This morning we arrived in Salvador, rightly renowned as Brazil's capital of music and African culture. It's a sprawling, seaside city, capped with the historical old town where live Brazilian musical beats and Candombré blend together along hilly cobbled streets, huge colonial churches, palaces, apartment blocks and abandoned buildings pressing in from every direction.

Travel was fairly uneventful, we got the 7am plane as planned and landed at Salvador around 9. After trying to find the first hostel on our list with an Israeli called David, we eventually discovered it's gone out of business or something..! so checked into another hostel called Albergue de Passo, which has turned out to be pretty good and at R$15/night, nice and cabado!

Jess has finally gotten access to some of her funds so when we're all awake we should be able to get her debts with us settled which will be a relief for all of us. Not sure what we're going to do tonight, we were all exhausted from very little sleep last night and have been having a siesta since 2pm (is now 4.30pm). Me and Sal explored a bit earlier though and found the first Governor of Bahia's house - Palace Rio Branco I think it was called! Also listened to some roots/hip-hop from this band. There's live music everywhere, Salvador is so colourful too with bright colours all over, and so much to see and do, we can hardly wait to have a proper look around the place. Awesome city - I already like it a lot more than Rio.  ¶ 12:31 PM