35*

Hello Europeans and North-Americans currently experiencing stormy weather or snow...

This is me drying my shirt on the beach in Ilhéus. It got wet, with sweat, because it is 35 degrees Celsius here.

Yes, I am in the land of the endless summer. Bahia does not have any seasons. It also doesn't have summer time (and for that reason, even though it is in the same time zone as Rio de Janeiro, it is still an hour earlier here... confusing!)
For someone who has grown up in north-western Europe (like me) it is difficult to imagine life without seasons. But here, it is always summer, the sun rises early (5am) and goes down early (6pm). No such thing as a long summer evening!

Yesterday I spent most of the day in Ilhéus, a nearly perfect little city on the coast, in Bahia's Cacaueira region. As you might be able to tell from the name, everything in Ilhéus and the area around it revolves around cocoa - and chocolate. (They have even invented chocolate that does not melt in 35 degrees heat - basically, it does not contain milk, and is rock hard, but very, very tasty.)

A church and a phone box. I can't think of a funny caption, but there has to be one.

Ilhéus, which also happens to be the birthplace of one of my favourite authors, Jorge Amado, was built in colonial style during the cocoa boom in the 19th Century. The buildings might be pretty, but the history is not. Even after slavery was abolished, the working conditions on the roças (plantations) were pretty grim. Jorge Amado paints a stark picture of this in his early books, Cacau and Terras do Sem Fim (both have been translated into English, and Dutch.)

Ilhéus is nearly perfect. It is Galway-sized, it has brightly painted colonial architecture, a good café called Barrakítika, beaches, a fairly good transport system... Nearly perfect, because it turns pale in comparison with the splendor of Salvador... more about which in the next update.