Exit — Madrid, Spain

  Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Friday, August 3, 2012

We are back in Madrid again, no drama so far except a 1 hour delay in Salvador before we departed.
One interesting parting observation we have made about Salvador; one of the largest cities in Brazil, the 4th largest economy in the world. Salvador has a significant African population with up to 80% of people acknowledged as having African descent. You hardly see any of them at the airport.

Before we left the city we made a quick stop at a fishermen's? village to visit the shrine of Yemanja.
This place is the focus of annual celebrations at the beginning of February when they hold the Yemanja festival and people from all over the state of Bahia and beyond converge on Salvador to pay homage and make offerings to the sea Goddess. The offerings are taken in small fishing canoes 3 miles out to see where they are thrown in the water accompanied by singing, drumming and prayers.

As with the outbound journey, we are finding Madrid airport rather chaotic. Long queue and no one quite sure what’s going on, woman sitting behind desk apparently doing her own thing but not saying much to waiting passengers.

It will be another 4 or 5 hours before we arrive home and we will have been travelling for nearly 24 hours since we left the apartment in Barra.  

This has been an epic journey for us, it is not the holiday we planned but has far exceeded any expectations we could have set for ourselves.