Salvador Day 4

July 30th
Last night Daniel had gotten some information from his hostel about doing an island cruise around the bay of All Saints, just like the one we all enjoyed so much in Paraty! It turns out that they are pretty affordable here, only 30.00 dollars, so we reserved spaces for Olivia, Angelika, Daniel and I to take the cruise in the morning, with a pick-up from Daniel’s hostel. The pick-up time was set for 8:00, so Angelika and I woke up early to get ready and walk over to Daniel’s, with a pit stop for snacks at the grocery store. Of course we were the only ones early, everyone else (including Daniel) was running on Brazilian time, and our pick up did not arrive until 8:30. However, the later start time did allow for us to see several little monkey-squirrels running across the telephone lines!
The transport was very nice, an air-conditioned mini-bus, and we were the only pick up on this side of town so we were able to get quickly to the marina meet up point where we only had a short wait before our boat was ready. We walked out onto the pier and joined with the other groups who would be on our boat tour, about 45 in all. Our cruise would ferry us out to two different islands in All Saints Bay, Ilha dos Frades and Itaparica. The bay is actually very large, and it took us about an hour and a half to get out to the first island, Ilha dos Frades, which was named after all of the friars and priests who arrived there as part of the missionary efforts to Christianize the New World.
I think that of the two this was my favorite island. It is much smaller, with only 70 full time inhabitants, and it is more of a lounging beach than Itaparica. The beaches there were soft white sand with clear turquoise waters and little construction, it was paradise. We stayed on that beach for almost two hours enjoying the unexpected sun (the forecast, like all this week, had predicted a significant chance of rain, but we out ran the rain clouds on the sail!).
After the boat sounded the horn for us to leave (I did not want to!) we packed up our things and got back on the boat for another 30-40 min to sail over to the next island. Along the way we listened to the onboard band play samba and bahian-ized Brazilian music until we arrived. Itaparica is the largest island in the bay, and it has a population of 70,000. We stopped at Ponta de Areia beach where there was the options of a buffet lunch on the beach, hiking, a city tour, and horseback riding or more sunbathing. We decided to just get lunch and hang out on the beach some more. There were a few clouds rolling in but it was still pretty nice on the beach. The water was more sheltered by the bay in Itaparica and it was smooth as glass and good for swimming.
Around 3:40 our boat began to board to head back to Salvador. On the way back the band played again and it would have been another relaxing boat ride back except that the water was very choppy and even with the splash guards down we were all getting soaked! We arrived back in the marina at 5:20 and after forgetting the name of our tour company, and having to back track to find our transport guy (we walked right past him), we made it into the van right as it began to pour.
Angelika and I could not really avoid walking back to our hostel (stopping to get some dinner supplies from the grocery store along the way) in the rain, but once we showered we felt so much better! After a low-key dinner we decided not to go to the street music festa in Pelourinho that nice due to the rain and the fact that after almost two months we are pretty run down, and so we spent the evening reading and resting.