consists of the Southern portion of Brazil. This southern Brazil is very European in culture and architecture and comprises mainly of Europeans and Japanese. We arrived at Sao Francisco and after having a coconut break (coconuts sold in street vendors made for some delicious coconut milk) we entered the church. There were many churches in this part of Salvador but what made Sao Francisco stick out from the rest was the forty years it took to built while the others took about five. The Church was built in the 18th century by slaves (who themselves where not allowed to take part in the masses) and had a room that was covered in gold. The walls, ceilings, and statues, had an immense amount of gold and was somewhat overwhelming to see all the wealth that was put into this room where mass was held. The golden room had statues of angels and angelas (which were female angels). This was very new to us to see these female angels and it was the same for the Portugese who found the genatalia on the angels and angelas to be very taboo and thus they banned future sculptures to include this. The Portugese went as far as to remove the genatalia or cover them up. The tour took over half of our day yet it flew by for the most of us, although we had Debbie Downers and Negative Nancy's on our midst.