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Published: March 18th 2010
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by Graham and Kerry but without Kerry´s edits yet.......... Salvador - CarnivaaaaaaAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!!
Forget Rio and Sao Paulo, Salvador is THE place to go for canvival......well that´s what we´d read anyway. Salvador was the original colonial capital of Brazil and was at one time the second most powerful city in the Portuguese empire. It has a much greater african influence than Rio and SP and is the original carnival centre.
There loads we could write about carnival but we´ll let the pictures do the talking (mainly because I´m very, very lazy).......
Ok, lets get the negative over and done with - staying in Salvador (or Rio or SP for that matter) is pretty expensive. We booked our hostel/hotel and the flight to Salvador about 5 months in advance and accommodation prices were about 7 times the normal. In addition, most hotels require you to book a room for a miinimum period of 7 days. We´d heard that accommadation would be nigh on impossible to find if we just turned up at the beginning of the festival but we saw plenty of places advertising that they had free rooms during the 10 days that we were there.
One
thing that worried us (Graham more so) before we arrived was that we heard in SP that Salvador was a singles destination with everyone trying to pull and random groping the status quo. Luckily we found that this was not the case, at least in the area that we stayed.
Also, Salvador has a reputation for having high crime levels (against tourists and generally) but we felt safe pretty much everywhere we went (with one notable exception, which I´ll get to......). My advice to would be carnival goers is to read the various safety advice written in blogs, digest it and then not get too worried about it, because the majority of it is seems very OTT and based on isolated cases. However, do take the recommended precautions, especially if you´re in the touristy Barra area. We´d recommend staying in Pelourinho as it is stunning.
So... now to briefly set the scene: Salvador carnival takes place in three main locations - Barra (along the beach road to Odina in the south), Campo Grande (through the commercial centre/new town) and in the Pelourinho (the beautiful old town).
We opted to stay in Pelourinho (pronounced Pelo-reen-yo) because it was
rated as the most tame (even family safe) and picturesque area and we didn´t think that we would sustain 24/7 partying for the full 7 days. We were not disappointed. We stayed in a hotel in the heart of the Pelho (= Pel-yo) and spent the vast majority of our time here. The area is made up of dozens of cobbled streets lined with colourful colonial buildings occupied by restaurants, art galleries & botique touristy shops and is very, very pretty. We loved the fact that the celebrations were spread out amongst the many streets and public squares so you could wander around and find something going on pretty much everywhere (the other 2 areas consist of a parade going along a fixed circuit). The street celecrations were of the "lets form into a small group and wander the streets with drums and trumpet" variety - there just isn´t the space to drive bus loads of musicians around. So it was a little less hectic but more "authentic". Then there were stages set up in the various squares for bands/dance troupes to perform on.
Celebrations tended to start at around 5pm in the afternoon and then carried on until....well
I´m not certain but I´m pretty sure i heard people banging drums at 8am one morning!
We were really, really lucky - our hotel was on what was probably the quietest street in Pelourinho, and our room didn´t overlook the street itself, so when we wanted to escape to peace and quiet we could. Others (most notably the dorm room opposite ours) were less fortunate!
We didn´t party as hard as we could have, opting to have a couple of nights in and another couple going out for a nice meal (overlooking the street celebrations) but we did have a great time. Our carnival was a bit more mushy couply in part because of the romantic nature of the location and our previous clubbing in Sao Paulo.
The other areas
Campo Grande Went to this route once during the late afternoon. Lots of men dressed as women, lots of kids with water pistols shooting the men dressed as women. A bit more locals orientated and definately started to heat up towards the evening)!
Barra Another that we only graced once with our presence. This one is the main tourist route and, being on the beach,
is very exposed to the blazing Brazilian sun. Stayed for an afternoon, caught a couple of Brazilian superstars singing on the back of trucks, then tried to take the bus home with near disasterous consequences...........the bus routes were all messed up because of carnival so we ended up getting a bus going in completely the wrong direction (despite the conductor´s assurances that it was heading in towards where we wanted to go, although that might be because our Portuguese was, well, terrible!)
Anyway, to cut a (very) long story short, we thought the bus was on a circular route and we would eventually end up at our destination. Instead, the bus terminted in a really dodgy part of town, possibly one of the favelas which can be pretty nasty for tourists (the locals on the bus started to to show real concern for us, which was touching but also really worrying. We don´t speak much of the language but we can understand when someone is saying "you really, really don´t want to be here"!)
Anyhow, the bus conductor realised what had happened, told us to stay on the bus (as in "for God´s sake, don´t get off the
Military police
getting into position in Barra. This was a common site. bus!".........although it was a lit bus in the middle of a dark square surrounded by locals), disappeared for 15 minutes (the longest 15 minutes of our lives!), came back with a friend and then drove us back into town on the bus! Legend! It could´ve been so much worse.........
Post Carnival
.....we stuck around the Pelho for a few days, moving to a apatment just north of the busy centre on a quite street that we absolutely loved. Then headed bck to Sao Paulo...............
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