Beware of lysia's dangerous vagina chakra

Our last day in brazil.  On the agenda: one more beach day, an acarajé for Cindy, some more samba dancing.

There was no way in hell we were getting back on a boat, or traveling a long distance to the beach.  We went back to our favorite local spot in Ondina, but the water was full of crap today.  Lysia thinks it's due to the pouring rain from the night before.

We do a little souvenir shopping before we decide everything is crap and no one is getting anything. 

Lysia goes on a mission for one last açaí.  Two places are out, the third has two adorable older women sitting there, talking to us about the shitty weather and how to properly make the açaí when we get back... Add a little bit of molasses, and a banana to make it smooth.  Lysia is taking notes.  She charges Lysia $12, double what the other two places charged.  You want a lesson, it's gonna cost ya.

We made a last minute decision to see Balé Folklorico, their locally produced show which I've seen there before, and in New York.  It was amazing.  There was an incredible display of capoeira, which I don't generally like.  Two dances featured the candomblé religion, a African-rooted polytheism whose gods are called Orixas.  Each Orixa represents a certain color, day of the week, feature of nature.  We had gone into a souvenir shop earlier that evening that had a lot of candomblé souvenirs.  Lysia a drawn to Iansã, the red Orixa who presides over storms and winds.  I like iemenjá, the blue Orixa who is the mother of all the other Orixas and presides over the sea.  (I think she's like the mermaid of all the Orixas.)  during the performance, lysia's Orixa is the one screaming the loudest, and the only one who gets danced up on by a male Orixa.  I told Lysia hers is the slutty and angry Orixa.   "That's about right," she remarks.

All of that made us want to dance pretty badly.  We asked the guy at the theater where we could find some samba that evening.  He said that there would be some In a square a small walk away, at 11, still a couple of hours away.

We go to get a drink, a few steps down the block, and there's a huge crowd at Teresa Batista, the open-air music venue.  There's another samba school playing.    Perfect.  Everything got crossed off the list.

We go to get a snack to refuel, and this man, Cicero, starts talking to us in Portuguese. Well, really, he is talking to Lysia, with me as translator.  He remembers seeing her dance a couple of times this week, and she is unconvinced until he describes the high-heel wedges she was wearing that night she was asked to visit that guy's habitation.  And then he described how her style of dance was more African than Brazilian, as she used her arms in a flowing manner, and he is really excited too see this because he was a dance instructor himself.

Of all the people dancing around Salvador, Lysia was the one who made the impression with her Afro-dancing.  And impression she made, indeed... Evidently Cicero is really into Indian Chakra meditation stuff, and spends the next half an hour telling all about her chakras, her energy, what he can sense about her, what it all means.  He wasn't even hitting on her (or us... I was strictly used as a demonstration model for where one's medians and chakras are, and a translator,) he was just talking.  And talking and talking.  The guy was fascinating.  He said that her energy was powerful, and sensual, but her head has "psychological problems."  He kept on and on about her psychological problems, and told her to be careful.  She is destined to never be alone, he says.

And then he told her that her third chakra, the one in her crotch, whatever that one is, is dangerous.

Beware of lysia's dangerous vagina chakra.

And her crazy brain.

Cicero has no interest in talking about me, my brain, my level if crazy, or my vagina chakras as all.  I'm having flashbacks of Bali where the medicine man is making Lisa and Shirin make triangles on their vaginas, and I got no vag triangle.  The medicine man said I'm just fine, and Cicero thinks so, too, I guess.  And no dangerous vagina energy.  Oh well. 

With that, we invite Cicero to come dance with us.  He sees his friend Cesar inside, an older man with dreads and one front tooth missing.  He is an African dance instructor, and introduces us.  Lysia and I follow Cesar's African dance moves for a while, and i think he's so surprised to see me jumping in the air with him that he at some point throws one arm around me to hug me and pat me on the head.

We take one more walk up the big hill to our hotel, and on the way we see Tito, one of our favorite workers from the hotel. We give him a hug and thank him.  He tells us to come back.  A little but further up the hill, we see Luis, the Colombian bartender from one of the bars we were dancing at.  We gave him a hug goodbye and told him to say goodbye to hector, the bar owner.

I guess you can make friends in Salvador after all.