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Published: February 6th 2008
Carnavale in Salvador has been an exciting, crazy and quite scary experience all at the one time.
By way of background, Carnavale sees an estimated 2 million people cram into the beachside city of Salvador to party for a full week before Lent. Unlike Carnavale in Rio (which involves sitting in a grandstand watching a parade pass by), Carnavle in Salvador is a street party for the people where everyone joins in. Basically, you see people from every nationality and walk of life partying on the streets together and as a result, absolute mayhem ensues.
To simplify it, there are 3 ways to celebrate Carnavale in Salvador:
1. Stand on the street and watch enormous semi-trailers roll by covered with speakers, lights and performers onboard. These ´Blocas´ even have a bar, a medical room and toilets (disgusting) onboard. This is reffered to as being ´Popcorn´ but should actually be called the ´I want to get crushed and mugged´ way to celebrate Carnavale.
2. Buy an ´Abada´ which is a coloured singlet that gives you entry to the Bloca. Surrounding the Bloca are hundreds of Brazilians who are paid to hold a giant rope intended to keep you
safer than being Popcorn on the street. Whether it achieves this aim is doubtful but at least the crush of humanity is not as bad.
3. Buy entry to a ´Camarote´ which is a grandstand on the side of the road with drinks, food and toilets. This is meant to be the safest way to experience Carnavale but for that reason seems less exciting.
There are 3 Carnavale circuits in different areas of the city. We have been lucky that the hotel we booked (the Hotel Village Novo) is right near the staging area for the Barra to Ondina Carnavale circuit. This has been a blessing because the main street (whilst being very crowded) feels infinately safer than the back streets and we don´t have to go searching for a taxi through the badlands at the end of the night.
The Barra to Ondina circuit winds its way along the beach for 5km and is meant to be the most popular of the 3 circuits. It takes between 4 and 6 hours to walk the entire circuit behind the semi-trailers as live music blasts out (it then takes about 2 hours to walk back to our hotel
Have you got it in orange?!
The head dress lets us keep a close eye on Lynsey in the crowdmaking for a very long night).
The Barra circuit is the most popular circuit and is jammed with people all night. It is also meant to be the most popular with western tourists (although at times it feels like we are the only western tourists here). This in itself has been an interesting part of the experience as most Salvadorians are of African descent so at times it feels like we are wandering through Capetown or Johannesburg.
With so many people on the street, there is a fairly big risk of a crush taking place, a fear which increases with thousands of drunk wankers running around. At times, groups of guys (sometimes up to 10 guys) storm through the crowd in a long line pushing people in every direction. They seem to be dancing but it looks more like ´Shadowboxing´and anyone who fails to get out of the way is thrown out of the way.
Many of the guys here are typically enormous and many have grown up learning Capoeira (which is a type of martial arts). As a result, when fights break out, it turns ugly pretty quickly.
The police presence here has to be seen
to be believed. The cops walk along in groups of 5 all carrying enormous batons which they don´t seem afraid to use. It´s actually quite amusing watching the crowd part to let the police through... it looks like Moses parting the red sea, and its fairly obvious most people know not to mess with them. Despite the police presence, it seems fairly common for pickpockets and robberies to take place so we have stuck to the main street and the relative safety of the crowds.
So far our experience has been:
Night 1 (Thursday): Gareth, a friend from Melbourne who lives in NYC joined us and will spend the entire Carnavale here. We hadn´t bought any Abadas so we decided to jump into the craziness on the side of the Barra circuit. Luckily, the crowd was not at full capacity and we picked our spot well so we had a little breathing room around us... We were also right near a police stand, portaloos and lots of street vendors. We got home at around 3:00am which was a good idea as the crowd had started thinning out and getting a little dodgier.
The only trouble we experienced
was a little kid jamming his hands in Lynsey´s pocket trying to grab anything possible. Luckily, we are taking all precautions and carrying our money in our socks and nothing else of value. Whilst its disappointing that such a small kid is pickpocketing already (he looked about 8 years old), it seems quite common and it´s not worth chasing him down as he most likely has big brothers nearby.
Night 2 (Friday): We were able to buy an Abada for the Tiesto bloca. Apparently, Tiesto is a world class DJ from the Netherlands and basically the entire bloca consisted of western tourists. I think the 2 million Brazilians and other South Americans must have found the sight of 3,000 tall, blonde Europeans herded together quite amusing (with the exception of Lynsey and I who are looking more like locals everyday!).
The Tiesto Bloca was great fun and we met some nice people which made the 5 hour walk a terrific experience. We were home by 4:00am and the party was still pumping with 5 or 6 Blocas yet to even depart the staging area outside our hotel.
Night 3 (Saturday): We bought an Abada for a local
Portaloo hell
There´s about 100 portaloos for 2 million people. As a result, the entire city smells like urine. group called Timbalada and headed out with Helen and Jay from the UK whom we met several months ago in Chile. We got straight into the action and had an absolute ball... the Bloca was filled with South Americans (mainly Brazillians I think) and the atmosphere was really contagious.
Unfortunately, on our way back to our hotel after the Bloca ended all hell broke loose a couple of times as the crowd was just too large for the street. It was quite a terrifying experience, made even worse by a general atmosphere of aggression. Luckily, being in a group of 5 we were able to stand our ground and found some of the nearby locals quite helpful. We basically stood in a doorway for an hour waiting for the crowd to thin and then took a parallel sidestreet home. We all had a great night but i think we were quite happy to be home safe.
One of the other unique (and ugly) things to happen during Carnavale is the assumption that any female on the street is fair game for the hordes of roaming males. We have witnessed some guys basically put a girl in a headlock
and demand a kiss before heading on to repeat the assualt. Needless to say, Lynsey is staying by my side every second of this week!
Also, the lack of toilets means that people are basically urinating anywhere they want. We even had to dodge people relieving themselves within the Bloca ropes in the middle of the road. Add to this the fact that some of the Bloca semi-trailers become overloaded and just empty onto the street, and you can picture how gross the streets are. Sadly, it´s merely poor organisation by the event co-ordinators and could be easily overcome with more portaloos being provided.
Amazingly, some people are running around barefoot or in thongs without any regard for what they are splashing through! Needless to say, our shoes are being thrown away at the end of the week.
Night 4 (Sunday): Time for a much needed rest. Dinner and early to bed.
Night 5 (Monday): We headed into the Pelorinho which is the historical part of Salvador to watch one of the other Carnavale circuits. This was a really great experience and a complete change from the Barra circuit. The buildings and cobblestone streets in the
Pelo are really beautiful and the atmosphere was more like a local festival rather than an international booze-up.
Local samba groups in costume walk around the circuit playing music and dancing and everyone just joins in and follows along. A lot of the little children were dressed in costumes and there was lots of families out enjoying the atmosphere.
Our night in the Pelo was a nice insight into the more traditional meaning of Carnavale and was a refreshing change to the Barra craziness. I think we got back to the hotel at about 3:00am.
Night 6 (Tuesday): The last night of Carnavale so everyone was excited for a big night. We were again joined by Gareth, Jay and Helen and we all bought Abadas for the Bloca where Fat Boy Slim and David Guettta were DJíng.
Our Bloca did not start until 9:30pm so at about 8:00pm we wandered out onto the side of the road to watch the earlier Blocas roll by. Then it was time to jump under the ropes and join our Bloca. Once again, the Bloca was a Gringo Land and it was absolutely pumping. Most people seemed to be having
a great time despite the hot temperature and being covered in thousands of other peoples´ sweat!
The Barra circuit was really crowded and it took many hours to work our way down to ´pit-straight´where Carnavale ends. All along the last few kilometres, there are tens of thousands of people lining the road and watching from Camarote grandstands. It truly is a tremendous sight and you feel like you´re involved in the biggest party to ever take place. I think we staggered home at 5:00am pretty tired and emotional just as the sun was beginning to rise over the ocean.
In hindsight, we have had an amazing week despite all the downsides to so many people jammed into one place. Would we do it again....? I´m not sure... Maybe we will give a different answer after a couple of months of sleep!
It has truly been a crazy experience and perhaps once in a lifetime might be sufficient. Also, I feel generally lucky that we haven´t been injured, mugged or crushed along the way.
For fellow travellers reading this, I would definately recommend coming to Carnavale in a group and sticking to the main streets (plus wearing
old, heavy duty shoes!). Whilst we may have been overly cautious, there are plenty of people here who have encountered trouble and it is definately one of the more intimidating places and experiences of our 6 months in South America.
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