Sharman's 30th Birthday in Brazil

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If you like lots of photos - you are going to love this blog. Sorry for the photo overdose - there were just too many things hilarious things to share with you all this week. There are two pages of the blog - too many photos!


Well my 30th birthday has come and gone and I got to celebrate it in Brazil during carnival. My only downer is that two days before while I was in Salvador hanging with some lovely ladies - a street kid looking for a way to pay for his next round of drugs walked up to me and snatched my St. Christopher charm off my neck. Things went downhill from there and I spent the next few hours crying my eyes out. It really shook me up and the claw marks on my neck from where he scratched me were a brutal reminder of the incident.


Any who - I arrived in Rio early on the 12th to meet Lynn and Graham who had rented our apartment for the week. It was a pretty lazy day recovering from lack of sleep and waiting for Hannah (my Patagonia travelling buddy) Mike (from the sexy salt flat pictures) and Simon to arrive. When they finally did arrive they had funny stories about how half their 24 hour bus was filled with people trying to bring contraband electronics in from Paraguay got busted and the bus was delayed while the police could deal with all of them.


That night was a write off for me but Mike decided to join two British boys crashing one night with us and go to a street party in Lapa. The neighbourhood is said to have the best bars and street parties but you’re bound to get robbed. A few hours later I was woken up to Mike going on and on about how he got robbed. He thought he had his wallet with him, except it was empty except for his bank card and drivers license. He had his money hidden on him but they didn’t get it. Instead he was attacked by a group of people - and one lady holding a baby in one arm - hitting him with a stick. Lovely experience.


February 13, 2010


Happy Birthday to me! After a slow start in the morning we went to the beach in Copacabana (2.5 blocks from our apartment). The two British boys turned out to be a riot. One of them had a borat neon yellow mankini that he busted out and started running around. All the Brazilian women (most wearing dental floss bikinis up their asses) were in love with him. Everyone wanted their photo with him, including some of the largest women I have ever seen in my life. I hope you enjoy - now you can understand why the people watching is so good on the beaches in Brazil.


I normally bake my own cake so I thought it was fitting to buy myself a piece of something sweet. I indulged in the most amazing piece of lemon pie and had a delicious fruit juice for lunch. For dinner we decided to go to an all you can eat place that was quite tasty. Um - the meal lasted 20 minutes before I feeling horrible and had what I can only describe is a full colonic. This was not what I had planned for my birthday - I was almost crying and had to lie down for 20 minutes before Hannah yelled at me to get dressed.


We started by walking down the beach, buying drinks on the street and dancing along the way. We stopped where a band was playing and I told Hannah that I wanted the man singing to say Happy Birthday to me. (Mike said that I needed to do 30 things on my birthday so I was coming up with random stuff by this point). We managed to tell the man in our broken Spanish/Portuguese knowledge it was my birthday. He then told the crowd that it was the foreigner’s birthday and that I had come to spend it in Rio for carnival. Next thing we know he had the crowd chanting Shar! Shar! Shar! To the beat of the drums. Absolutely hilarious!


Next up down the beach we spotted a guy with a hairy chest. Told Hannah I wanted to rub my hands through it - she made a deal. I had to kiss him. Let me tell you that from my experience - Brazilians do not know how to kiss. Yuck. The five of us (Me, Mike, Hannah, and Sophie and Jo from New Zealand) decided to take the subway to the Sambadrome to see if we could get last minute cheap tickets for the first night of the parade.


The subway was filled with people in costumes on their way to be part of the parade. When we got off we started seeing discarded costumes on the ground of samba schools that were already done. As we walked towards the place that we were supposed to get free tickets we realized there were some serious street parties going on. We were getting close to the area where the parade finishes and people come out and realized we had hit the gold mine of discarded costumes. Once we were all outfitted (me in the ugliest black/rat/garbage princess outfit) we decided to screw the tickets and go back to the street parties.


We were seriously the only gringos in sight, and everyone was convinced we had just taken part of the parade. We stopped along the way and had a hot dog - Brazil style - topped with everything including corn, peas, potato chips, lettuce, and at least three mystery sauces. We met some lovely people from Ghana who celebrated with us and bought us some beers.I was somewhat scared to eat and drink, but the caiparahna’s were just too good I couldn’t say no. Let me tell you - when you literally have nothing in your stomach after shitting yourself silly - the hard alcohol hits you hard!


We kept walking along until we found gay town on the post-parade route. It was a combination of gays and trannies dancing up a storm and we were more than welcome to rip it up on the street wearing our enormous costumes. At this point, we were some of the only people wearing costumes. Now that you can see what I was wearing - I hope you can imagine how good I looked when I was doing the thriller dance when Michael Jackson came on. A-MAZ-ING.


My body was still in dehydration mode but everyone else had to go pee up what I can only describe as pee alley. I escorted Mike up the street - in his Polynesian outfit with no shirt on he was quite desirable from the boys in the area. I’m sure they were ready to cat fight my ass away just to get a piece of him.


By 4 am we were ready to rip it home and the subway back in our costumes was hilarious. Of course we made friends with a few more people and the guys working in the station gave us all 10’s in the window as we walked past.


Valentine’s Day was another recovery day and some more time on the beach. That night Hannah and Simon had tickets for the parade and woke us up to show off the costumes they picked up on the way back. The pile of costumes in our poor apartment was growing.


On Monday we bought Mike a Speedo on the way to beach. We picked out a Brazil-shorts style one for him. He then proceeded to ask all the women in our area if they liked his new Speedo. Everyone else had parade tickets that night so Mike and I set off for the Sambadrome at midnight in the hopes of getting scalped tickets. It was 1 am - and we scored tickets in sector one for $30.


We arrived just when the 3rd Samba school was finished and the next school was getting ready to start. The next thing we know some guy in a jet pack is flying over top of a float to start off the parade. The first of many things that would amaze me that night.


The Sambadrome can hold 90,000 people along a 700 meter stretch. Each samba school has a preset amount of time (80 minutes) to parade from one end of the Sambadrome to the other with all its thousands of dancers, its drum section, and a number of floats. Apparently there is an area of Rio called samba city with warehouses filled with the floats, costumes, everything. I can’t really understand how they get everything downtown - or how much they spend. There had to be at least 7 floats for each school, boatloads of crazy costumes, and more fake boobs than you can imagine.


The final two schools were absolutely amazing! The costumes, the dancers, and the floats blew away any expectations I had of the parade. It was 6 am by the time it was all done and I was hunting the area of leftover costume. Pickings were slim and all I could find was two leftover head dresses with massive ostrich feathers on them. We carried them back and as the last two in the apartment to bed at 7:30 we were relegated to the floor (our apartment sleeps 4 - but sleeping six brings the prices down).


Tuesday night we ripped apart all of our costumes and made new ones that we wore to a block party in Ipanema beach. Missing my fashionista ways back home I was the ringleader of ripping apart and dressing everyone up. By the time we hit the subway we were a pretty comical bunch, and when we arrived to find most people wearing normal clothes we were a hit at the blocko.


From what I recall I spent a large part of the night dancing in the middle of the street next to station wagon pumping out everything from Rhythm is a dancer to newer dance hits. Every male on the street wanted to kiss us - I think it is a Brazilian thing because people are locking lips here like nobody’s business. I kept trying to tell them I have a boyfriend - but I think that made them more determined. Our gay friend Richard should have been protecting me - instead he was bringing the vultures on and I had to side step more than one close talker. Highlight of the night was when I stole a giant poster hanging from the street lights that says Carnival 2010 - with a no peeing picture on it.


Yesterday Mike had a panic that we weren’t doing anything in Rio so we set off on the bus and went to the Sugar Loaf. Basically it’s a rock formation on the edge of the beach that just pops up out of nowhere. There are two cable cars but we decided to be cheap asses and walked up the first mountain to save $13 dollars and only take the second cable car. Wow - a 25 minute hike up a massive hill in the heat, in our flip flops was a lot of fun. I haven’t worked that hard in weeks and the sweat was dripping down my face.


Once we got up to the sugar loaf the view of Rio was amazing and we just sat there in awe. I can say Rio is going to be a beautiful spot for the summer Olympics. We got back in time to pick up the crew and head off on the subway for Maracana stadium - apparently the largest football (soccer) stadium in the world. We scored 30 dollar tickets for a semi-final cup match between Botafoga and Flamengo - the Rio favourites.


We managed to find some place to stand and I can tell you the energy in there was electric. The flags were enormous and would take some serious effort to get them ripping around. There were drums noises coming from everywhere and people were standing up and signing the entire time. A little fact for all of you - there is no alcohol sold at the football matches here. Everyone is pretty well behaved - and the fans for each team are separated on different sides of the stadium - but if beer was involved it might be a completely different story.


January 18, 2010


Today is Mike’s 30th birthday. When we woke up it was raining and crap outside. He had been planning to go to Christ the redeemer on his birthday (giant Jesus statue in Rio and one of the new wonders of the world). We took the bus and were informed that you couldn’t really see anything. I decided that since I have tomorrow I will hold out and try for better weather but mike had to go because he is leaving in the morning - this is his last chance. Really - I am a horrible friend to Mike on his birthday - and when he got up there he got good views for 30 minutes. Happy for him - but I still feel bad. I will miss him - Mike is one of the best people I have met on this trip. will miss you loads buddy!


Hoping that tomorrow I can have the same luck and that Jesus is on my side, cause after that I am off to the south for some serious beach time.

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Photos

Happy Birthday
Lovin life on Copacabana Beach

Start of the night
walking up Copacabana beach in the one-zy. Still early, only 9 pm

Costume Time
our collection of leftover costumes we found on the ground

Dance time
an older lady who became one of our dancing buddies at the gay dance party

Cool ass costume
the post-parade walk back to the subway, and yes, people got on the subway with those costumes

My freaking enormous costume
you can't see it - but I have a creepy long black tail - still not sure what my costume is.

brazilian kiss
Joe getting smooched by a brazilian boy.

Carnival!
I love my feathers, i love my feathers.

new tattoo
it's fake - I'm too much of a wimp.

costumes -
some seriously amazing ideas for halloween

Comments

[Jen]

mankini is my fav!
LOVE all of these costumes!! looks like an incredible birthday Sharm! thanks for posting so many pics! jen