Christmas Vacation of a Lifetime: Final Stop: Christmas Day in Salvador

Where I spent my Christmas vacation: Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

After nearly two weeks in South America, my 1997 Christmas vacation trip was drawing to a close. There was only one more destination: the place where I finally would get to spend Christmas Day on a beach in Brazil. The beach would be in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.

There was more to Salvador than beaches. Salvador is the center of Afro-Brazilian culture. As such, it has the best music and the best food in all of Brazil. Think of it as New Orleans, only with the most beautiful beaches that would make Miami or Myrtle Beach feel inadequate.

The historic Pelourinho neighborhood is the center of Tourism Salvador. Above is the Igreja de São Domingos Gusmão. It was Christmas time so the exterior is decked out accordingly. Below is the incredible Igreja e Convento de São Francisco.

This is the most beautiful church in a neighborhood of a city filled with beautiful ornate historic churches. I was able to get one shot of the interior before a curse descended on my camera.

I took the above photo of the church's ornate interior without flash.

You may think I am kidding when I say that a curse descended on my camera. I am not. I was walking through the interior of the church, by myself. There was no one else around. I saw a sign, in Portuguese, saying something along the lines of "no flash photography." But there was no one else around! And I really didn't speak Portuguese, right, so I could deny knowing what the sign said, if somehow I was confronted. But there was no one else around. So I took a series of photos using the flash of my camera. And no one caught me. No one saw me.

This literally was the very first photo I snapped with my camera's flash after I saw the sign:

The film was ruined in development. But not the whole roll! Only the film roll starting at the exact point where I decided to ignore the warning against flash photography! And to think I thought no one saw me!

When I got home after my trip, I went to the Sahara Camera Center, the best place in town to get film developed, to get my five or so rolls of vacation filmed developed. When I went to pick up the photos a few days later, the clerk was apologetic. He said one roll was ruined. I knew immediately which roll it was going to be. And I was right. But when I saw that the exact point where the ruining started, I literally burst out laughing.

It's sad that I have only a few photos from Salvador that were salvageable, but the life lesson was far more important. I no longer intentionally disobey instructions on photography inside a church.

As I said, the rest of my pictures of Pelourinho also were ruined:

All washed out.

I have no pictures from Christmas Day on the beach, however. Ruined or otherwise.

One of the difficulties of going to a beach as a solo traveler is what to do with your "stuff" if you want to go into the water. So I elected not to bring a camera.

I don't recall which beach I went to for Christmas. I think it was Praia de Jaguaribe, but I could be wrong. It was a pleasant ride up the coast in the "executivo" bus, the more expensive air-conditioned bus serving that route.

It was a very pleasant way to cap off the trip of a lifetime. I have since been over-blessed with several other "trips of a lifetime" since. But this was the first. If you don't count the high school Spanish class trip to Spain.