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Published: February 5th 2008
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Well since the last update I seem to have been more or less tagging along with a GAP.COM tour group. Bar the odd few days where I have disappeared. This been to regain my composure/credibility as an independent traveler, something like that anyway.
So since leaving the place where my last blog ended I have generally just been clinging to the coast and rarely moving anywhere where I cannot see water. It’s definitely a plan and a half.
First off I headed to a place called Jericoacoara, very nice it was too. I had heard a lot about this place so naturally I expected to be disappointed, thankfully I wasn’t. It seemed to have found the fine balance of been a holiday destination but not been overly annoying at the same time. I think this is for a number of reasons. The 1st one been there are no bank machine or banks here (nearest one is an hour away) There are no roads here just sand dunes/tracks. It also helped that me and the person I was traveling with found a place in Jeri that was an absolute bargain. Been in a somewhat isolated oasis of sorts I expected
the prices of everything to be overly inflated, it wasn’t. We even had a tab at the caprinha stand down on the beach. The prices of the caprinha´s got lower as our time in the place went on mainly because of our superb patronage of this particular little stand.
After a rather large day on the tiles in Jeri we decided it was time to move on again so we hopped on a bus/4x4 to a place called Pipi. This was a mere 16 hours away.The decision was Possibly a little rash but it’s nice to mix it up a little. However it was a near perfect journey with what seemed like 3 near seamless transfers onto various other buses that would eventually take us to our destination.
We arrived in Pipi sometime during in the day. I aim to pull no punches so I shall say Pipi was horrible. It is cram packed with everything and anything. I read somewhere (possibly phony planet) that when in Pipi you need to look past the boutiques and expensive hotels and you have another Jericoacora. Well if you going to go down that road, do a little this and a
Jeri
Donkeys frolickling around in the sand outside our aprtment in Jeri little that and voila! Barrow is sexy once again.
Post Pipi was when carnival started to kick in. They call it pre carnival over here; carnival actually starts on the 2nd feb. I’m not entirely sure about the pre part of it though as there seems to be no0thing pre about the whole thing. The pre seems to be pretty much full on in its own right. First off we arrived in a place called Orlindi. We got off the bus and we literally could not move anywhere as the streets were just packed with people playing trumpets bashing drums etc……. This was great bar the fact that I still had my backpack with me and it was about 35 Degrees. Anyhow managed to find a hostel and dump my stuff and then quickly got out onto the street to get into the mix. Out on the street I was greeted with the now familiar sound of 100´s of drums been pounded to within an inch of there lives. It was only at about 11pm that the celebrations got into full swing. This was curtailed about 30 minutes later when somebody got shot. It was at this point that
Salvador
march to that beat the police decided to call it a night. So on this night the celebrations were brought to an abrupt end. I say abrupt but it had been a good 5 hours of grooving to the beat and I was pretty much cervezaed out.
After Orlindi it seemed rude not to give Salvador a bit of my time. After all it is the crime capital of Brazil, supposedly where the best carnival is, bloody sweltering and the center of Afro Brazilian culture. The combination was too good to turn down! The style of music played in Salvador is completely different to that of any other carnival with horns a notabale absentee, its all about the drums in Salvador.
Since leaving Manaus the people have generally been getting darker in skin color and definitely a lot bigger. This culminates in Salvador where the boys and gals can bang a drum with severe intensity for hour upon hour. So much so that after 3 days of pre carnival ion Salvador I feel like I have a persistent mosquito shadowing me around everywhere, 24 hours a day. Funnily enough it’s just the fact that my right ear is absolutely buggered.
In
Salvador
Down at the local, mines a pint please mr gasman my mind I was never really interested in going to Rio for carnival. However this got a little turned on its head when one of GAP.COM peeps said they had a spare bed in there room. With prices spiraling out of control in Rio’s zoo´ i thought it would be terribly rude to turn down, so I didn’t. But then after a flick through my passport I realized that my Visa expired in 2 days.
This is entirely my own fault because upon entering Brazil they asked me how long I wanted a visa for? I flippantly replied a couple of weeks. So they put me down for a month. This was fine by me because at the time my plan was to go west up the Amazon and into Columbia. As it turned out though I headed east on a little odyssey down the Amazon. With time running out and me been in Rio I had to book myself on a bus to get me to a border, any border really kind of capiche. In my mind it wouldn’t really have bothered me if I had overrun my visa by a few days. However I get the feeling
that in a country like Brazil I would probably come across some over Zealous Immigration person and they would throw a bucket at me. Luckily I managed to get on a bus heading too Foz de Iguazu within hours of arriving in Rio. Eventually I ended up crossing into Argentina on the day my visa expired, not a day over not a day under.
I reckon the expiry date of my Visa was a bit of an omen really. Rio is the place associated with Carnival but I get the feeling that it has become some overly priced, overly controlled affair. I am quite happy that my memories of Carnival will be the unrestrained, sweaty drum bashing affair that was Salvador.
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