Arrival: The Barra, Salvador
Salvador announces itself from the south through the density of its traffic, the scale of its highway infrastructure, and then, abruptly, through the Estrada do Coco feeding into the upper-city street grid. The route descends through the Barra neighbourhood and arrives at the Farol da Barra in the mid-afternoon.
The lighthouse is the oldest operational lighthouse in the Americas. The original beacon was lit in 1698, mounted on the roof of the Forte de Santo Antônio da Barra — itself the oldest military fortification in Brazil, its first stones laid around 1536 by Francisco Pereira Coutinho, the first donatário of the Captaincy of Bahia. The fort was built, and has stood, at the precise point where the Atlantic coast meets the mouth of the Baía de Todos os Santos: the Ponta de Santo Antônio, called Ponta do Padrão in the early colonial period, where Portuguese navigators in 1501 planted a padrão de posse and named the great bay they had found on All Saints' Day. The current lighthouse tower — 22 metres of white-banded stonework, troncônica in form — dates from 1839. Inside the fort is the Museu Náutico da Bahia, which houses a collection of maritime artefacts, charts, and salvage from wrecks along the Bahian coast, some of it lying on the seabed for over three centuries. The views from the terrace are extensive in both directions along the coast.