Yup, still here. We have been over to Itaparica again and are now back in Salvador for a trance festival this weekend where DJ Sir Man will be playing. We have made a few friends here in Salvador which has given us an insight into the trance music scene here and also led to a few days out away from the other tourists. We met Diogo and Karena at a party by a lighthouse where I played a short set of London style techno and ended up being driven around for the rest of the night to see the sights of Salvador. Diogo is part of a collective called soononmoon who put on trance parties and he asked me to play at one of his parties and generally took us under his wing to show around this part of Brazil. Karena has helped us to learn Portuguese as she speaks only a tiny amount of English so in order to communicate we have had crash courses in interpretation and the dictionary pages have been nearly worn out.
It's now the rainy season and for the last week it has rained solidly, sometimes for about eight hours at a time so were hoping that it will lay off for a bit at the weekend for the festival.
Starting to get a bit repetitive, but we are still here. We did go sailing for a few days and had some lovely peace and quiet on the Ihla de Itaparica. However, on our return the control cable for the gear box decided to snap just as we were coming into our berth, in forward gear, with no space to turn and only the pontoon to stop our progress. So we used the pontoon to stop our progress by virtually mounting it before killing the engine and tieing the mooring lines up. No damage to Oceana or ourselves except a layer of paint and a few frayed nerves, but Oceana left a nice dent in the pontoon and a lot of Frenchmen who had come to assist ran off expressing anti-English expletives!!!!
Anyhow, now that we have fixed the cable we are waiting for our dinghy to be repaired and are therefore still here in Salvador. It seems rather strange that we should feel stuck in locations that most people choose as holiday destinations, but we have had enough of this place now with all the hassle of beating your way through people who want to relieve you of the burden of carrying money, by fair means or foul, and just want a nice beach to chill out on.........maybe next week.
Meanwhile DJ Sir Man has played a gig with the soononmoon collective and has been offered the chance to play at a trance festival at the end of the month so I guess we will still be around these parts until then.
