Brazil - Day 2

Thursday February 7th 2:13 (11:13 pm CST)

Today started a little late, as expected. Around 15:00 we went up to Pelourinho to just kind of walk around, take some pictures, and find stuff to do. I ended up buying some post cards but I still want to buy a shirt of some sort. A lot of the souvenirs are African-like because Brazil has such a strong history from Africa. More slaves were brought to Brazil during the Atlantic Slave Trade than any other place. So I think that most of these things would be a lot cheaper in South Africa, and basically the same thing. We ate lunch at a buffet with all Brazilian food. It was a pretty large buffet but I tried to take at least a little of everything. Three of the things had squash or something in them so I didn't eat more than one bite but the rest of the stuff was really good. I honestly couldn't really tell you what the name of one of the dishes was though. They had some pork and ribs that were absolutely delicious; I even had to go back for seconds. I've never really been a big fan of ribs but ever since Kat and I went to the Texas Road House in early January and had ribs I've absolutely loved them. So when the local businesses close for Carnival they board up their windows and everything. In some of my pictures you may see this, so just beware that that's why. Most of them were still boarded up late this afternoon but many were starting to take it down. Hopefully sometime tomorrow or Friday they'll all be gone and we can see what Salvador usually looks like.

David also ended up getting his hair put into some corn rows by some ladies in the plaza. Actually a nice lady with some crazy friends it seemed. While he was doing that I was sitting right by him with some lady with bloodshot eyes that spoke very little English or Spanish but insisted on talking to me as much as she could. First she wanted me to buy her a beer or give her a souvenir. Then she wanted to do my hair into those little squares that stick up (I don’t know how to explain it any better than that). Then she said that she really like my smile but didn't like my shoes (wtf). Then she kept on speaking in Portuguese talking about who knows what. It kind of freaked me out. Haha

After that we went back to the ship to figure out what was going on tonight. Everyone said they were going to this reggae bar in Pelourinho but nobody knew where it was, which was really helpful and I really don't think anyone actually made it to this place because I'm not so sure that it even exists. So we went up the elevator to Pelourinho and started to look for places to hang out. We ended up going down this one street which had live music and went into a bar but it was totally sketch and one of the girls we were with got freaked out because she thought someone was trying to get into her purse and he other girl was freaked out because there was this guy in a costume that looked like one of those axe murderers in a horror movie. I thought it looked awesome, and really wish I brought my camera for it. We ended up at this Brazilian restaurant and ordered some drinks and food. I tried my first capirinha (Brazil's national drink, along with Skol beer) which was pretty good. We also had some Brazilian appetizers which were good, and again, couldn't tell you what they were but I would definitely have it again. Some thing with fries and some sort of cheese dipping sauce and some pork/meat thing with rice. I really don't know, but it was good! After that it was past midnight so we ended up just walking back to the ship. If it wasn't a group of like 5+ of us I don't think that it would have been very safe to walk home, but 3 of us were guys so that was definitely to our advantage.

While I only took Spanish 1 and 2 in my early years of high school, the little that I know has really been useful in Puerto Rico and Brazil. The national language in Puerto Rico is Spanish and the language in Brazil is Portuguese but almost everyone knows Spanish as well. Likewise, most everyone in Puerto Rico knew at least a little English. Looking back on it now, I wish that I would have taken more Spanish classes in high school and throughout college. It would have been SO helpful. However, the rest of the countries we go to don't really speak Spanish at all. But still, if I could do it over again I would take more Spanish. It would be helpful in so many ways when traveling and even in the US. Spanish and Portuguese seem really similar in a lot of their sayings. "Obrigado" (Thank you) is the main one that I've used, and then the rest is like "espanol?" or "ingles?" which usually ends with me talking in extremely broken Spanish.

It doesn't look like we're going to go Scuba diving in Brazil. We found out that it's $250R and that ends up being more than we've paid in the Bahamas or Puerto Rico. Also, once we thought about it for a while it would be kind of hard to do because of the enormous language barrier. We would have to (somehow) call them on the phone and find out the times for the dives and where we need to go, then before we were about to dive we wouldn't really know what the dive master was telling us. This could be anything from "beware of the strong current in this area" to "be done with your dive in 50 minutes." It just wouldn't really work unless we had a translator. Oh well, tomorrow we're planning on getting some internet somewhere. I've heard that the Internet Cafe's in Pelourinho are like slower than the ship's though. So hopefully we can find a place with a faster connection to I can use Skype. But around 18:00 or so we're going to go to a futbol game in Salvador. Apparently it's really not a good game at all. It's just between two parts of the city (I think) but there are a ton of SaS people going and I think it'll be an awesome experience.