Thursday, May 16, 2013

Day Trip to Cachoeira

Yesterday we took a road trip on our bus to the town of Cachoeira, about 90 miles outside of Salvador.

It was our first trip out into the countryside, rural Brazil so to speak (not including the Amazon in this category). The drive was beautiful; the landscape varied between thick clumps of tropical foliage and green rolling hills dotted with cows feeding placidly on the grass. All cattle in Brazil is grass-fed and so beef is really tasty compared to the corn-fed cows in the US (I had a McDonalds Quarter Pounder yesterday and it was the best burger I have ever eaten at a McDonalds).

We passed by many bamboo plantations and a paper mill that makes paper out of of bamboo. We also saw a grove of mangrove trees that naturally filter the water which had a lot of salt in it. The leaves of the trees are hence salty and are used by the local inhabitants in their cooking.

On the way we stopped at a town called Santa Amara and walked around for a while. We stopped at a newspaper publishing house which still uses a hand operated printing press, the oldest in Brazil and probably the only one in the world which is still operational. We next stopped at an 18th century church, Our Lady Saint Mary of Purification. Our visit happened to coincide with a mid- day Mass so we sat in the back row and listened to Mass in Portuguese. It was accompanied by a recording of acoustic guitar and even though we couldn't understand the words, it had a spiritual, uplifting quality to it.

We got back on the bus and about three hours after we left Salvador we arrived in Cachoeira. Cachoeira is a picturesque town built along the Paraiguacu River by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The town has a very European feel to it because of the architecture of the houses and churches and also the plazas and narrow cobblestone streets which our bus driver expertly navigated around. However there are distinctly Brazilian elements as well, such as the markets for fruits and vegetables as well as crafts and household supplies; the vendors on the street selling different types of goods, along with the small shops ranging from barber shops to bakeries. The northeastern part of Brazil was the center of the slave trade by the Portuguese so 90% of the population here is of African descent.

Many of the houses were also not well-preserved although there was some new construction that definitely looked out of place amongst the older colonial style of houses. One street was packed because a new shoe store had just opened and the store was offering a new car ( which we saw) as a prize to some lucky shopper.

We drove across the bridge over the River to the old farm house where we were to eat lunch. It was called Fazenda Santa Cruz (Fazenda means farm in Portuguese). The house was beautiful and sat atop a hill overlooking the river and the town. There were enormous mango trees in the yard and the ground was scattered with fallen mangoes. Such bounty! We later saw someone raking the fallen mangoes which were hopefully going to be used later on.

We sat on two long tables on a verandah which wrapped around the house. It rained briefly but cleared up soon and we enjoyed a delicious meal in idyllic surroundings. The main course was steak
which had doubtless come from one of those peaceful placid cows at some point. Needless to say it was scrumptious. There was a buffet with various side dishes and mango sorbet for dessert.

After lunch we stopped at a cigar factory to see how cigars are made. The factory was started by a German entrepreneur named Dannemann in the 19th century. Apparently these are some of the finest cigars in the world and some of you can look forward to receiving them as gifts in a few days!

The factory was a large room with about twenty women working on different stages of the process. We watched each stage starting with rolling the tobacco leaves,
followed by gluing the outer casing on and closing up one end and then testing the cigar to see if it was rolled the right degree of tightness.

The cigar factory was our last stop and we hopped back in the bus for our long drive back to Salvador.




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