Carnival 2006
Trip Start
Nov 13, 2005
1
44
72
Trip End
Jul 13, 2006
Salvador, Brazil
Thursday, February 23, 2006
after a painful 32 hour bus ride to salvador, we arrived at the apartment that we had arranged to share with a couple of other random people. to our surprise it was stunning! a beautiful split story apartment right on barra beach overlooking the beautiful water, the lighthouse, and most importatantly the start of the barra-ondina carnival parade.
for the days before carnival, we had no idea what to expect. we heard stories of muggings, girls being hassled and what salvador carnival is famous for.. all the guys kissing all the girls whether they want to or not.
we met up with sams friend george from columbia and with him, his group of brasilian pals from salvador that he met when he lived in salvador 2 years previosuly. Leo, a cool salvadorian that is currently living in london, helped sam and I spent thousands of dollars (aussie im talking) on bloco tshirts, which is basically a ticket to participate in one of hundreds of trio electric trucks that were to parade the city in the following 6 days.
a trio electrico is basically a truck with a huge sound system, that has a huge stage on top, where bahias best perform afro brasilian music. as part of the ¨bloco¨you are entitied to privillaged access to dance around the truck without the worries of the favella boys mugging you during the party. each truck drives a circuit of 7km over 6 hours, moving at a pace so slow you barely notice it.
in salvador there are 3 parade routes, each seeing about 15 trucks per night. so basically the party starts at midday and ends at 6am and about 2 million people take to the streets each night..
day one of carnival and we had tshirts (girls can get theirs altered and made into normal tshirts that you would wear out for a few dollars) for ara ketu. without knowing what to expect, we donned our trainers (essential, dont even try anything else) and matching shirts and hit the streets - with 2 million other people mind you. a bloco is an amazing experience. you basically dance constantly jumping up and down for the entire 6-7 hours that you are in the bloco. the music, we got addicted to very fast, especially the afro drums of timbalada and olodum. salvador carnival is very differnt from the rio and olina ones that we have become so accustomed to in the media. salvador is where the party is at, whereas rio and olina is where the beautiful costumes parade..
little did we realise that because our apartment was situated on the main route, we only had silence in our apartment for about 5 hours a day. the other 19hrs, live music as loud as any nightclub was blasting from the trio electical trucks.
throught the six days of partying we managed to see araketu, jammil, gil and for the final night of the carnival, fatboy slim.
fatboys set was incredible. potentially one of the most crowded blocos in the entire carnival, a group of 12 of us, all with matching altered tshirts danced for 7 hours straight.... in a moment of surrealness, at the prime of fatboys set, it rained hard for a minute... then the sky turned back to the ¨never rain all year¨beautiful salvador weather. topped off with fireworks and a incredible buzzing crowd, it was potentially one of the best nights our of my life.
between the constant partying, we spent alot of time with leo, who is probably the coolest brasilian we met. we were invited to his house for lunch and drinks almost daily, and sam even managed to play a game of tennis with him. (leo you are the dude. cannot wait to catch up with u in london and hopefully in germany for the world cup)
needless to say that after carnival, our bodies basically collapsed and we ended up chilling out in our apartment (it had a pool too) for a week after just recovering from the entire ordeal..
we decide that it was definetly time to head back to argentina and get some wine and meat into our bodies...
