Sexy Samba in Rio & Crazy Carnaval in Salvador

Rio

After a 24 hour bus ride from Iguazu (our longest so far and we survived just fine!), we arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the 6th February. We were very spoilt because family friends from Switzerland have an appartment in Rio, in Copacabana, just behind the famous Copacabana Palace to be exact. And they had very kindly offered for us to stay there while in Rio. Heliane is from Rio originally so not only did we have a wonderful place to stay but she also gave us loads of very useful advice and great tips on where to go and what to see.

Our first full day in Rio we walked from Copacabana to Sugar Loaf mountain on the advice of the local tourist office. We were a bit nervous to begin with having heard numerous scary tales of people being mugged and pickpocketed, but we felt surprisingly safe and it set the tone for our whole Rio experience really. We were certainly careful and not foolish but Rio is an amazing city and we loved every minute of being there. We didn't have a single bad experience (except for a tiny little run in with a nasty taxi man, but will tell you about that a bit later) and we felt comfortable and relaxed our whole time there. The locals were super friendly and helpful, even though our portuguese at that stage was little more than very bad spanish with what we imagined a portuguese accent would sound like. It must have been very comical. We caught local busses everywhere and walked a lot during the day and at night we almost always had really friendly and fair taxi drivers.

Anyway, getting back to sugar loaf....we took the cable car up and the view from the top is incredible. It was a clear day and we could see for miles. We spent the afternoon at a very posh shopping centre looking for new shorts for Kez, our mission was unfortunately unsuccessful but it was a pleasure to spend a few hours in an air conditioned mall!

The next day we went on a tour of two favelas in the morning. A favela is a slum in Brazil and Rio has loads of them, mostly built teetering on steep hills. They have a very bad reputation, kind of like the townships in South Africa. People are very poor, any number of people can live in a single “house” and the city government does very little to improve the living conditions. Although the bigger ones do have running water, sanitation and refuse removal. In the favelas the drug lords rule and there is a real “respect” for their authority. They have a reputation of being exceedingly dangerous places, and during wars between the gangs they certainly are, but an advantage of being so heavily controlled by drug lords is that they are incredibly safe most of the time. The drug lords don't want the police anywhere near and they therefore have a rule that there will be no crime in the favelas. Amazingly enough it seems to work. We visited two, a small one and then the biggest one called Rocinha. In the first we visited a community after-care centre for local kids that is funded by the company who run the tours. The idea is to keep the kids off the street and give them something useful to do with their time. We also walked around the tiny narrow little alleys and met some of the locals who are very happy that people are interested to see where they live and to hopefully start lifing the really bad image these places have. Most Rio locals have never been to a favela and wouldn't dream of it either. In Rocinha we walked down the main street and we both ended up buying slops cos they are way cheaper than in the richer areas. You can literally swing your fancy digital camera around, and we did, and it is perfectly safe. Only in a few places where the drug lords' “watchers” hang out were we advised not to take photos because they don't want to be in any. It was all in all a very interesting experience, the views from the favelas are amazing and the people were very friendly. It's also always so good to see the “hidden” parts of cities and to learn more about the people who live there.

In the afternoon we went up Corcovada mountain on a little train, it's where the Christ the Redeemer statue is. The statue really is amazingly impressive, awesome in the true sense of the word. And of course the views of the city and the beaches are spectacular. We headed back to Copacabana and spent a few hours on the beach and in the evening we had dinner at a rodizio churasscaria, where they keep bringing huge kebabs and cutting off as much as you want. We ate so many different kinds of meat and literally rolled out of the place groaning.

On Friday we went to the botanical gardens, which are really wonderful. They have palm trees that are like 60m tall and a lovely orchid greenhouse among all the other beautiful gardens. In the afternoon we went to Ipanema beach and lazed away drinking our favourite agua de coco (from green coconuts and served chilled, still in the coconut with a straw). We went to the rocks to watch sunset with a few beers and it was a beautiful evening - not quite as beautiful as the sunset from point rocks in Kenton though! We had dinner at a chic little pizza restaurant called Capricciosa just up from the beach, it was expensive but the pizzas and the salad were brilliant.

The next day was spent exploring the city centre of Rio and we caught the tram up to a funky little area called Saint Teresa where we had such good sushi for lunch. From there we walked to Lapa, the famous partying district but it was still pretty quiet in the afternoon so we headed home to get some sleep before our night out. We went to the sambadrome to watch the final rehearsal of 2 of the samba schools before carnaval. It was free to get in and there were about 40 000 locals there to support their schools, which traditionally come from the poorer areas and a lot of the people can't afford tickets to the real day during carnaval. The atmosphere was phenomenal, there were almost no tourists there and the locals really know how to party. The parades were really good, even though they weren't in full costume. The bands pounded out the songs which everyone seems to know because they release them as singles a couple of months before. We were adopted by a family who were very eager to make sure we had a great night and they were very proud to point out all their relations who were participating in the parade. We slipped out right near the end to avoid the crowds and caught a taxi to Lapa. This was the dodgy taxi guy who quoted us a ridiculous fare, we bargained him down and started to drive the 5km we wanted to go. But once we arrived he said he had never agreed to the lower price, a lie of course but arguing in portuguese is not the easiest. In the end we agreed to split the difference and we eagerly jumped out. We went to a multi-level club called the Scenarium. On one level it has a live samba band, on the next a dj playing kind of brazilian house and the top floor is a chill out area and restaurant. We danced wildlly until we were exhausted, mostly on the samba floor where the band was so amazing. Our hips just do not shake like they should though!

Our last day was very rainy and between the rain and our very late night we didn´t do too much. We did update our blog with the argentinian edition, such dedication from us!

Salvador

We arrived in Salvador da Bahia on Monday 12 Feb, the easy way, by aeroplane from Rio. The flight was easy, it took us longer to get into town, eventually getting a taxi when the bus didn't turn up. We stayed at the Albergue do Passo, great location just on the edge of Pelourinho (the old town), a pretty nice hostel (but poor compared to the nearby Laranjeiras hostel which was amazing and seemed to really care about their guests).

Pelourinho is beautiful, full of many historic churches, colourful colonial buildings and cobbled streets. Carnaval only made it better, full of parading blocos (music bands) based mainly on african drums, whose rythym you could only get caught up in and dance. At least until after carnaval, after a week of partying, we needed a rest!

The first night we ate fish moqueca, a traditional Bahian dish made from coconut milk, palm oil and herbs and spices, and tasted delicious.

On the tuesday, our task was to organise carnaval t-shirts. The main feature of carnaval are blocos - music bands who parade on various routes on trucks, the biggest of which seemed to consist only of 4 metre high speakers, with the band and singers dancing on top. You can either:
- buy a t-shirt to dance with the bloco, cut off from the main crowd by a security cordon of a rope carried by hundred of guards.
- pay to go into a camarote (kind of grandstand / nightclub next to the parade route), the expensive ones also giving a t-shirt
- go popcorn, free, and where you can follow a favourite bloco or watch and dance to all the blocos that go by. Called popcorn as thats what the dancing crowd looks like from above!

Armed with some advice from our friend and seasoned carnaval goer Cameron, we eventually decided on getting t-shirts for 1 bloco and 2 camarotes, but more about them later.

Wednesday was valentines day, which we forgot about until about 5pm, partly as we were trying to organise bus tickets for after carnaval. This took us a few hours, first plodding round many agencies, not quite believing their tale that the only place to get the tickets was at the bus station, 10km away. Which is where we ended up, buying the bus tickets. We saved the day with a romatic date over pizza.

The thursday was spent at one of the town beaches, drinking agua de coco and watching an amazing caipoera guy practising on the beach. It was first day of carnaval in Salvador, and we had an easy evening watching small bands in pelourinho, knowing what was to come.

Friday we got up, bought some additions to complement our fluorescent pink bloco t-shirts (just look at the photos), and made our way down to the Barra parade route. We had chosen to dance with Babada Novo, one of the cheaper blocos Cameron suggested. It turned out to be an inspired choice. Babado Novo have one of the most energetic music styles in a field of bands of energetic party music, and fronted by an extremely charismatic woman, who energetically bounced and danced for the whole 6 hour parade route. A great band for a foreigner who knew none of the songs and understood none of the lyrics. We danced like madmen too. The bands do not have an infinite supply of songs and so repeat the biggest songs, and soon we were dancing even more madly to our favourites. Indeed, as the week progressed, we realised that there were carnaval classics that all bands sang in their own style, great for a foreigner, and soon we were singing along, albeit with some of our own lyrics. And we carried on dancing like madmen for the whole 6 hours by which stage we were exhausted. It's a complete sensory overload and at times just insane as you get bounced along with the crowd, but it it was definitely one of the best nights of our lives! Even getting home was easy, with all night free buses that were empty at 1am when our bloco finished, as there were still 6 more hours of blocos to come.

The Saturday we went camarote Oceania. We were worried a bit that we had got a bit carried away in the carnaval spirit and spent a bit too much on this camarote, but it turned out to be great. The view of the parade was amazing, and it was right at the start of the parade route where all the bands seemed to stop for 4-5 songs, way more than the other camarotes. We danced as most of the blocos went by, aided by the open bar, then had a pretty good dinner at the buffet, bit of a rest followed by some more crazy dancing at the disco until the early hours. Sunday we spent the day in bed.

Monday we went popcorn on the Avenida circuit. It rocked going popcorn. We spent most of the day there, and had a wicked time. Ther was a surprising amount of space, at least until later on, but most of the big name blocos went earlier. By now we knew most of the songs, which only increased our mad dancing spirit. We had expected popcorn to be a massive squash and totally crazy, and it sometimes was, but most of the time it was just great fun.

On Pancake tuesday, the last day of carnaval, we ate no pancakes. Which was a surprise, as we'd spent quite a few hours in the tasty creperia in the laranjeras hostel. But we did have them the next day to make up for it! Instead of pancakes, we spent the tuesday in another camarote, Inter Tropical. It also had an open bar, which we made even better use of than the previous one. The same great blocos went past, and we had another great day of dancing even though the spirit in the camarote could have been better. By the last day of carnaval, we were getting pretty good at the samba steps we copied from the locals. At least so we thought, until some friendly brazilians decided to teach us the basics properly and once again, our hips just didn't seem to be able to move fast enough!

Although the next 2 days carnaval was officially over, this didn't stop the music and smaller parades in Pelourinho. We were tired, slept loads, and after a week of great partying, tried to avoid loud music as much as possible. Must be getting old!

We had an amazing carnaval, our favourite bands of the carnaval, were Babado Novo,
Chiclete con bananas (a carnaval institution, and far too expensive to dance with),
Ivete Sangalo (also a carnaval institution, and also far too expensive to dance with!), Banda Eva, Gil, Jammil, Tribahia and Timbalada.

We definitely needed some rest afterwards, and headed north to some amazing beaches, but more about them in our next installment...

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