The Blanket Express to Salvador (1 of 3)

A long time ago, an article about Bahia landed on my desk in Japan. It sat there for a long time ignored under a pile of travel brochures and forgotten paper work. When I finally found time to read it, it concluded that “Americans had to build Disney World to have fun – Bahia was created like that”. That alone was enough to wet my appetite; I made a promise to myself to go there at the earliest opportunity.

A few years later, and with the shops thick with Christmas shoppers and Christmas carols being sung on every street corner, I bought myself a return ticket for the 20 hour coach trip from Fortaleza to Salvador. The opportunity to spend the final Christmas of the millennium in the most spiritual place in Brazil appealed to me greatly. A perfect antidote to the end of millennium angst I was experiencing.

I had some uncertainty about long distance coach travel. I used to commute from London to Amsterdam regularly and it was generally a trying experience, continual delays, cramped coaches, stroppy drivers and frequent stops in deserted, dirty and expensive coach stops in the middle of nowhere where it was easier to get mugged than buy a Coke. I often arrived haggard and wondering why I bothered. I expected much worse from Brazil – my imagination was running wild and I imagined that by the time I arrived in Salvador I would be recalling the luxury of the Amsterdam to London night bus with fondness. I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when I arrived 20 hours later in Salvador, refreshed and ready for some serious sightseeing.

The coach was much more luxurious then I could have ever imagined. A few minutes after we pulled out of Fortaleza everyone had wrapped themselves in blankets and were snoring contentedly – try getting this comfortable on the London-Amsterdam bus. Not having realised that over zealous use of the air conditioning would result in my extremities turning blue, I was soon turning out my rucksack in search of t-shirts. By the time we arrived I was wearing my entire wardrobe – and some of my girlfriends too. I now understood why the passengers had all boarded the bus dragging thick woollen blankets behind them.

We motored steadily through the night, stopping every three hours for a fresh driver at towns so small they barely featured on my map – a bar, a snack stand and a tired looking woman ready to sell me ice cold beer – The hallmarks of an advanced civilisation so often missing in my Trans-Europe expeditions. The road was also pleasantly unforeseen, but in a country where the government proclaims that “roads are progress” I shouldn’t have been so astounded.

Each stop was a chance to stretch my legs, buy another icy cold beer or just marvel at the vastness of Brazil. For a European it’s sometimes difficult to fully comprehend the size of the country. For exampl, Bahia is roughly the size of France – and I always used to think that when I lived in London the 100 yard walk to my local supermarket was a long way.

Years of travelling had honed my skills and each stop I managed, with my poor Portuguese and a sharp index finger, to buy any number of cookies and pastries. The American writer Thomas Cobb once wrote that “road food is always neutral in colour and taste”. After tasting many of the savoury pastries, chilled fruit juices and other things which fell into the category of objects unknown – but extremely delicious – available at each stop, I had to conclude that was Cobb wrong.

I awoke just as the sun rose – colouring the vast sky with purple and reds, we were travelling through a low sun baked land of bauxite coloured earth broken now and again by the rich green of palm tree. The vastness of the sunrise and the gentle snores of my fellow passengers filled me with hope for the coming day; by definition a traveller must be optimistic. Only the driver and I were awake – but he didn’t seem too impressed, for him it was all in a day’s work.

Read all three parts of the adventure:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

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