Back in Bahia, it was hot and very steamy. The faded, mouldy opulence of Portuguese colonial architecture looks sad, but there is such exuberance in Salvador. Dirty, noisy, hot, peligroso and tourist-oriented. But very alive. That is its attraction, I think.
Now, anchored among palm-fringed islands south of Ilha Bom Jesus, Chris and I are at peace with the world. The silence, the hourly swims, the ancient sailing scows, the dugout canoes. The little ferries, noisy but quite inoffensive. We are eating fruit, reading and sleeping a lot. Chris has War and Peace. I have my endless tinkering – the Profurl wrapstop (Prufrock, as C calls it), trilight bulb, broken saloon drawer, leaking basin in aft head, jobs.
Boat-building in Brasil – take a good muffler; attach an old diesel engine to it; build a boat around it; paint it in bright primary colours, then discard the muffler.