Cachoeira

Saturday we went to Cachoeira (which is about 60 miles inland of Salvador) with Ashia and Danny. We left around 8:45 am and took a taxi to the bus station and bought our tickets on the second level of the station. The bus was at 10:10 so we looked around the shops that they had on the ground floor. There was a havianas store and a bookstore that we went in as well as a lingerie store which we thought was odd.

It was a two hour ride there. We were dropped off in their saturday market thing, which was interesting, but we left because we were hungry for lunch. We walked around for a while aimlessly, but just before it got annoying we stumbled across one of the museums that was recommended to us. Then across the street was another church/museum thing for the Sisterhood of the Good Death, which apparently is a cross between Candomble and Catholicism.

Next, we walked around a bit more and found the river, took some pictures, admired the many beautiful churches, then got serious about finding a place to eat again.
A local man asked us if we wanted a tour and Scott replied by asking where we should eat lunch. He immediately said to go to the convent, then took us there. There is an old convent that has been converted into a pousada and restaurant. We looked around for a few minutes, admiring the innate peacefulness of the place, then finally sat down to lunch around 2 pm. We each ordered something, but apparently each order serves two people so it was a lot of food. We ate as much as we could and left the rest. I contemplated dessert but there was no way.

We then walked back to the river and across the bridge to the cigar factory - the final place on our list of things to see. It began to pour as we made it to the factory, so we dried off a little and began to explore. The most interesting part was the showroom where about 20 women were making the cigars. A guide there explained each step to us in pretty good english, but with a very strong accent.
We watched them choose the tobacco leaves and stack them evenly, then place them in the foot-pedal-powered rolling machine. She would roll them a few times then pluck off anything sticking out the ends, they were then given to a woman who would roll them into the outer leaf to contain it. The entire cigar is made inside and out out of tobacco leaves, even the piece to seal the end. The glue they use to hold it all together is actually a natural glue from the root of some other plant, but still all natural tobacco that I guess the company now grows in green houses to keep the crop more uniform and less susceptible to insects and the elements. Apparently Brazil has some of the best tobacco in the world right here in the state of Bahia. When we finished at the cigar factory we went back to the bus station and made the two hour and 30 minute trek back to Salvador. We ate a little for dinner, went and got acai, then came back to the house to relax for the rest of the night.