After the rain stopped, I strolled along the beach. The beaches on the bay are not as nice as the beaches on the ocean. The water is dirtier, the sand is harder with more stones, seaweed, and junk on the shore, the tide is large with less beach above the tide line. The shore is less steep so you have to go far out into the bay to get to deep water, and the waves are very small, but this good for children and non-swimmers. At the far end of the beach, it is quite long perhaps even a mile, opposite the ferry station, I heard music coming from behind a large wall and many people milling about a driveway/alleyway next to this wall. I went in and saw the love "group". It was two guys, a singer and a keyboardist who was playing a synthesizer with all instruments including rhythms. They were singing popular Brazilian songs and were quite good. There were about 130-160 people listening to them. Some dancing, some sitting drinking beer, some standing and talking. The dancing was not traditional Brazilian dancing. It was much closer to the hip grinding, freak dancing that is featured in US rap videos. And EVERYONE was doing it! The young, the old, the pretty, the ugly, the fat, the slim. One lady was even holding her toddler while dancing. The whole scene had a very pleasant vibe.
I noticed a distinct difference in the "look" of the people as I walked along the beach. I saw more people who appeared to have a condition my parents had told me about called rickets. I remember this to be a bone disease caused by vitamin D deficiency. I saw more bowled legs, limps (one leg longer than the other), and bodies that were not "quite right", a little asymmetric, than I did in other parts of Salvador. I also saw more people with Down's syndrome here than elsewhere. Health professionals have told me that these types of health conditions are associated with poor nutrition and malnutrition in early childhood and during pregnancy, and are seen more often among the poor. The bus ride to and from Sao Tome passed through may poor neighborhoods. I saw only small pockets of the extreme poverty I saw in Nova Vida. But there were virtually NONE of the nice houses, tall apartment buildings, or hotels that I saw in other parts of Salvador along the ocean coast.
