Rather than throw in random shots on the street, seeing that I didn't actually go anywhere today, here is a nice shot from home.
Hmm, what's all that yellow stuff? No, it's not curry (I'm allergic you know) - it's dendê! Palm oil, the main main staple of all foods Bahian. Without it acarajé, abará, and the Brasilian version of Montezuma's revenge would not exist (I'm taking votes on names for it - be sure to participate). This scourage of the digestive tract is a heavy heavy yellow/orange oil that come from crushing up those little red berries on African palms. It also makes us all fat, since we like to use it so much in so many dishes. This one I ate today, on my nice gasoline sign table, is called muqueca. It's usually made with tomato (none of that here, I'm allergic), green pepper (also not present for the same reason), onion, some kind of meat or fish, and tempero verde (a garlic and green herbs mix we use to season everything). You eat it over rice, which I did here. Also on my plate is a goolash type thing called pirão made from some of the caldo (juice, gravy, etc whatever you want to call it) from the muqueca, and below it is pumpkin, also a typical favorite here. That wierd blackish thing near the top of the plate was what Neta called "chicken surprise" - chicken with plantain bannana in the middle, and it was actually pretty good.
An interesting thing to note - all this European influence makes us eat with a knife in the right hand and the fork in the left. Not how I grew up eating, but much more efficient, I have to say. It should really be adopted in the States, where people are less inclided to wash their hands before they eat, but end up putting their fingers in their food to get it on the fork.
It boasts to be the biggest mall in South America. Iguatemí had this title for some time as well. It's supposed to be the huge competition "shopping" to Iguatemí, being built literally around the corner and within site of our beloved gi-ganti-mall (we call this kind of thing a "shopping" instead of a mall), in which I have gotten lost more than once, and the giant church across the street from it (also lovingly know as "God Shopping"). Nothing in particular has been done to deal so much with the traffic flow around this area, except to add this new overpass, which I believe will lead directly to the mall and be horribley congested most of the time. 
For anyone who has ever been here, you know that the area in front of Iguatemí is not the best place to be in a car, and you are likely to sit there for a minimum of of 15 minutes during a heavier than normal traffic time. Access to this exclusive road will come from that same vein of traffic, since we never make more than one route to each destination. Unfortunately, adding a lane is not an option, since all these roads are at least 5 lanes wide already. And we say Brasil's economy is suffering - yet we still have money to spend in the giant shoppings!
