Hhecife and Salvador

This is gonna be a quicky because, well, there's not that much to report on. The rest of our days in hhecife were spent spectacularly missing all the tourist attractions. After a walk through town I looked in the guide book and saw we'd walked past some very impressive baroque architecture or some-such. The guide book mentioned all this, but did it even give a passing mention to the huge shopping centre that featured food and drink at crazy prices, internet cafe, and photo development for tuppence ha'penny? I think not. So I think it fair to say we have been travelling enough that we divert from the common tourist hotspots and hunt out our own little gems to really get a feel for how people live. I mean steak for a centavos per kilgram or something. And I got a new USB key. Couldn't smoke in the shopping center though, but you've got to roll with the punches. We left on an impulse for the 4 day sail to Salvador, and it took 4 days and 3 hours. First 24 was a mixed bag with squally weather and rain aplenty, but it soon settled down to a nice steady down-wind sail. Salvador has been so far quite superb. We're in a marina for the first time since the Canaries, which is a treat. Salvador, as the 3rd largest city in Brazil, doesn't have the best reputation for safety. But the place so far has felt very safe; you get a real feeling of being well protected seeing security guards walking round with pump-action shot guns and pistols cocked. Things get a little crowded with tourists when the cruise ships are in, but when they're not the place is quieter and safer. And the place really is quite stunning. In fact we like South America so much after spending a week or two here that we've decided that rather than spend a couple of months here, we'll spend a year instead. The window to cross to south Africa closes February/March, and from what we've seen and heard so far, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina deserve much more exploration. So the plan is to take time going down to north Argentina, then cross at the beginning of the window, which is around September/October time I think. Well I did say “total and unpredictable change” in the last blog post.