Brazil - Day 1

Wednesday Feb 6th 13:30 (10:30 am CST)

So yesterday we came in way too early to wake up. I ended up not getting up until 8, which is when we had our diplomatic briefing.

As we debarked the ship there was a drumming group outside to meet us and other cruise ships just arriving. Really fun to listen to. I'm pretty sure they were just doing some freestyle beats and mixing it up as they felt like. We finally got off the ship around 10:00 and headed to Pelourinho, or the older part of town where there's a lot of touristy type of things to do. Also, during Carnival everything is closed down besides little shops on the side of the streets. The only exception to this is the places that rely on tourists for their customers such as in Pelourinho. Carnival didn't start until around 15:00 so we had some time to just walk around and see the place. We also went to the beach around where our bloco was going to start for a couple hours. The beaches are pretty nice. None that we saw were outrageously huge though. Also, the swim attire here is speedos for the guys and a thong with a small top for women. Not everyone wears this, but the vast majority of them do. It doesn't matter if you're too fat for it or not either. So there were quite a few people that really shouldn't have been wearing that who were on the beach. Not one woman was wearing a one-piece suit either.

Around where we docked is a huge tourist area so there are a ton of people selling stuff and looking for ways to make money off of you. People in the streets everywhere will come and offer to sell you anything from food and water to bracelets, necklaces, and sound makers. Even if you're sitting down outside at a restaurant they will come up to you and try to sell you things. It kind of gets annoying but you get used to saying "no obrigado" (no thank you) pretty quickly.

On a side note, we are a smaller cruise ship compared to all others when we dock; we look like a little toy ship. I noticed the same thing when we were in San Juan. Like our highest deck, the 7th deck, comes up to about the bottom of the outside deck on most of these ships. It's insane.

So... CARNIVAL. In Brazil they spell it Carnival but in the US I've usually seen it spelled as Carnivale so if I switch back and forth between the spellings that's why. According to our academic dean, there are at least 2 million people dancing at any given time in Salvador. Carnival is also the largest Military deployment for the country every year in a peace effort. There are tons of these military police. They always travel in groups from 4-6, but usually always 5. They're fully dressed in military attire with helmets and batons, no guns. If you see a pack of these military police coming your way, you better move aside because they'll just plow through whoever’s in the way of where they need to get. I don’t think there was ever a time once Carnival started that I didn't see a group of military police for more than 10 minutes. So I guess a couple of years ago at Carnival some girl got schwasted and ended up getting raped. She was just blackout drunk and not being smart. That's why they've given us so many safety warnings before Brazil. Not once all day and night did I feel scared or worried.

On a side note about Salvador during Carnival - there is a severe lack of bathrooms, or people using the ones provided, so everyone just pees in a corner or something. You learn quickly to never step in wet puddles on the ground. I'm assuming that this is mainly only because there are so many people out for Carnival, but the stench of urine comes around often. They need a really big rainfall to wash all of that stench away.

Also, in Brazil there are really rich people and really poor people. It's not long before I confirmed this for myself.

The national/local beer here is Skol. It's actually not too bad, it's a light beer. On the streets it was $2 Reais for a big can (like 473ml or something) which ends up being a better deal than $1PBR's at Downtime.

So right around 3, when Carnival started in Pelourinho we headed to the streets to watch some of the first blocos.

So I'll try to explain how these blocos work. People buy shirts to be a part of these blocos, which is basically just the group of people who follow the band through the streets. These are protected by a large, strong rope that circles the entire bloco and is held onto by probably like 200 regulators as we move. So there's this huge rope around everyone who bought these shirts, then in the front portion of the bloco there's a semi with whatever band/artist is playing on the top. The back of the semi is loaded with some huge speakers and lights for effects. Probably about 100 yards behind the first semi there's another one with more speakers and a bar to buy drinks. We never actually made it back there for drinks because people were always walking around with coolers full of beer, water, and canned Smirnoff ice. So once the band starts playing everyone starts dancing. Which usually only consisted of jumping up and down and waving your hands at the really good parts. Then there are people all along the outsides of the rope that didn't pay to be in the loco. This is usually where all of the theft occurs. There's also not a whole lot of room to move since the bloco takes up the entire street and pushes everyone to the sidewalk.

The first bloco that we saw was the first one of the day, and we just stayed on the outside because we really didn't know what to expect from it. To put it bluntly, it was absolutely crazy, and it only got more crazy as the night went on. One bloco's attire was a full dress of Ghandi, which looked pretty cool. The bloco that we ended up buying was the one that Eduardo suggested, which was Voa-Voa. This was where the Chiclete com Banana band was playing, the best and most popular axe band in Brazil. They went on at midnight and ended at 5 or so. They played in Bahia, right along the beach on Av. Oceanica which goes right along the ocean. Since we had some time on our hands we went back to the ship to eat, then went back to Pelourinho to meet up with some other SaS people and watch the blocos go by. Then around 9 we headed to Bahia to make sure we had enough time before Voa-Voa went on. Fat Boy Slim started at around 10 or so, which a lot of SaS people ended up buying shirts to. I didn't want to go to Fat Boy Slim just because he's more Americanized and I'm here to learn and see more of the culture, so David and I got tickets to Voa-Voa. When Fat Boy started we tagged along the outside for about an hour before heading back to get ready for Voa-Voa. It was pretty awesome to say the least.

Then after Fat Boy Slim was this woman singer, I can't think of her name right now, but she's the biggest female singer in Brazil. And absolutely beautiful. I feel bad that I can't remember her name because we learned about how popular she was.

Then came midnight, which is when the craziest party I've ever been to just got crazier. First of all, we got into our bloco and everyone and their brother had a digital camera and was taking pictures without any worry. Inside the bloco is one of the safest places to be it seemed, I didn't see one fight within it and think David and I were some of the only people without a digital camera taking pictures. There was also a news crew in there for a while, and cameras along some sides of the streets filming the craziness that was the Voa-Voa crowd. Although they sang in Portuguese, that wasn't any reason to not enjoy the music and I really didn't even notice it. Music is music; it's not hard to tell when the crazy dancing parts of the song are. And if there's some hand motions or something to it, you just follow the other million people around you. So we followed and danced in the bloco until around 4am when we decided we were just too partied out. Brazil knows how to party, there's no doubt about that. They outlasted both of us and who knows how long they were going to continue. There was one song that Voa-Voa played about every hour that I can't wait to download and listen to again. lalalalala - lalalalalaaaa la

When we left the ropes of our bloco some of the security people along the ropes grabbed both of our hands and took us to a taxi. I thought they were just being nice and protecting us from the people around the outside of the ropes, because we did just leave the most popular band in Brazil and our shirt was one of the most expensive ones for the day so everyone wanted it. They were being nice and protecting us, but when we got to the taxi they asked for money. I think that's just annoying. I was going to give them a tip but they don't need to ask for it and all I had left was a $50 Reais bill and a $1 coin. So we ended up giving him $10 and having to pay the taxi $40 to get back to our ship.

Another awesome thing happened when we got back to the ship though. A bunch of people were leaving really early to go to Iguacu Falls so they had some breakfast out for them. Just some croissants and stuff like that, but it was great. Us and some other people that we met up with when we got back to the ship ended up eating like half of it. Some quality drunk food :)

So Carnival ended today at noon, I was way too tired to wake up for it. Brazil plays Ireland today though in Ireland so we might try to find a Sports Bar or something and watch it. I also want to find out what happened with Super Tuesday back in the states.