Return to Salvador

Our program allows you plenty of time to discover your new country, culture and customs. Below are some of our recommended highlights. Some tours and packages can be organized when booking your program, please see the program price page for more information.

city tour
Anybody visiting Salvador winds up spending at least some time in Pelourinho. Pelourinho is the Old City, the old heart of Salvador, with colonial-era buildings and winding cobblestone streets. Lots of good stuff -- music and capoeira -- is there. The place is full of bars and restaurants and small shops.

beaches
Salvador's shore is 20 kilometers long and has a sequence of beaches that is highly beautiful and goes from Praia do Porto to Praia do Flamengo. This interval's excitement is intense day and night, with well-lit beaches with bars and restaurants that open into the night. Porto da Barra: bay with calm and crystal waters, offering the city's best bathing. It is also the place where Tomé de Souza, city founder, first arrived.

a igreja de nossa senhora do rosário dos pretos (the church our lady of the rosary of the blacks)
This is located in and dominates the Largo do Pelourinho. The church was built over a period of a hundred years or so beginning in 1704, by the enslaved members of O Irmandade de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Pretos do Pelourinho (The Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Black Men of Pelourinho).

a igreja de são francisco (the church of saint francis)
Located up the cobbled streets and to the left at the far side of the Terreio de Jesus, standing at the end of an adjacent square (Praça Anchieta), beyond a large stone cross. The place is awash in gold leaf, and it hosts a rococo gallery of saints and angels which, again, one would be hard-pressed to find in any other church -- pregnant cherubs and saints with protuberant manhoods -- all carved, of course, by slaves.

the mercado modelo
Located in the lower city across the street from the Elevador Lacerda, and is the old Customs House now transformed into a warehouse of handicrafts stalls. The rear part of the structure is given over to bars (very local) and restaurants (on the street level, and upstairs on a huge balcony). If you want to buy in the Mercado Modelo be prepared to haggle, and be prepared to shake off vendors insistent on selling something to you whether you want to buy or not.

carnaval
Carnaval in Salvador basically has two parts: the parade of trio elétricos (more about them in a moment), and the barracas. A trio elétrico is a done-up semi trailer, loaded with thousands of watts of sound equipment and with a band playing on top. They parade very slowly along one of two circuits; one closer to the city center, running from Campo Grande to Praça Castro Alves, and the other running from Barra to Ondina. They are called trios because the first one was an old car with a driver and two musicians (Dodô and Osmar) in the back (the car can be seen in the museum at the Lagoa da Abaeté). The other part of Carnaval is the barracas. They are everywhere, turning Salvador into a city of ten thousand parties. A lot of them have their own sound systems. And where there isn't a barraca, there'll be somebody with an isopor (styrofoam cooler) selling beer or batidas(cachaça/fruit mixtures; killer strength).

excursions

buraquinho
Just north of Lauro de Freitas, which is just north of Salvador, Buraquinho is located where the river Joanes flows into the sea. A charming area of beach houses and well-built barracas. There is a seaside beach, and a surf-protected riverside beach (salt water) perfect for kids.

arembepe
The so-called Aldeia dos Hippies (Hippie Village).

morro de são paulo
Boats to Morro de São Paulo leave from the Centro Náutico da Bahia, the beautiful blue-and-white building on the water behind the Mercado Modelo. The journey takes two hours for both type of craft.

mar grande
Across the Bay, Pequenas lanchas (small boats; small only by comparison to the big ferry boats, really) leave the Centro Náutico da Bahia, the blue-and-white building on the water behind the Mercado Modelo, every half hour, seven days a week.