I had a few wasted days in Arembepe. Having cancelled my bus ticket out of Salvador de Bahia, I had booked a flight online. When I got to Arembepe, I didn't have wifi there, but at times my phone's internet connection through the data plan was good enough to receive emails. When in Arembepe, I received an email from the website I booked my flight with, letting me know that my card had been declined. With my poor phone internet, I tried several times to skype my bank in the US and find out what was going on - unsuccessfully. I began to get nervous because I started thinking that perhaps my bank marked this booking as fraudulent activities and would immediately cancel my credit and debit cards, when I am in the middle of South America. That would be really bad. Anyway thankfully after a few days and communication challenges (no net, bad skype connections, pending emails etc), I was able to finally get my ticket to Peru booked.
I did a bit of sightseeing everyday in Arembepe. It was really beautiful. One evening we went to the beach and I enjoyed taking pictures of the boats at sunset - and also using them as photo props:-) In the evenings, we almost always ate acaraje at Cachitas. One thing I kept on wondering about is why no one had different flavours of acaraje. I wondered if I was the first person who had inquired about chicken acaraje. All the ladies sold the same type of acaraje - an option with shrimp and one without. For me it really told me a lot about the culture in Bahia. Culture is extremely important there, and they have maintained their culture for centuries. Acaraje has been made in the same way for generations, and perhaps the thought of even changing the formula, will somehow be a betrayal of culture......Who knows...Maybe I am overthinking it. Maybe chicken really is much more expensive an ingredient than shrimp or maybe chicken just doesn't go well with okra.....
There was a full moon when I was in Arembepe, and everyone kept on telling us about the "luau" party that would happen on the night of the full moon. It would be in the hippie village. I began to get really excited about it, but on the day of, it rained cats and dogs. I have never seen torrential rain like that. It was really beautiful to watch from indoors.
Anyway, the day after the "luau" party that never happened, I got to go the hippie village. That was an experience and a half. More about that in my next post.
