Expert: Ken Rapoza Cruz - 1/6/2008

Question
Tudo bom? My name Aking . I'm thinking about moving from America to Brazil for a year.I have a 100,000$ sat aside for my living expenses. I really want to move to salvador. How safe is salvador? How is the night life? Is it safe to drive there ? Is there any other place in Brazil that you would recommend? How about Belo Horizonte?

Answer
Dear Aking:
Not knowing you very well, or your lifestyle choices, I would advise you generally on Salvador as such -- it has all the things you will need from a big city: good n ightlife, good restaurants, some crime, good hospitals, good schools, good transportation system. Bahia is a poor state and a backwards state, so life outside of Salvador could get complicated. Roads suck, itts all very Third World. But if you can handle that, you can handle Salvador.

$100,000 for a year in Bahia would put you in a VERY confortable position, but you wouldnt be able to live like the rich there for very long. Youd be able to live like a middle manager of a bank in a Connecticut suburb . But you wouldnt be able to live like Donald Trump. Now in Salvador, there is a lot of Donald Trump, very little midddle managers, and a shit load of poor people.

Salvador is relatively ssafe, not more dangerous than Brooklyn or the Bronx. Just stay in th emiddle class neighborhoods where a man earning $100,000 would live and frequent. Stay away from places where the poor frequent, unless you can blend in and speak the language, or dont carry things with you that would suggest you are rich. To you, a hundred grand might be chump change, but to them, that is a life time of labor.

The northeast of Brazil is a backwater, and people can appear n ice, but rob you bllind or take your hostage for cash if they perceive you are rich.  Mingle with your class. If you want to downgrade, choose wisely, dont act like a movie star or snobby rich American living the good life in Bahia looking for chicks,get it?

I would not recommend Belo Horizonte, only because it is not an international city. What would you do there? If you want to really rough it, go to the northeast to some seaside villa, but Belo is for working and middle class/profesional Brazilians, not for foreigners to live for a year.  I wouldnt even care to visit it. Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais is nice.

With your cash, I wouold visit the Amazon, Rio de Janeiro, Foz do Iguacu falls in Parana and Florianopolis in the summer months (Dec - Mar).  Id also go to some off the high plains areas in the center western states of Mato Grosso and Goias, great nature reserves there; otherworldly.

Good luck.