There’s an energy that is hard to describe in Salvador de Bahia, a place where the people have a real lust for life, and both the past and future are so keenly celebrated, to rambunctious effect. Salvador is a melting pot of Portuguese colonial guilt and Afro-Brazilian culture – once the capital of Portugal’s sprawling empire and the centre of its slave trade. It’s a place where old-world European architecture meets African music, dance, and food and is host to hundreds of fascinating festivals each year. The sights, sounds, and colours of the celebrations here is what draws people to come and visit, but there’s also beauty – of the raw variety – to be found by those who look harder.