Aventuras no fevereiro

By now Carnaval has come and gone, and the city of Rio de Janeiro is now at its calmest I've seen so far. Nearly two weeks later, confetti still dots the sidewalks, rainbow glitter is still ingrained in my skin, and all of Rio seems to be collectively experiencing a massive hangover.

I guess I should begin by saying that Carnaval was a lot different from what I expected. I told myself I would make no predictions, but in retrospect I realize that what I was anticipating was a hyper-cultural experience that would show me what it truly meant to be a carioca and probably end up being the best week of my life - no pressure. After returning to Rio from Salvador, I expected the bus ride from the airport to Leblon to take about 4 hours due to the millions of revelers bombarding the streets with extravagant floats and ridiculous costumes involving sparkly bras. As it turned out, the ride took the usual hour or so and was completely devoid of any sign of the so-called "world's biggest party." Okay, I thought to myself, this must be resting time - come nightfall, the city will be vibrating with activity! Dora had informed me that my very own 'hood, Leblon, would be hosting a huge bloco that evening, so as the sun went down I was applying my glitter, adjusting my purple wig, and generally preparing for a night of utter mayhem. Word on the street was that the bloco would be starting in Ipanema and gradually traveling toward Leblon, so my friend and I optimistically made our way over to Ipa only to find that the bloco had already moved to a location that proved impossible to find. In typical Brazilian fashion, everyone we asked, from drunkards in the street to hotel attendants, pointed us vaguely in a nebulous direction, leading us on a 2-hour goose chase for our first bloco. The closest we got was a plaza that seemed to be the meeting place for all the people who were too drunk to continue on with the parade. We were confused; this was the CARNAVAL, and the idea of actually having to search for something to do hadn't even occurred to us before.

The next day proved to be more or less of the same, and when we finally successfully encountered our long-awaited blocos we were disappointed to find that we were spending most of our energy on fending off crude drunk men and trying to move through the packed crowds in search of danceable music or at least a spot of shade to rest in. The more entertaining and festive street parties seemed to take place in Centro (the downtown area), and I did enjoy myself at some of those, but overall I was somewhat underwhelmed by my Carnaval experience. By the final day, I was tired of getting groped, sick of cheap beer, ready for the tourists to leave, and left without a real understanding of why so many people would travel from all parts of the world to spend thousands of dollars on this ordeal.

But then, something wonderful happened: a friend invited me to the Sambódromo, the huge arena in Centro built for the purpose of showcasing the top samba schools in Rio during Carnaval, to watch the top six samba school parades in their last performance. This is one of the most special aspects of Carnaval in Rio; the samba schools spend the entire year (at least) preparing ridiculously over-the-top parades for crowds of millions of people. This was where the huge party I had pictured in my head with thousands of women in sparkly outfits being rained on by confetti was taking place. During the week of Carnaval, the biggest twelve or so schools of samba compete for the top spot in Rio's apparently very important samba ranking. I had previously thought I wouldn't be able to go because during Carnaval the tickets rise to absurd prices of R$500 and appeared to me to be just another tourist trap, but since Carnaval was technically over when I went, most of the estrangeiros had already left Rio and I was about to buy a ticket for only R$25. The celebrations began at 9pm, and as each of best six schools performed for about an hour and a half, we were in the stadium until about 7 in the morning.


(One of my favorite floats, but by no means the most extravagant)

I can't really describe the flamboyance of it all; I'm including borrowed photos, but pictures really don't at all do it justice. Pondering the unimaginable amount of money and resources that goes into financing this party instead of aiding the vast and numerous problems that plague Brazil bothered me a little, but many people have pointed out to me that tourism during Carnaval does bring in extraordinary wealth that is redistributed (however unevenly) back to Rio's various communities, so I'm withholding judgment for the time being. To make a long story short, my expedition to the Sambódromo definitely provided me with a better understanding of what Carnaval is really all about, which I am so thankful for. I was really starting to feel like a downer for not loving Carnaval, and now I feel that I got the full experience of the most extravagant party in the universe.

Now that that's out of the way, I can talk a little about another recent adventure in the life of Eshtephanie: Ilha Grande. Most of the people in my program chose to travel after Carnaval during our month off, but since I'm going to do most of my voyaging during and after the semester, I stuck around Rio. However, the little posse of those left behind (myself included) got a little jealous and decided to make a very last-minute getaway to Ilha Grande for some wilderness shenanigans. To get to the island, one takes a bus ride to Angra dos Reis, a small port town three hours outside of Rio, followed by a 45-minute ferry ride. By the time we arrived to Angra dos Reis it was already 9pm and the last ferry to Ilha Grande had already left, so we slept on a small but exceedingly well-lit beach and waited for the sun to rise. The next morning, we made the first ferry to the island and arrived early enough for a full day of adventuring.


(Oh you know, just floating)

Perhaps I should begin by saying that Ilha Grande is one of the most beautiful places I'm ever been in my life. From a distance, it bears a strong resemblance to Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs the island is crawling with endangered (rather than extinct) species including monkeys, sloths, parrots, and turtles. The beaches are the cleanest and clearest I've ever seen and everywhere you look on the land is pure, beautiful GREEN. Three of us embarked on a hike that was three hours each way and found ourselves in Dois Rios, a seemingly deserted, almost ghost-like little community at the top of one of the island's mountains. After inhaling lunch at the only restaurant for miles around, we saw a creepy old prison and a former leper colony and eventually made our back down the mountain so that we would return before dark.


(Taking a dip in A Piscina dos Soldados on the hike up to Dois Rios)

Upon our return, we met up with the rest of our traveling squad and dined on cheese sandwiches, cookies, bananas, and screwdrivers on the beach. The two men in our clan wimped out and booked a hostel for the night, but we females were determined to camp (illegally, so as not to spend our precious remaining money) and staked out a spot on Praia Preta, so called because of its black sands. After successfully setting up our tent in a semi-hidden local so as not to attract the attention of policemen who might try and kick us out, we noticed that the tide was beginning to rise dangerously close our spot. Left with literally nowhere to sleep, we made our way back to the main beach and decided to just sleep out in the open and simply charm our way out of any hassling we might get from the authorities. This was all well and good (aside from the many obnoxious travelers who spotted us on the beach and came over to try and hang out with us at 4 in the morning) until it began to rain extremely heavily about an hour later, when any hopes of actually getting any sleep were officially extinguished. Not to worry though; luckily we were just delirious enough to actually kind of enjoy the many hours we then spent huddling in the only open café eating more of those glorious bread and cheese sandwiches. By the time we made it back to Rio, we were wet and cold (for the first time since arriving in Brazil nearly two months ago) but filled with longing for more time on one of the most beautiful islands in the world.


(The beach at Dois Rios - our reward after hours of hiking)

Speaking of being back in Rio, classes finally start tomorrow and I wish I were more excited. More contact with Brazilians will be great for my Portuguese, and I am looking forward to starting a volunteer project, but after going so long with no schedule whatsoever, I'm kind of doubting my ability to sit in a classroom now that I know the wonders that await outside. I've been spending so much time exploring, hiking, swimming, and just generally living in the open air that school is failing to muster much enthusiasm. Soon to come:
a) Classes in Portuguese: fail or not fail?
b) Rio being cold(ish) and rainy: will my pants and sweatshirts actually come in handy?
c) Planning a trip to Argentina in the next few months: affordable or not affordable?
d) Confronting the housing market and moving out: can I make it happen?
e) Any suggestions from readers like YOU!

Salvador da Bahia

Since my last blog entry (side note: yes, I realize and feel kind of guilty about the fact that my posts are slowly being dispensed less and less frequently. I will try and do better.) I have traveled to and returned from Salvador and have found myself caught in the midst of Carnaval in Rio. Being a creature of a chronological nature, I think we should start with Salvador.

Although I mentioned that my friends and I would be couchsurfing in Salvador, I don't think I adequately explained what this wonderful little invention really is. Basically, it's a website that connects (very) budget-conscious travelers with people in all parts of the world who are willing to let said travelers sleep on their couches for free. It's even cheaper than staying in hostels (which are actually pretty expensive in most parts of Brazil around Carnaval), you get to meet and bond with really friendly and hospitable people, and you can communicate with people from around the world and share stories about traveling. That being said, our couchsurfing experience was somewhat atypical. We planned the trip in a very last-minute fashion, so last-minute that we only heard back from one of the potential hosts we contacted, an extremely enthusiastic high-school student named Fabio who told us in broken English that his step-dad sucks and wouldn't allow us to stay with them, but that his aunt had an empty house that she hadn't lived in for years and that we were welcome to stay there. Our own little vacation home in Salvador - que chic! Well, as it turned out, the house:
a) was completely unfurnished
b) had no lights
c) or running water
and d) was about an hour and a half from the city center by bus.
The first three were actually not really a problem; we were committed to finding free lodging during our travels no matter what, so our standards were naturally not very high, but the latter turned out to be a bit more significant. Getting home at the end of our nights proved to be an adventure that was often expensive and sometimes didn't happen at all. Traveling was further complicated by the fact that none of our phones worked without a series of county codes seemed to vary from one phone number to the next. But despite the chaos, Salvador itself was really an interesting and wonderful place to be, especially in the days before Carnaval.

First thing's first: food. If could trade Rio food for Salvador food, I would do it in a heartbeat. While cariocas eat unseasoned meat, cheese, and bread almost exclusively, Salvador is known for its spicy seafood. While there, I ate shrimp, lobster, oysters, and a few types of fish, and it was all ridiculously cheap. The most common street food in Salvador is acarajé (click the link and drool), which consists of a cake of fried black-eyed-pea dough split in half and filled with various spicy sauces made from cashews, shrimp, tomatoes, and hot peppers and topped with whole shrimp. The most I ever paid for an acarajé was an astoundingly low R$4, about $2 U.S. Of course, Salvador also has much of the same bready/cheesy/meaty street food as Rio, but always cheaper and somehow better.


(Sittin' on the dock of the bay...)

I think that in some ways Salvador is actually considerably more dangerous than Rio. First of all, about 80% of baianas (people from the state of Bahia) are of African descent, so I stood out much more than I do here in Rio (even with my Brazilian tan). Living in Rio's Zona Sul, I don't see nearly as much poverty as exists throughout the rest of the city, and even the favelas I've visited are governed by strict, extremely community-oriented social codes dictating that resident not harm or steal from anyone in the boundaries of the favela. While I'm clearly aware that crime, both violent and not, does happen here all the time and while I know several people from my program who have been held at gunpoint (some more than once), I've just never seen desperation firsthand to the extent that I saw it in Salvador. In and around Pelourinho, Savlador's historic neighborhood where most tourist attractions are located, you can't walk a block without being solicited by a group of adorable children asking R$5 to tie a piece of ribbon around your wrist, or an old man (who probably looks thirty years older than his real age) who nicely offers you directions to a museum and then demands money. A group of Americans we met in Pelourinho had been robbed three times in one day, once before my very eyes. Almost every interaction I had with anyone in the street was about money. This was difficult to see and get used to because the entire time I knew that every person who pleaded for money or eyed my purse for a little longer than was comfortable really needed money, but I just couldn't give it to all of them, especially not in the quantities that they asked.


(Capoeira on the beach, anyone?)

That being said, Pelourinho is really a beautiful and interesting area, despite being increasingly touristy. My friends and I saw a modern art museum, an Afro-Brazilian culture museum, a Candomblé ritual, a pre-Carnaval drumming procession, and a capoeira performance in the street (which we eventually took part in). The Candomblé ritual was by far the most fascinating and confusing; we had been trying to find a Candomblé ritual to attend for a low price all day with little success, but in the early evening we asked one more person who pointed us down the street and told us that a free ritual was starting in five minutes. The ritual consisted of a lot of drumming, followed by some chanting, after which the babalorixá, or "father of saint" fell into trance. After this part of the ritual was over, beer and feijoada were offered to spectators. The entire ritual lasted over three hours. Throughout the experience, all I could do was wonder how authentic the ritual really was; at first, I was convinced that it was a tourist-oriented show that didn't accurately represent Candomblé, but by the time the babalorixá went into trance I wasn't so sure. The drummers, who were all teenagers, were laughing and smiling throughout the ritual, and no one involved seemed to be taking it very seriously besides the babalorixá himself. But the intensity that overtook the room when he entered trance was impossible to deny; he acted crazed, shrieking, moving with huge, dance-like motions, drinking cachaça straight out of the bottle and pouring the rest outside as an offering to the Candomblé gods. My friend and I left a little early as they were bringing out the food, but I would have been interested to see if they solicited the viewers for money after the ritual was through.


(Uma rua em Pelourinho)

Our last night in Salvador was the first night of Carnaval, so we ventured out to the biggest opening-night parade in Barra before taking a cab to the airport for our flight at 3 a.m. The first night of Carnaval was everything I expected it to be - everyone dressed up, huge floats full of partiers going down the street, each featuring a live performer, stands set up selling every kind of food and alcoholic beverage you can imagine, the works. After a few hours of sneaking into and dancing in the VIP section of a float parade, it began to rain, a perfect shower for all the bodies drenched in the sweat of a thousand other people. Somehow we made it to the airport on time, and our trip (at least the last night of it) was pronounced a success.

Well, by this time Carnaval has come and gone, so that will obviously be the subject of my next blog post, but just out of curiosity, are there any topics that any of you dear readers would like me to cover? The Rio Deal is an interactive experience, you know...

Viajando e preparando para Carnaval!

So we now find ourselves one week into February, and here in Brazil that means one thing: CARNAVAL. For obvious reasons I will wait until after the festivities to write my main Carnaval entry, but for now I’ll comment on a few observations I’ve made in this climate of simultaneous excitement and anxiety.

Everything has subtly but noticeably gotten more expensive. For example, I’ve been in the market for a certain style of bikini top for the past week or so, so I’ve been frequenting the beach, where vendors haul around huge racks of bikini tops and bottoms, among many, many, many other things, with extra regularity. It seems that even just a month ago, which was still prime tourist season, vendors were practically begging to haggle down their prices, but now my inquiries of “quanto costa?” are met with an expression of stern rigidity and a reply of “vinte” for a bikini top, which is twice the price of some department stores. Also, the average price of a beer (or rather, uma cerveza estupidamente gelada) seems to have gone up by a real or two, which is bothersome. But make no mistake, I’m definitely not complaining. If vendors, stores, hotels, airlines, and every other business in Brazil can make twice the money during two weeks than they normally make in six months, good for them; the vendors need the money, and the tourists who flock to Rio during Carnaval certainly aren’t hurting for it. R$3.50 is still less than two dollars for a beer, and hey, I bought that same bikini top plus another top and bottom at a stand in Centro yesterday for fourteen reais, so ha.

Blocos, or huge pre-Carnaval street parties, are everywhere. Even after having attended a few, I still don’t really understand them. At first I kind of thought they were supposed to give everyone a preview of what the real Carnaval was going to be like, but I shared this hypothesis with Dora and she laughed at me, telling me that no bloco was going to even come close to halfway-adequately representing CARNAVAL. Basically, big float-type things featuring singing men (usually dressed as women) on trucks roll down the street as thousands of people dance around them. There are beer vendors everywhere and everyone is very drunk. Yesterday’s bloco in Ipanema began at 4 and when my friend and I tried to buy beers at around 5:30 we were shocked to find that every vendor we sought was sold out. Overall impression: blocos are fun but being grabbed and proposed to by sweaty drunk men is not.

Most cariocas over the age of thirty don’t seem to be big fans of Carnaval. Traveling in February (which we will get to later!) is crazy around these parts not only because people visit Rio from all parts of the world for Carnaval, but also because of the mass exodus of cariocas to other calmer parts of the country. Whenever I express my excitement to Dora or any other carioca, they seem to think it’s really cute how all the gringos still get so enthusiastic about Carnaval, which makes sense I guess. As I am only beginning to see, the city really does get taken over for almost a month, making life as usual somewhat difficult. I asked Dora what she’s going to do for Carnaval, and she said she would probably watch TV and maybe visit her daughter.

On another note, I will be traveling TONIGHT to Salvador da Bahia, a city in the northeast of Brazil that is known for its African influence, drumming, laidback lifestyle, seafood, and capoeira. It is also the birthplace of Adriana Lima, thought by many to be The Most Attractive Person in the World. I highly encourage anyone who has the time to Google pictures of Salvador, but please be warned that it is very addictive and produces many a loud “ooh” or “ah.” Three of my friends and I will be staying and couch-surfing in Salvador until the first day of Carnaval and then returning to Rio for fun and games (to put it lightly). I am so, so, so excited to see another completely different part of Brazil, and if (fingers crossed) I actually end up buying a replacement camera by the end of the day, the rest of you will get to see it too!

Wish me boa sorte!