Mobile store

If one wanted to leave the house and spontaneously go to the beach, without so much as a bathing suit, it would be fairly easy to find anything you would need being sold by vendors - bikinis, cangas, food, water, sunglasses, sunscreen.... Many people make their living walking around looking for customers. This rule actually can apply all over the city and the stores come to you both on foot and by vehicle. There is a woman in Pituba who sells hammocks, usually camped out behind Iguatemí, but if you so desired you could buy one from this guy, whose noise polution announces his arrival. It is a common practice to drive a vehicle around with a giant speaker, announcing your products and prices, or if you are politcal candidate, your views and to throw mud at your competition. I didn't really pay attention to what his prices were, but I imagine they might have been on the high side, considering the neighborhood he was driving through is mostly private houses.

Capelinha! Olha o sabor de fruta!

This is a rather nice shot of the roadsides of Salvador. It is not unusual to see livestock with in city limits - chickens and roosters run domesticated near favela areas. In the areas that still have green space in the city, there is often horses grazing at the side of the road, usually not tied up or monitored in any way. They seem to know someone will come for them eventually and just stay put.

This guy is selling popsicles, but not just any frozen treat - within the depths of this cooler is Capelinha, a frozen fruit puree that puts Dole strawberry to shame. The most common favorite here is the Amidoim (peanut) flavor, but they come in a range of flavors including Morango (strawberry), Côco (coconut), Goiabab (guava), Cajá (no idea), Acerola (no idea, but one of my favorites), and Açaí (a purpley healthy tasting thing from the Amazon). This type of vendor also has a song he sings (most vendors have a sound or song that allows you to recognize what's comming long before they appear), saying something along the lines of "Look! Capelinha! Fruit flavor!" This is one of my weaknesses for Bahian food - I cannot resist the sabor de fruta!

Garrafamento chato

Is it the engineers' fault? Is it the fault of building a city without urban planners? Is it our healthy economy that allows so many people the luxery of having a car? Whatever the cause, there isn't really a time you don't find this kind of traffic during a normal day. Only in the middle of the night is the road clear. And it's not just the cars - the buses are also standing room only. For lack of sidewalk , cyclists and motorcycles fly between the semi-stopped lines of cars, weaving in and out of traffic, beating the wait by a long shot. If it weren't so dangerous (would you ride a bike on the road where people made left hand turns from the right hand lane and seemed to think the white dashed lines were for decoration?), I would consider taking it up. Almost everywhere in the city has a maximum of two routes to get there. Most of these routes are shared between objectives. The other option for this route (from Rio Vermelho to Pituba) is to take the Orla, which runs the length of the ocean and is the main route to almost everywhere in the city. Although a prettier option, it's not very practical for that reason.

A job nobody wants

I know I have seen these people in the States, the lucky construction worker with the job of waving the flag at the oncomming motorists, warning them that there is construction going on. Apparently here in Salvador, they don't even want to bother paying someone to do this, so they put up these nice little wooden men to hold the flags. They even paint them in the worker's uniform and give him a real flag to hold. This one in particular has a severly shortened arm, I think because the traffic here was so tight it was in danger of being (or had already been) hit by a passing truck or bus. There are several of them along this route, guarding the ever present project of the Salvador Metro (begun over 10 years ago I believe, and still no where near being completed), an L type of public transportation desperately needed in this city.

Coffee on wheels

When one moves to another country, one never thinks about all those conveniences you thought you wouldn't notice had gone missing. One of my great losses was the coffee shop. Every morning I would get a Coconut Latte on my way to a 9 AM class, drinking through my lecture or teaching between sips. Even, gasp, sneaking in sips between on air breaks while DJing at The Impact. In Sampa, I am told, there is a great pleathura (did I spell that right?) of all things American, including our college town study houses, but here in Hickville Bahia, we are not so advanced. But hey, we can still get coffee just about anywhere, even without the Starbucks on every corner. Our coffee, and I mean coffee - not latte, can be found on these interesting rolling apparatuses in caraffs of all shapes. Sold in little plastic shot glasses (think Jell-o shots), you can get it in both black and with milk. These guys are all over, and their coffee carrying shops are usually on wheels. You can't see so well because this picture was taken in a moving vehicle, but there is a steering wheel in his right hand that he uses to steere the coffee "truck" around (this would be why he's on the street, since the side walks weren't really built for things with small wheels). In fact, often times you will see these things actually painted and built as miniature semi-trucks carrying coffee, and usually a radio. This guy is like a middle - class style, not so fancy. Hooray for the fillers of the "need a shot of EX-presso" urge.