It’s time to go.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Right now, as my friend Mélanie would say, I have “one foot in each canoe”—frankly, this Metis saying, is much more poetic than the French version, having your “ass between two chairs.”

I’m adopting a country when I’m travelling, it’s a matter of survival. So yeah, I get attached to places, people, food, cultures, languages and more, and it’s often hard to leave. I have this weird fear of things ending as well, so it doesn’t help.

I tell myself that it’s not really an ending, it’s a new beginning, or other bits of wisdom you may have seen written on a public bathroom door.

Mind you, it’s kind of true.

Usually, the fact that summer is over and fall is starting in the southern hemisphere is a kind reminder that it’s time to go north and look forward to spring and summer. I remember cold nights in Santiago in late March. Last year, daytime still felt like summer in São Paulo but the temperature was starting to drop quite a bit after sunset.

But in Salvador, it’s never really “winter.” It doesn’t get cold, it just rains more between April and August. The temperature is remarkably constant and I guess I’m lucky because it didn’t rain much the past three weeks—much less than last year in Ubatuba, Ilha Bela or Santos, anyway. Here, when it rains, it’s for ten or twenty minutes, mostly conveniently at night.

I was comfortable in Salvador.

Now, this is a sentence I’d never thought I’d type.

If four months ago, Feng had suggested ending the trip with three weeks in Salvador, I probably would have recoiled at the thought of it—it’s a big city with a bad reputation, a bit of a tall order for a solo traveller.  

Why did I change my mind? Laziness, mostly. Geography, also—the state of Bahia is huge, it’s a trip within a trip and I didn’t have the energy for long bus rides and remote towns, so Salvador it was.

My list of unknowns was long. Was it going to be rainy? Was it going to be completely dead after Carnival? Was I even able to stay in one place for three weeks?

Everything turned out better than expected. Crazy, I know, in a world that seems to get worse every day, according to the news.

Much like São Paulo, Salvador is one place you must explore patiently, almost methodically. It’s worth it, trust me. I discovered that Salvador is a friendly place, full of gems, with a thriving Afro-Brazilian culture. I realized how important music is here—there’s always someone playing something, somewhere. Last Sunday, I even had the chance to go to a last big party because Salvador decided to celebrate the city’s anniversary in style with a free concert in front of the lighthouse. It featured all the hallmarks of a big Brazilian event—a giant stage, booze vendors lined up in the side streets, and rows and rows of portable toilets… for an evening, it was like Carnival all over again. I got to see Gilberto Gil live, thank you Salvador for that!

Would I live in Salvador? Honestly, I don’t ask myself the question anymore because these days, I feel like I don’t have a home but many homes and for better or for worst, I’m leaving pieces of my heart all over the world.

Maybe it’s not so much about Salvador, but more about the fact I love tropical places, spending time outside, and hanging out with perfect strangers who also go out just for the sake of hanging out with perfect strangers and enjoying a sunset together. It’s about the fact I like culture, art and history, good food and fresh ingredients, walkable cities, the seaside and more. Salvador is my kind of place, basically.

The soundtrack of my days and nights in Salvador was a mix of the comunidade’s pirate radio, classic rock from someone somewhere in a condo who really likes classic rock, roosters going crazy whenever they felt like it, weekend parties around condo swimming pools and gatherings in comunidades around an open-air barbecue, loud beeps from Uber drivers’ phones, cans being crushed by the catadores (waste pickers), fans above my head, the occasional drumming from drummers who are probably already practising for yet another party…

It was lively. I like lively places. I love this community feeling in Brazil. I’ve always felt welcome here.

I’ll be forever grateful to Canada for many things—welcoming me, teaching me English, helping me find what I’m good at, and giving me work opportunities. The weather has always been a deal breaker, I never got used to it. And I’m not a big fan of individualist societies either.

I’m not in the right place geographically speaking.

So I’m still running.