Beco de Gal -- You wanna samba? This is the place! A Salvador institution!

Lady Gal herself!

Tucked into a small alley (beco) is a very local place run by Gal (Maria das Graças da Silva Oswaldo), samba singer and afficionado extraordinaire.  The tunes (live) are top notch and the vibe is very chilled. Wednesday night is the big night here, the music starting around 10:30 or so and running until 3 a.m. (why Wednesday? that story's here). Getting on towards midnight the pace usually picks up and the dance "floor" is jammed with gyrating bodies (and they gyrate very well indeed!).

Beco de Gal is located at Avenida Vasco da Gama, 2893, next to Transporte Ondina (not far from the Dique de Tororo, if you know where that is). Any taxi driver will know how to find it. Keep in mind that this the real Salvador; it hasn't been sanitized up for tourists (and it's wonderful this way!). Entrance is 5 reais.

Gettin' Down at the Beco

And while I'm on the subject of samba, there's also this place...

It's the football (soccer) field of the Esporte Clube Tejo (Tejo Sports Club) in the neighborhood of IAPI.  On Mondays, after the game is over and the sun has set... the samba begins.  Details are here.

Garcia -- [* Note: The outside pagodes described here have been prohibited by the prefeitura (city government). They had become too popular and the influx of people into the neighborhood was disturbing some of the local residents. This area nevertheless remains an interesting and lively place to go (for those so inclined, anyway) on Saturday nights.]

Garcia has two ends: The fim de linha (end of the line; the bus line, that is) end, and the Campo Grande end. The Campo Grande end is middle-class, while the fim de linha end is a bairro popular (working-class neighborhood) that cooks on Saturday and Sunday nights with pagode fundo de quintal. Pagode is a popular samba form, and "fundo de quintal" means "backyard". It's a style where the players sit around informally and play for themselves, their friends, and families. Two sides of the square in this part of the neighborhood have such bands, and the bands are surrounded by people dancing (get into the mix and you'll see some really good moves!) and having a general good time. This is Salvador at it's most fundamental. It's beautiful. Buteco de Farias is a restaurant on the square (Farias is the owner's last name, as in Rubens Farias) with great and inexpensive and very-typical-for-this-sort-of-area food. It's a simple place, but that's the beauty of it.

The music starts between 8 and 9:00 p.m. on Saturdays and 7 and 8:00 p.m. on Sundays. Saturdays wind up around 1:00 a.m. and Sundays an hour or so earlier. A cab from Campo Grande will cost you five reais or so (I'm guesstimating there), or you can get a bus (the sign on the front will say Fazenda Garcia; that's "Garcia Farm") at the bus stop on the street (Avenida Leovigildo Figueiras) to the right of Teatro Castro Alves (as you face the theater), across the street from the theater. That's also the best place to get a cab (getting a cab at the wrong spot will mean taking a huge spin around Campo Grande, and possibly several other blocks as well). Garcia is great, and it's a huge change from the usual tourist areas.

Ribeira -- Is a neighborhood or bairro (ba-EE-ho) on the bay side of the city, not too far from the Igreja (Church) de Bonfim on the peninsula of Itapagipe in the lower city (cidade baixa). It has a long stretch of beach and barracas and barzinhos (literally: little bars; this term is used to denote the simple unpretentious bars that Salvador is full of). Sunday is the big day, with seemingly endless streams of people eating, drinking, listening to music, dancing, and socializing. The view across the bay to islands and hills on the far side is lovely, and the boats on the water are usually moving under the power of either wind or human muscle (as opposed to waters off Barra).

Getting to Ribeira is easy by bus. Just take the Elevedor Lacerda in the Praça Municipal (very close to Pelourinho) down, get off, and walk to the bus stop directly in front of you. Buses going to Ribeira (with big signs on the front saying so) pass every several minutes. Ribeira is the end of the line. Now, getting back by bus can be a different matter; if you leave in the afternoon you'll probably be forced to battle your way onto the bus with hoardes of unruly kids. Once your on, any bus which passes through Comércio (or downtown, where the bottom of the Elevador Lacerda is located) will get you close to where you started out from. Or if you are feeling more gentil (and have some change in your pocket), you can take a taxi.

São Tomé -- Is another beach on the bay side. It's beyond the peninsula where Ribeira is located and, again, is the end of the line. You can get the bus at the same place you get the Ribeira bus, and getting back by bus is no problem (each way takes the better part of an hour). One of the interesting things about getting to São Tomé is getting there. The bus follows Avenida Suburbana, and the suburbs in Brazil, in great contrast to the U.S. or Europe, are where the have-nots live. These are favelas (shantytowns), scattered up in the hills like houses-of-cards, wherein reside the majority of Brazil's population. Most visitors to Salvador never see this and leave with a mistaken impression of Brazil's living standards.

Anyway, the beach at São Tomé is beautiful in its small-community way (in spite of a ship-loading pipeline located off to the beach's left) and on Sundays it's very lively. If one wishes to go a bit further, there is a long pier (you can't miss it) and from there you can get a boat to the island of Maré ("maré" means "tide"), about twenty minutes away. There's no pier in this area, so everybody jumps out into waist-deep water (in terms of the average adult) and wades up to the beach. It's fun! There are plenty of boats back; you just wade back out and jump on. More information on Maré is located in the "Islands in the Bay" section.

Disembarking at the Ilha (Island) of Maré

At Sete Portas: Some of the Primary Ingredients in Bahian Cooking

Sete Portas (Seven Doors)-- Is the smaller of Salvador's two primary "open air" markets, the larger being the Feira de São Joaquim, located down on the water just beyond the ferryboat terminal. Both are cornucopias of local life and color, with one very noticable difference -- the level of cleanliness. Sete Portas wins handily on this account. Both markets sell -- in addition to many other things -- fruits and vegetables from the interior, fresh fish, meats (and other animal parts; not for the squeamish), tobacco (in big, sausage-like rolls), a wide variety of medicinal leaves and roots, beads, statues, incense, and other items for use in candomblé ceremonies, handcrafted items (brought into São Joaquim from the little town of Maragogipinha on colorful sailboats which look like they could be pre-Phonecian), live chickens, and, at São Joaquim, live goats.

The ceramics in Salvador's feiras begin here, in Maragogipinho, along the Rio (River) Jaguaripe, close to Nazaré das Farinhas.

Lunch (almoço) at Sete Portas can be grand. Mocotó and sarapatel are popular, the latter being Bahian-style chitlins; the former made using cow legs as a base (these foods are remnants of the slave days, when the meat went to the "big house", leaving the leftovers to go to the senzalas). You can get stews (ensopadas) served up with great heapings of aipim (similar to manioc), or typical workingman's lunches of chicken or beef served with rice, beans, and salad, all in the most traditional of ambiences. Nothing will set you back more than the equivalent of several dollars, and if it's hot inside, well, the beer is cold.

Sete Portas is within walking distance of Pelourinho for the adventurous stroller (via Baixa dos Sapateiros), and it's even closer to Santo Antônio.