I don’t have to use matchsticks to light the stove burner.

I don’t have to wrap and put away all food right away because it’s unlikely ants and various bugs will find their way to the condo’s sixth floor—I can’t even open the door when the doorman buzzes me in, and I’m a human with strong arms.

Because yes, there’s a professional doorman, not a bunch of stoned Argentinian neighbours sitting around on the stairs all day long.

And there’s an elevator. I don’t have to climb a million stairs.

There’s even a supermarket down the road with vegetables and everything.

So far, no random power outages.

Oh, and there are cars and stop signs.

Crazy, I know.

“So, back to civilization?” Feng asked jokingly when he called me in Ilhéus.

Well, kind of.

Ilhéus is a “big city” but a “big city” Bahia style and I’m deep, deep into Bahia State.

It didn’t take me long to realize how far I was from the modern version of Brazil as featured in São Paulo, Salvador, Recife and even Vitória.

“Look, I don’t know where you saw a shopping mall on the map but I guarantee you Ilhéus isn’t shopping mall material,” I told Feng. “Mind you, the airport is conveniently located in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, you just walk by planes landing. Also, this is China in the 1990s. Lovely old ladies downtown insist on having their picture taken with me—I’m guessing there aren’t too many tan-but-white gringas around here.”

“No way!” Feng couldn’t stop laughing. “Now, that’s travelling!”

Ilhéus is a dot on the map, 210 kilometres south of Salvador on the endless Bahian coast.

I ended up here out of curiosity and for logistical travel reasons—same rationale as usual, “why not.”

But I couldn’t find much travel info about Ilhéus—it’s far, it’s out of the way, and it’s in the middle of nowhere, Bahia. The city is the hometown of Brazil’s most famous author, Jorge Amado. It was also one of the biggest exporters of cocoa beans, which explains why I’m in the “Costa do Cacau”—the Morro was on the “Costa do Dendê,” “dendê” being the palm oil used to cook pretty much anything in Bahia.

A famous writer and chocolate—it couldn’t be that bad, this is my kind of world.

“No ladeira climbing, gringa!” my Brazilian friend had warned me. “Watch out, it’s a city…”

I kind of agreed with him on this one. Ilhéus is a “big” city and a port, after all. It could be seedy, I’d play it safe.

I was staying in Pontal, right in front of downtown, across the bay. On my first day, I asked the doorman if it was okay to walk across the bridge to downtown. This is a normal question to ask in Brazil where everybody is concerned about safety—I usually get good tips about places where it’s okay to go and places best avoided.

He looked at me, bemused. “Uh… yes.”

So I took the bridge and thirty minutes later, I was downtown.

Ilhéus is smaller than it seems.

I visited the cathedral, Jorge Amado’s house, and smiled for the picture with random local old ladies.

Then I started wandering around. This was when I realized that Ilhéus was safe, like, really safe, and that locals were lovely people quite excited to see a foreigner exploring their city.

I got a bunch of tips. Some of them included climbing ladeiras to get to several viewpoints—steep side streets are best avoided in Salvador and Rio but safe here.

Sure, the buildings are all falling apart, the streets are oddly angled and it feels a bit chaotic but it’s a welcoming place with a great atmosphere, it’s very walkable (looking at you, Belo Horizonte), and it’s beautiful.

I skipped the beach—it’s pretty wild, empty and endless. Even locals seemed more comfortable swimming in the river, under the bridge.

No regrets about Ilhéus, it was an interesting stop.