A Tale of Two Carnavals

On my last night in Rio, I told a girl at a party that I was heading to Salvador for their Carnaval celebration the next day.

`'You´re going to Salvador?" she said.  "Are you mentally and emotionally prepared for that?"

I was taken aback.  "I think so," I said.  "I mean, I´ve been in Rio for the last three days, and it´s pretty crazy here.  Are you saying it´s going to be crazier there?"



A carnaval crowd along Ipanema beach in Rio

 "Just wait," the girl said.  "Salvador is like Rio, times 100."

She was right, kind of.  If Rio´s Carnaval was like Myrtle beach week on steroids, then Salvador´s was like Myrtle on a crazy acid trip.  They were both insane, exuberant parties, and I´m still in recovery.

In Rio, Dan and I didn´t have tickets to the parade at the Sambodromo, which cost upwards of a hundred dollars and sell out months in advance of Carnaval.  The stereotypical images of women in gold bikinis with feather headdresses are all from that main parade.  Instead, we went to blocos (like the one at right), which are smaller street parties that take over the entire neighborhoods of Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon.  "Smaller," of course, being a relative term - the streets are packed from about 5 pm onwards with thousands and thousands of people in costumes (men in wigs and bustiers, girls in bikinis and sailor caps), drinking beer from cans sold on the street, sometimes dancing to music from bands playing atop big buses parked in the middle of the street.  It was, in a lot of ways, like your stereotypical college spring break on a much larger scale.  The part that made it really great were the people we met there, including our lifesaving CouchSurfing host and the girl who hosted the house party we went to on our last night in Rio.

Salvador, on the other hand, was like nothing I´d ever seen - a joyful mess of people and street decoration and confetti and drumming, all set among beautiful rainbow-colored colonial houses. During Carnaval, the touristy colonial old town, called the Pelourinho, is packed full with families dancing, caipirinha stands, and percussion groups that wander the streets dressed in exotic costumes or matching t-shirts.  Our first night there, Dan and I ended up following an Asian-Brazilian drumming team wearing mud-colored face paint up and down cobblestone streets for what must have been an hour and a half, dancing with the crowd as it waxed and waned.  The energy of the crowd was awesome, and exhausting.  Our second night there we just sat at a sidewalk cafe for hours as the party raged around us, pausing our conversation as various drum groups passed us and drowned out all other sound.  I was definitely ready to leave by the time we headed to the small town of Lencois, but it was one of the most incredible things I´ve ever been in the middle of.

I´ll add my own pictures when I get a chance to upload them, as it´s really hard to convey the scene in a couple of paragraphs.  I´m grabbing internet wherever I can.  More on the rest of Brazil later!