Salvador, two weeks in: five things I love, and five things I don't

Since I have a lot of opinions about Salvador, I thought I'd put them here in a classic listicle format for your reading pleasure...

"Temos coco gelado" - nothing better than cool coconut water

This is meant to be light-hearted, not deep criticism of a city/country I barely know, and definitely not sociological commentary. Please don't take me too seriously!

Five things I love:

1. Tropical fruit. It's delicious, cheap, and also comes in juice form... So far I've had, among others, umbu, acerola, cajá, pinha, goiava (guava), maracujá (passion fruit), ananás (pineapple), and lots of manga (mango), as well as the obligatory coconut water fresh from a green coconut. And there are still plenty more I can look forward to!

2. The people here. Nearly everyone I've met has been friendly and chatty. People are willing to talk to strangers and freely share their knowledge and experience. All of this makes going about your daily business really pleasant.

3. The architecture in the historical centre. This is such a cliché - if people have one mental image of Salvador, it's probably of beautiful, brightly-coloured, colonial-style houses lining steep cobbled streets. And some parts of town (the Pelourinho area and Santo António Além do Carmo, where I live) really are like this.

Photogenic streets

4. The beach at Porto de Barra. When I was preparing for this trip, my 'back-up plan' was that if my research didn't go well, I would spend all the time on the beach. In retrospect, the weather means that was a ridiculously naive idea. But on the two occasions I have been to the beach so far, Porto de Barra has been lovely. I'd happily spend more time there!

5. The chance to challenge myself and discover new things. So far things haven't all been as I expected - and not always for the better. But I'm trying to get the most out of this experience that I can, by finding solutions to my problems and not getting bogged down in the smaller worries.

Stormy skies

Having said that, though, I would like to give a balanced view of life, rather than just choosing the good bits. So here are five things I don't love:

1. The climate - it's the winter, so it's raining a lot, it gets dark early (around 5pm), everything is constantly damp, it's humid, there are mosquitos everywhere, and I still managed to get sunburnt while wearing factor 50 suncream.

2. The crazy traffic - including traffic jams, and some of the worst driving I've ever seen. Most drivers are seemingly unaware that their cars include a special feature known as "indicators". And pedestrian crossings are an optional decoration, whether the traffic lights are red or green.

3. Security paranoia. Everyone is scared of robberies and violence, particularly at night, with the inevitable result that it's easy to feel threatened after dark, regardless of how (un)likely it is that anything will happen at 5.30pm in a busy street. It's hard to know whether Salvador deserves its reputation as a violent city, but I'm not taking any chances.

4. Cat-calling. Maybe this is the flip-side of the friendliness. It annoys me in the UK too, but it doesn't happen anything like as frequently there as here. Yes, the words "hello beautiful, smile!" are theoretically friendly, but if you're a complete stranger, I don't want to hear it as I walk past you, and if you persist in making that horrid kissy noise, I'll just ignore you.

5. Lack of information about buses. Oh, you want to get on a bus home? If you're lucky, you'll find a helpful "ônibus" sign at the side of the road, with an accompanying queue of people. Then simply wait between 30 seconds and 30 minutes and hope that a bus turns up. Then try to guess where it's going from the arbitrary selection of stops written on the side of it. There's no way of telling whether buses going to other places will come along to your stop, or not... so good luck!

My new friend

In all seriousness though, things are going well, and I'm learning a lot about this forever surprising place. And look, I even made a friend!