Farewell to Freddy and Bahia sights

This morning was our final opportunity to buy fresh shrimp from our buddy, the bicycling fish vendor. I saw him at the market yesterday and told him we would want two pounds of shrimp this morning. About 9 am, we heard his familiar “pescado! camarones!” Phillip and I went downstairs, with our camera, to buy our shrimp and tell Freddy that we would be leaving on Monday. I was able to tell him, in Spanish, that we enjoyed buying our fish from him. He gave us his phone number to call him when we return to Bahia. Such a nice guy!

After we put our fresh shrimp in the refrigerator, we decided to do some walking. Two sights in Bahia remained for us to visit before we leave on Monday, the museum and the Mirador La Cruz. My Lonely Planet book noted that Bahia has a good museum. When we arrived, the security guards told us the guide was in a meeting, but we were free to see the exhibits and take pictures. Sure enough, the museum was quite good, with an extensive collection of artifacts that even kept Phillip interested! They had a reconstructed ship that the Bahians used about 2000 years ago and many relics from nearby Chirije, an archeological site. One floor was an art gallery and another was dedicated to pictures of the mangroves. The security guard even took us up to the roof patio to get pictures of the city and the bay. We got a great picture of the ferry dock with the crowds waiting for the boat.

After the museum, we started walking for the Mirador La Cruz, the lookout on the hill. The lookout is actually in the cross we can see from our balcony. The security guard at the museum had suggested we take a taxi, but no… we wanted an adventure. What we got was a walk up a very steep road! The road wound around the back side of the hill and ended at the lookout. Then, we had numerous flights of stairs to climb to the horizontal part of the cross where the viewing platform was. We were rewarded by a great view of the entire peninsula.

From this view, our condo is on the right, just after the green tree area.

Phillip zoomed in to get our condo, the taller building you can see in this picture. Only the penthouse is above us (the penthouse has more windows on this side than the other apartments do). Phillip took a picture of me up in the lookout to show y’all that I really did climb those see thru steps! 

Phillip enjoyed taking pictures of the cityscape while I slowly walked around, soaking in the view. A few final views, one showing the shallowness of the bay. You can see the sandbars on the other side. The other, a nicely framed view of the bay from the top of the hill.