We then flew to the picturesque Bahìa, with its colorful colonial architecture and the turbaned Bahianas.  Founded by the Portuguese in 1594, it was the capital of Brazil for 200 years; now a city of contrasts between the poor people conducting their daily chores in the streets and the hip youth hanging out at the beaches.

I traveled on my own further North, to Olinda, to visit an Italian professor I had met 2 years earlier on Lake Titicaca.  He explained to me the charged political climate of his artistic town, in an election year, expressed in colorful murals.

SLIDESHOW