TRAVEL / Entranced by the dance of Brazil: A mystery taxi ride through the backstreets of Salvador da Bahia ended at a voodoo ceremony. David Presswell lived to tell the tale of a city of samba, carnival and crime

A LOCAL saw has it that one day, God placed all the races of the Earth in one country - by way of a practical joke. He called it 'Brazil' . . .

Forget any notion of 'the typical Brazilian': in the north they are Indian; in the south they have blue eyes, fair hair and drink in bierkellers; and in the old colonial towns of the east, such as Salvador, they are African. If it were not for the sheer size of the country - its land-mass is greater than that of the United States - the anomaly would be more obvious.

Next to me on the flight to Salvador was an affluent American couple. Innocently enough, I asked them if they were on holiday. 'Right now my wife and I are in Salvador because we want to adopt two daughters,' he replied in measured tones. 'We already have five sons, so we now want two daughters,' she chimed in.

'And we've been told by a man who knows this area, who lives here, that it might be possible to take two little baby girls out of the country and back to the States. Do you know anything about Salvador?' 'Only what I've read,' I said. 'It's very African.' I showed them the photographs in my guide book. 'Susan's hoping for a little cheerleader, a little girl who looks like her,' he continued. 'Of course, that would be nice for me too.' But there was no reply from Susan, who was staring with catatonic fixation at the photographs.

Salvador is African to the core. Not only do most of the population look African, but the brightly coloured scarves the women wear about their heads are African in style; samba, the music they dance to, pulses to an African beat; and the warm streets are heavy with the rich smell of African cooking. Salvadoreans cook everything in a combination of coconut and palm oil, dende - a concoction as overpowering as liquid Bounty bar.

Yet Salvador da Bahia enshrines the soul of traditional Brazil. It is here that Brazilians advise you to see carnival at its most authentic; and it is here that the nation's favourite novelist, Jorge Amado, set most of his novels.

The day I arrived, Brazil's TV Globo was filming an Amado story for one of its tele-novellas. It was a 1950s piece which involved a clutch of prostitutes - one of whom was clearly a man in drag - being chased into a church by a bevy of truncheon-happy policemen. The backdrop was the quarter of Pelourinho: cobbled lanes and plazas in which buildings from the past 300 years jostle together as in an unruly family photograph - colonial edifices in crumbling splendour, high-rise shanties and shacks among palms - as though someone had planted Prague in the tropics.

Indeed Salvador da Bahia once ranked alongside European cities. Between 1549 and 1763 it was the capital of Brazil, and considered the second city of the Portuguese Empire after Lisbon. The African influence arrived with the importation of black slaves from Guinea in the mid-16th century. They were put to work on the sugar plantations, which in turn afforded Salvador its magnificent buildings.

At the end of Praca da Se is the cathedral, a baroque edifice that dwarfs the square before it. Outside, bare-footed Salvadoreans queue for alms; inside, it is as if King Midas has run amok. Everything is gold. Statues, altar, walls, ceiling - all are coated with it.

The legend of Midas cautions that the effect is deathly. Like a mouth full of gold fillings, the lasting impression is one of rottenness: the rot of too much sugar. It is made worse by the dedication of the building to - of all people - Francis of Assisi. It is said that the African slaves who were drafted in to build and decorate the cathedral expressed their resentment towards a religion that was actively oppressing them by endowing the angels they carved with huge genitals. Sadly, these have since been lopped off. But in the Afro-Brazilian Museum across the Praca, the visitor can see an awesome display of traditional African carving, uncensored. Figurines in wood and clay brace themselves against the weight of massive, pendulous breasts and swollen phalluses, while their crudely carved masks gape and gasp.

I was particularly taken by the photographs which showed many of the objects being used as part of Condomble, the voodoo ritual for which Salvador is famed; and I saw it as a stroke of good luck when I was approached by a small Brazilian waiting outside, offering to be of help. He had sunken eyes, a large mouth crammed with teeth, and a rucksack that looked more like a displaced hump; but he spoke English, and in Brazil that is a rarity. Seeing Condomble would be 'difficult', he said, as no service for tourists would be taking place until the following week. I turned to leave, and he decided that it would be possible - just. Later that night I waited on the corner of a dark, cobbled street. I was starting to regret ever suggesting the idea, when a taxi pulled up, the small Brazilian identified me, and we sped off into the outer suburbs of Salvador. I had no idea where I was.

Eventually the car pulled up to the side of a road. The Condomble hall - the terreiro - was a bungalow up several tiers of steps, disconcertingly reminiscent of the mansion in Psycho. On its veranda stood groups of Brazilians dressed entirely in white.

Inside, thin tassels of white paper hung from strings radiating from a pole at the centre of the main room, creating the effect of a pavilion tent. More reassuring was the sight of 20 other tourists on benches either side of the room, the men on one side, the women on the other.

We sat in silence, making nervous expressions at each other. What would a trance be like? Would I enter it, just watching? Would there be gruesome animal sacrifices? Would they turn to a tourist instead?

The performers entered: the men took up their drums and the women, wearing layer upon layer of white lace tied in a bow at the middle of the back, formed a circle around the pole at the centre. The drums began, pounding against the silence, and the women danced.

For the next two-and-a-half hours they moved, step by step, sway by sway, 12 of them. I became mesmerised by two in particular. One was an old woman with a frizz of white hair who hardly seemed to move at all: she waddled, maintaining throughout an expression of disdain. In front of her was a woman in her early twenties with pale skin and a neck that seemed all the finer for the swelling of white lace about her midriff. She rocked from left to right, splaying her haunches as though pleasuring the ground, her open throat urgent for the cool air. As she began to tip into trance, a matronly hand would steady her lower back.

Brazil is a country where you can understand a certain hankering after oblivion. It has problems on a scale which mock those of other nations. While I was there the Bank of Brazil closed to stop investors removing money - that included travellers' cheques. I came down one morning to find that the price of my room had gone up overnight due to inflation.

When I arrived in Salvador, the woman in the tourist office advised me to dress 'like a beggar'. Perhaps this spared me the trouble that most other travellers I spoke to had encountered. Some had been held up at knife-point, others had had shoulder bags or watches snatched. None had been hurt, because none had resisted. But rumours abounded of thieves even gouging out kidneys, slinging them into ice-bags and shipping them for sale in America. There are simply too many people in Brazil with nothing to lose.

The effect of constant wariness makes Brazil a very tough and tiring country. It is rarely advisable to come completely off your guard, even on the beach. In fact the beach is the most likely place in the whole of Brazil to be robbed. You are advised to take only the barest minimum with you. Brazilian women take this literally, wearing bikinis so small that they are referred to as fio dental - dental floss.

But the unpredictability which sometimes makes Brazil dangerous also makes it compulsively exciting. On my first evening I had supper at the Cantinho da Lua. As I sat there, watching palm trees darken to silhouette against the skyline and wondering how many more mouthfuls of crab in dende I would be able to stomach, a four-piece band set up.

Brazilians drifted in, a samba beat struck up, and within moments the restaurant was packed with young and old, men and women, Brazilians and foreigners, dancing. God's joke perhaps, but on that evening there was no place on earth I would rather have been.

Travel notes

GETTING THERE: Fly to Salvador da Bahia with Varig Brazilian Airlines (071-629 5824). Ticket prices vary according to the route you take; Pex returns from London to Salvador start at pounds 967 - or you can fly to Recife on the north-east coast of Brazil for pounds 890 return and continue to Salvador for dollars 222 (around pounds 113). Journey Latin America (081-747 3108), one of Varig's main agents in Britain, recommends flying to Recife (it offers a return fare of pounds 585), and then using a Brazil Air Pass (dollars 440 for five internal flights) to get you to Salvador as part of a tour of the country.

TOUR OPERATORS: Journey Latin America (081-747 3108) specialises in tours to north-east Brazil; Steamond Latin American Travel (071- 978 5500) offers various tours, including jungle lodges and ecological Amazonian safaris with river cruises; phone for brochures and details.