It's 6:10 am right now in Santiago and I have a half hour to kill before my shuttle picks me up from the Hotel Americano to go back to the airport for my Antofagasta flight. Despite a really crappy bed and lots of party noise from the Friday night festivities drifting up through the window, a little self-induced dreaming afforded me a few hours of sleep. Although I would like to think that this raw throat is because I slept with my mouth open, I may be getting sick. There was a weird Australian kid next to me on the flight yesterday that was coughing up a storm.
This city is apparently very cool and very rich with culture and night life. It's a shame I was only here for a few hours of restless sleep. Maybe I'll come back someday for the full experience. I'm definitely enjoying the peace time right now before another day packed with activity. Although I'm SUPER stoked to be meeting up with the guys today!
It's weird to think that I'm sitting in Chile. Too bad I've only seen the inside of an airport, the inside of a van, and the insides of a hostel. And that's all I am going to see of Santiago. But hey, whatever. Gotta jam and catch my ride soon. Hopefully there's some good breakfast food at the Santiago airport while I wait for up to two hours.
Until the next post from Antofagasta, much love,
Brad
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Off the grid for a bit
Hey sports fans. Nothing terribly exciting has happened in the days since the party ended (except me getting a new tat), so I won't bore you. Just resting and tying off loose ends. My plane to Antofagasta, Chile leaves in exactly 12 hours. There, my friends Pat and Andy and I will have a monumental reunion and they'll explain the lifestyle in that city to me. They've been there for two weeks now, I believe, so they can show me the ropes.
I don't know the internet availability there and I'll have other fish to fry for at least a day or two, so don't expect any grand posts for a while. I need a break. Writing is one of my favorite pasttimes, but jeez... Time-consuming.
Stay tuned for more, just not right away. MANY thanks to anyone reading this from Brazil (or maybe not from Brazil, but just in Brazil when we met). You all made my experiences here memorable and fantastic. Everyone else at home, I think of you all daily and miss you. Wish me luck with the frazzled South American airport system tomorrow. Burning Man buddies, here I come!
Hanging tough,
Be Rad
I don't know the internet availability there and I'll have other fish to fry for at least a day or two, so don't expect any grand posts for a while. I need a break. Writing is one of my favorite pasttimes, but jeez... Time-consuming.
Stay tuned for more, just not right away. MANY thanks to anyone reading this from Brazil (or maybe not from Brazil, but just in Brazil when we met). You all made my experiences here memorable and fantastic. Everyone else at home, I think of you all daily and miss you. Wish me luck with the frazzled South American airport system tomorrow. Burning Man buddies, here I come!
Hanging tough,
Be Rad
My Huge Carnaval Post
CARNAVAL, PROS and CONS
The Salvador Carnaval is the largest gathering of people for a party on Earth. An estimated 11 million different people attend the festivities over the 6 days. I was one of them this year. Here are some observations I made about such a massive and unique festival in the form of a pro and con list.
PRO, music: The festival is centered around traditional African and Bahian music, most of which is axé (“ah-shay”), candomblé (“con-dome-blay”) and pagoda (“pah-go-jay”). These are all very lively styles of music meant for jumping and grooving and the whole crowd throws its hands and water into the air at every chorus. There is live music for about 10 hours each day playing off of mobile stages on double-decker busses called trio-elêtricos. The other kinds of music are samba, reggae, reggaeton, gypsy drumming, and various electronic music from guest DJs. Nearly all of the compositions are original, and nearly every person from Bahia knows all the songs. It’s really cool to see four blocks full of people laughing and shouting along to music they know while balloons, beach balls, water, confetti and clothes fly all over the place.
CON, music: I personally didn’t know almost any words to the music, nor what it was talking about. That makes it hard for anybody who doesn’t speak Portuguese to really enjoy what they’re hearing. Also, being a somewhat critical musician, I tired quickly of the repetitive nature and lack of creativity of much of the music. It’s like techno: if you’re buzzed and dancing, the music is great. But if you’re looking for quality, technical music, you won’t be satisfied. To be fair, the electronic music was all really good and there was a ton of Bob Marley being played all the time.
PRO, color: the colors are bright and numerous everywhere at Carnaval, which is a real feast for the eyes. The costumes and shirts associated with the blocos are really great and it was very surreal to see a mob of 500-2,000 people jumping around a mobile rock concert in the same brightly-colored shirts.
CON, theft: There is a ton of pickpocketing at Carnaval. A guy in an orange bandana snuck out of the crowd and stole my friend’s flask out of my pocket in about one second and then slipped back into the mayhem invisibly. They’re really pretty slick. They put pressure on your left side like they’re someone trying to push past you, which makes you pay attention to that side and look at the rude guy shoving you. While your focus lies on them, their partner not-so-slyly slips into your right-side pocket as discreetly as possible and liberates you of whatever you have in that pocket. I wised up after I figured out what happened and stopped FOUR subsequent attempts over the next two nights. Thank god the guys aren’t violent about theft, because, against Fernanda’s advice, I probably wouldn’t give up anything without a fight. Unless they had a weapon, of course. At least I knew better than to carry any money or identification in an outer pocket. Those things I swallowed in a balloon and regurgitated only when I needed to buy drinks.
PRO, the dancing: If ever there were a collective group of people that know how to dance vigorously and with endurance, it’s the Brazilians. The energy at Carnaval is a frenzy. The ocean of people in the streets bobs and undulates to the beat like the waves in the sea that lies just below Carnaval. Nobody headbangs in Brazil. They’ve all learned since childhood how to swing their hips, hold their torsos and arms like a preened rooster, and stomp their feet in time. The trio-elêtricos tend to have the most beautiful kinds of people on top of them since they are so public, and many of the women trio passengers can samba like professionals. I caught myself staring more than once.
CON, fights: A lot of men (and some women) at the festival either a) go there to pick fights, b) are overly jealous and combative toward people that look at or dance with their significant other, or c) get super drunk and take things personally. I saw about ten fights happen over my five days of going. Granted, the close quarters, alcohol, bad smells, lack of comfort or space, and loose-lipped men and women are all catalysts for short tempers. But seriously, these people must just love to fight. And some for no reason. This is a true story, I kid you not: on their way home from the camarote (VIP building) on the night that I stayed home healing and relaxing, Nanda and Renata ran into one of their old friends named Simon. He was walking home by himself on a well-lit street not saying or doing anything, when a stranger walked by and punched him in the face. His lip was split open pretty badly and he was sucking on a wet paper towel when the girls found him. He was cheerful, but without gauze or ice, so they brought him home and I doctored him up with the Neosporin I brought from home and a bag of ice. Poor kid.
PRO, attitudes: Nearly every face at Carnaval has a smile on it. Every varying level of smile, too. Some are calmly observant while others are ear-to-ear and singing a favorite song. Hugs are plentiful and kisses are easily obtained.
CON, smells: The flood of people into a small area brings with it some really powerful stink. Everybody drinks and eats a lot there, and exercising afterward gets the juices flowing, literally. There aren’t really enough Port-o-Potties and all the businesses in the affected area are closed and boarded up, so with no options left, most men just whip it out and piss on a wall. Sometimes in a crowd! Or on a nearby car. The piss runs down the gutters to mix with spilled beer, the occasional vomit, and god-knows-what else to form brackish pools of stench soup. Body odor isn’t as big a concern, since the sweat is closer to water than to B.O. sweat, plus one’s nose begins to shut down quickly after arriving. Ugh, but the worst thing is that many homeless people that usually live in the area have really nowhere else to go or they have some meager job at Carnaval and have no other options, so they actually go Number Two in the gutter or into a T-shirt or something and leave it within visual and/or olfactory range of the crowd. Pewww.
PRO, beautiful people: Brazil is an untapped resource for chiseled, gorgeous people. In an earlier post, I mentioned how some of the most visually cursed people live here due to scars, birth defects, disease, and what have you. However, some of the most surrealistically attractive people on Earth live here, too. I’m totally straight, of course, but the guys here have perfect bodies, great skin, healthy lifestyles, and great teeth. And the women… Oh, my god. I think God smote the entire country with curves. And they know how to throw them around, too. Caramel and ebony and walnut and cream skin, blond and morena and kinky and curly full hair, short and tall girls, big features, big booties, and the absolutely best legs I’ve ever seen were everywhere I looked. And as I’ve said before, their language is like singing. If I didn’t already love my life in the States, I’d live here in a heartbeat just for the women! Ah, but I still wish they all could be California girls.
CON, poor people: All over the place, there are poor people either begging for money, attempting to scam or rob you, or selling really crappy wares or food. The most common thing I saw walking around Carnaval was a guy or a young kid hauling a Styrofoam cooler on his back full of ice and beer, selling it for super dirt cheap. It is a major buzz kill, especially since nobody has a plan or a shred of sympathy for these people during or after the festival.
PRO, location: Carnaval takes place on the streets that border the Atlantic Ocean in Salvador. One can see the sea and the endless horizon from almost anywhere in the event, and each sunset and sunrise is more beautiful than the one before.
CON, sexual deviants: Many men here exploit the sexually liberating nature of the event and go off kissing girls who don’t want them. I hear that lots of girls prefer to make out with a guy and make him leave than to deal with his garbage all night while he follows her.
PRO, cheap goods: The exchange rate from US Dollars to Reales here is about 1 to 2, which already helps me out. Then, everything is super cheap there anyway. A skewer full of sausage, beef, chicken and vegetables costs only two Reales, a bowl full of delicious and nutritious Açaí costs about four, and a tall can of beer costs ONE Real! That’s about fifty cents in the U.S. Even the most luxurious and costly food and drink nights at Carnaval are pretty cheap.
CON, filth: Because the trash collection infrastructure really sucks at the festival and because there are millions of people all in the same place with a devil-may-care attitude, the trash and other filth really piles up. There aren’t even trash cans anywhere. You literally just throw garbage into piles or out of the way under a table or something. It makes for a depressing way to discard trash.
PRO, camarotes: There are special viewing places for Carnaval called camarotes. They are actually businesses, that line the streets the rest of the year, that have been converted into two- or three-story clubs with limited access. They are either costly or invite-only, but they have the best views of the trio-elêtricos, provide a nice place to sit down or get away from the madness on the streets, and have real bathrooms to use. Nanda’s father has a high position in the Coelba, or Company of Electricity for Bahia, so he was given two passes to the BEST camarote for all 6 days. It’s called Express 2222 and there was free food inside (not just crackers and stuff, but ice cream, chocolate, rare cheese, fruit, temaki, deli meat, sandwiches, coffee, free delicious cocktails, free beer, wine, champagne), free massages, tons of gifts at the door, a full dance floor with guest DJs, three stories of balconies from which to view the festivities on the street, computers all over with internet access (which I think is a stupid thing to have at the world’s biggest party, but whatever, it was free), huge futons everywhere, comfy couches, and celebrities. I went there for two nights and Nanda went with other people for two nights.
CON, madness: It’s so confusing, disorienting, loud, distracting, crowded, unstable, dirty, and intimidating at Carnaval sometimes that it detracts from the beauty of the event. As easy as the city is to navigate, I still got lost a couple times because of all the craziness happening.
PRO, rain: Every single night for the whole week, the rain would start to fall at one or more points during the parade. I personally can’t get enough rain since I’m a desert-dwelling land lubber, and it drove the temperature down considerably. Plus, all the girls who didn’t want runny mascara would all run for cover, which cleared the streets for the rest of us to frolic.
CON, rain: Much as I love the rain, apparently it’s fairly dirty rainfall. One of the negative side effects of such a large city is that the clouds have a fossil fuel content and make some people ill with the flu and stuff if they get rained on.
PRO, kissing: If a member of the opposite sex makes steady eye contact and offers a smile, it is perfectly acceptable to approach him or her and have a makeout session. Usually, it’s the man’s prerogative, but girls can do the talking, too. It’s very free and open.
CON, transformation of Salvador: To protect the businesses and historic sites from the ravages of Carnaval, the city boards up much of the authentic storefronts and covers them with advertisements and colorful banners. It’s okay if you’re a Vegas type, but I much prefer the real city, so all the gaudy crap makes it just look phony-bologna.
PRO, a big break: Since the economy and school all shuts down for the whole week, nobody really has anything to do during Carnaval except to party and sleep in. As a result, there are many cultural events throughout the day by people that would otherwise be working. Also, the entire city is present at the event.
CON, expensive: Except for the cheap food and booze I mentioned, everything else is pretty expensive. To gain admission into the area immediately around the trios, called blocos, requires basically just a special shirt. But to get one of these shirts, even for an unpopular or brief band, costs from R$ 50 to R$ 200! That means you have to walk behind the band car all night, too. Entrance into the camarotes costs anywhere from R$ 100 to R$ 600 a night!
PRO, originality: The Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro is by far more visually amazing. The costumes, dancers, floats, and stage effects are hands-down the best on earth. However, only performers can get on the street. Even high-paying patrons can only watch from good seats, they cannot go down to join the party. Bahia Carnaval is totally hands-on and intimate. The party includes everybody who can walk and dance.
The myriad of other observations I made can all be blended into one cohesive and unforgettable memory. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, even after attending five Burning Man festivals. These people really love to cut loose. And the festival immediately precedes Ash Wednesday and 40 days of Lent, so it gives them all the opportunity to glut themselves with sins of the flesh and then purge their wicked ways afterward. Glorious!
NOTES, for those of you who care...
Pros: color, music, dancing, smiles, pretty people, location, cheap beer and food, camarotes, celebrities, rain, camaraderie, exciting, smells, kissing, no economy for a week, transformation, tons of business, no cars, no schedule, cheap stuff for sale, creativity,
Cons: theft, fights, cops, smells, poor people, rape, filth, madness, lost, turns pretty Salvador ugly, music, food can make people sick, rain, expensive for blocos and camarotes, really loud, hazardous for feet, puddles of god-knows-what, pissing in public, can’t swim in the sea for a week afterward,
The Salvador Carnaval is the largest gathering of people for a party on Earth. An estimated 11 million different people attend the festivities over the 6 days. I was one of them this year. Here are some observations I made about such a massive and unique festival in the form of a pro and con list.
PRO, music: The festival is centered around traditional African and Bahian music, most of which is axé (“ah-shay”), candomblé (“con-dome-blay”) and pagoda (“pah-go-jay”). These are all very lively styles of music meant for jumping and grooving and the whole crowd throws its hands and water into the air at every chorus. There is live music for about 10 hours each day playing off of mobile stages on double-decker busses called trio-elêtricos. The other kinds of music are samba, reggae, reggaeton, gypsy drumming, and various electronic music from guest DJs. Nearly all of the compositions are original, and nearly every person from Bahia knows all the songs. It’s really cool to see four blocks full of people laughing and shouting along to music they know while balloons, beach balls, water, confetti and clothes fly all over the place.
CON, music: I personally didn’t know almost any words to the music, nor what it was talking about. That makes it hard for anybody who doesn’t speak Portuguese to really enjoy what they’re hearing. Also, being a somewhat critical musician, I tired quickly of the repetitive nature and lack of creativity of much of the music. It’s like techno: if you’re buzzed and dancing, the music is great. But if you’re looking for quality, technical music, you won’t be satisfied. To be fair, the electronic music was all really good and there was a ton of Bob Marley being played all the time.
PRO, color: the colors are bright and numerous everywhere at Carnaval, which is a real feast for the eyes. The costumes and shirts associated with the blocos are really great and it was very surreal to see a mob of 500-2,000 people jumping around a mobile rock concert in the same brightly-colored shirts.
CON, theft: There is a ton of pickpocketing at Carnaval. A guy in an orange bandana snuck out of the crowd and stole my friend’s flask out of my pocket in about one second and then slipped back into the mayhem invisibly. They’re really pretty slick. They put pressure on your left side like they’re someone trying to push past you, which makes you pay attention to that side and look at the rude guy shoving you. While your focus lies on them, their partner not-so-slyly slips into your right-side pocket as discreetly as possible and liberates you of whatever you have in that pocket. I wised up after I figured out what happened and stopped FOUR subsequent attempts over the next two nights. Thank god the guys aren’t violent about theft, because, against Fernanda’s advice, I probably wouldn’t give up anything without a fight. Unless they had a weapon, of course. At least I knew better than to carry any money or identification in an outer pocket. Those things I swallowed in a balloon and regurgitated only when I needed to buy drinks.
PRO, the dancing: If ever there were a collective group of people that know how to dance vigorously and with endurance, it’s the Brazilians. The energy at Carnaval is a frenzy. The ocean of people in the streets bobs and undulates to the beat like the waves in the sea that lies just below Carnaval. Nobody headbangs in Brazil. They’ve all learned since childhood how to swing their hips, hold their torsos and arms like a preened rooster, and stomp their feet in time. The trio-elêtricos tend to have the most beautiful kinds of people on top of them since they are so public, and many of the women trio passengers can samba like professionals. I caught myself staring more than once.
CON, fights: A lot of men (and some women) at the festival either a) go there to pick fights, b) are overly jealous and combative toward people that look at or dance with their significant other, or c) get super drunk and take things personally. I saw about ten fights happen over my five days of going. Granted, the close quarters, alcohol, bad smells, lack of comfort or space, and loose-lipped men and women are all catalysts for short tempers. But seriously, these people must just love to fight. And some for no reason. This is a true story, I kid you not: on their way home from the camarote (VIP building) on the night that I stayed home healing and relaxing, Nanda and Renata ran into one of their old friends named Simon. He was walking home by himself on a well-lit street not saying or doing anything, when a stranger walked by and punched him in the face. His lip was split open pretty badly and he was sucking on a wet paper towel when the girls found him. He was cheerful, but without gauze or ice, so they brought him home and I doctored him up with the Neosporin I brought from home and a bag of ice. Poor kid.
PRO, attitudes: Nearly every face at Carnaval has a smile on it. Every varying level of smile, too. Some are calmly observant while others are ear-to-ear and singing a favorite song. Hugs are plentiful and kisses are easily obtained.
CON, smells: The flood of people into a small area brings with it some really powerful stink. Everybody drinks and eats a lot there, and exercising afterward gets the juices flowing, literally. There aren’t really enough Port-o-Potties and all the businesses in the affected area are closed and boarded up, so with no options left, most men just whip it out and piss on a wall. Sometimes in a crowd! Or on a nearby car. The piss runs down the gutters to mix with spilled beer, the occasional vomit, and god-knows-what else to form brackish pools of stench soup. Body odor isn’t as big a concern, since the sweat is closer to water than to B.O. sweat, plus one’s nose begins to shut down quickly after arriving. Ugh, but the worst thing is that many homeless people that usually live in the area have really nowhere else to go or they have some meager job at Carnaval and have no other options, so they actually go Number Two in the gutter or into a T-shirt or something and leave it within visual and/or olfactory range of the crowd. Pewww.
PRO, beautiful people: Brazil is an untapped resource for chiseled, gorgeous people. In an earlier post, I mentioned how some of the most visually cursed people live here due to scars, birth defects, disease, and what have you. However, some of the most surrealistically attractive people on Earth live here, too. I’m totally straight, of course, but the guys here have perfect bodies, great skin, healthy lifestyles, and great teeth. And the women… Oh, my god. I think God smote the entire country with curves. And they know how to throw them around, too. Caramel and ebony and walnut and cream skin, blond and morena and kinky and curly full hair, short and tall girls, big features, big booties, and the absolutely best legs I’ve ever seen were everywhere I looked. And as I’ve said before, their language is like singing. If I didn’t already love my life in the States, I’d live here in a heartbeat just for the women! Ah, but I still wish they all could be California girls.
CON, poor people: All over the place, there are poor people either begging for money, attempting to scam or rob you, or selling really crappy wares or food. The most common thing I saw walking around Carnaval was a guy or a young kid hauling a Styrofoam cooler on his back full of ice and beer, selling it for super dirt cheap. It is a major buzz kill, especially since nobody has a plan or a shred of sympathy for these people during or after the festival.
PRO, location: Carnaval takes place on the streets that border the Atlantic Ocean in Salvador. One can see the sea and the endless horizon from almost anywhere in the event, and each sunset and sunrise is more beautiful than the one before.
CON, sexual deviants: Many men here exploit the sexually liberating nature of the event and go off kissing girls who don’t want them. I hear that lots of girls prefer to make out with a guy and make him leave than to deal with his garbage all night while he follows her.
PRO, cheap goods: The exchange rate from US Dollars to Reales here is about 1 to 2, which already helps me out. Then, everything is super cheap there anyway. A skewer full of sausage, beef, chicken and vegetables costs only two Reales, a bowl full of delicious and nutritious Açaí costs about four, and a tall can of beer costs ONE Real! That’s about fifty cents in the U.S. Even the most luxurious and costly food and drink nights at Carnaval are pretty cheap.
CON, filth: Because the trash collection infrastructure really sucks at the festival and because there are millions of people all in the same place with a devil-may-care attitude, the trash and other filth really piles up. There aren’t even trash cans anywhere. You literally just throw garbage into piles or out of the way under a table or something. It makes for a depressing way to discard trash.
PRO, camarotes: There are special viewing places for Carnaval called camarotes. They are actually businesses, that line the streets the rest of the year, that have been converted into two- or three-story clubs with limited access. They are either costly or invite-only, but they have the best views of the trio-elêtricos, provide a nice place to sit down or get away from the madness on the streets, and have real bathrooms to use. Nanda’s father has a high position in the Coelba, or Company of Electricity for Bahia, so he was given two passes to the BEST camarote for all 6 days. It’s called Express 2222 and there was free food inside (not just crackers and stuff, but ice cream, chocolate, rare cheese, fruit, temaki, deli meat, sandwiches, coffee, free delicious cocktails, free beer, wine, champagne), free massages, tons of gifts at the door, a full dance floor with guest DJs, three stories of balconies from which to view the festivities on the street, computers all over with internet access (which I think is a stupid thing to have at the world’s biggest party, but whatever, it was free), huge futons everywhere, comfy couches, and celebrities. I went there for two nights and Nanda went with other people for two nights.
CON, madness: It’s so confusing, disorienting, loud, distracting, crowded, unstable, dirty, and intimidating at Carnaval sometimes that it detracts from the beauty of the event. As easy as the city is to navigate, I still got lost a couple times because of all the craziness happening.
PRO, rain: Every single night for the whole week, the rain would start to fall at one or more points during the parade. I personally can’t get enough rain since I’m a desert-dwelling land lubber, and it drove the temperature down considerably. Plus, all the girls who didn’t want runny mascara would all run for cover, which cleared the streets for the rest of us to frolic.
CON, rain: Much as I love the rain, apparently it’s fairly dirty rainfall. One of the negative side effects of such a large city is that the clouds have a fossil fuel content and make some people ill with the flu and stuff if they get rained on.
PRO, kissing: If a member of the opposite sex makes steady eye contact and offers a smile, it is perfectly acceptable to approach him or her and have a makeout session. Usually, it’s the man’s prerogative, but girls can do the talking, too. It’s very free and open.
CON, transformation of Salvador: To protect the businesses and historic sites from the ravages of Carnaval, the city boards up much of the authentic storefronts and covers them with advertisements and colorful banners. It’s okay if you’re a Vegas type, but I much prefer the real city, so all the gaudy crap makes it just look phony-bologna.
PRO, a big break: Since the economy and school all shuts down for the whole week, nobody really has anything to do during Carnaval except to party and sleep in. As a result, there are many cultural events throughout the day by people that would otherwise be working. Also, the entire city is present at the event.
CON, expensive: Except for the cheap food and booze I mentioned, everything else is pretty expensive. To gain admission into the area immediately around the trios, called blocos, requires basically just a special shirt. But to get one of these shirts, even for an unpopular or brief band, costs from R$ 50 to R$ 200! That means you have to walk behind the band car all night, too. Entrance into the camarotes costs anywhere from R$ 100 to R$ 600 a night!
PRO, originality: The Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro is by far more visually amazing. The costumes, dancers, floats, and stage effects are hands-down the best on earth. However, only performers can get on the street. Even high-paying patrons can only watch from good seats, they cannot go down to join the party. Bahia Carnaval is totally hands-on and intimate. The party includes everybody who can walk and dance.
The myriad of other observations I made can all be blended into one cohesive and unforgettable memory. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, even after attending five Burning Man festivals. These people really love to cut loose. And the festival immediately precedes Ash Wednesday and 40 days of Lent, so it gives them all the opportunity to glut themselves with sins of the flesh and then purge their wicked ways afterward. Glorious!
NOTES, for those of you who care...
Pros: color, music, dancing, smiles, pretty people, location, cheap beer and food, camarotes, celebrities, rain, camaraderie, exciting, smells, kissing, no economy for a week, transformation, tons of business, no cars, no schedule, cheap stuff for sale, creativity,
Cons: theft, fights, cops, smells, poor people, rape, filth, madness, lost, turns pretty Salvador ugly, music, food can make people sick, rain, expensive for blocos and camarotes, really loud, hazardous for feet, puddles of god-knows-what, pissing in public, can’t swim in the sea for a week afterward,
Tattoo Photo
Here it is. A black B for Brad and Brazil on my bicep. And three calligraphic bars for my special number.
B
Tatuagem Nova
I am now the proud owner of a NEW TATTOO as of about 30 minutes ago. Not supposed to take my bandage off for another hour and a half, and then I'm supposed to slather it in dermatological goo almost all day, but I'll take a photo when I can and post it for y'all. Now I have physical evidence of my stay in Brazil painted on my body forever. Sweeeet. Picture soon to follow.
Much love,
Golden B
Much love,
Golden B
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Adventure back in Salvador, the 9th through the 17th
Starting with this post, I think I’ll start cutting the length more. It takes too much work to describe every little thing, plus you probably don’t care anyway. I’ll detail the best stuff, and the rest lives in my memory only.
Monday, 02-09-2009, was basically my first uneventful day. I cleaned, learned how to cook some dishes with Ana, and hung out doing crossword puzzles in Portuguese and watching Two and a Half Men with Mariana. I’m actually getting much better at the puzzles (called quebra-cabeças). My problem is not forming clear ideas in the language, it’s just that I have almost no vocabulary to work with. A year of studying would do me a LOT of good and I can probably be to a highly conversational level within one year if I want. [This is a note to myself as well as an observation for you readers. I need to see my motivation when I read over this the next time.] Nanda went to work in the morning, and in the evening, we went to her classes. Her friends all gave her a load of grief for “dragging me along” to something boring like college, but I of course found it interesting. Especially her first professor, Senhor Bernardo. This guy is a trial attorney, and a damn good one from what I hear, as well as a professor. His gaze shows how much he knows and how keen his wit is, but his expressions, animation and delivery of speech says that he’s a high school freshman in theater class! He’s extremely funny and had me riveted, even in a boring subject in a language I don’t speak. So that was fun. The next class was numbingly droll, but a unique experience anyway. I met Nanda’s classmate, Wagner, who is a charming goofy guy with a lisp and a great laugh, and we screwed around in class quite a bit. I felt sheepish, but they didn’t care. Afterward, we visited a bit, all went our ways, and Nanda and I went home to relax and sleep.
Tuesday, the Tenth, another uneventful day. Nanda worked, I wrote, finished the book “Fight Club,” which is as utterly enlightening as it is gruesome, I highly suggest you read it if you want a twisted but accurate look into the manic male mind, and hung out some more. Nanda’s boss, who is also her cousin Tila, was really riding her, so I laid low. I ran some work errands with her, then we attended class again, only these ones were different. We ate temaki afterward (gigantic sushi cones), then drove around and visited a bit. Then bedtime.
Wednesday, February 11th, I spent the morning fixing Nanda’s laptop, which is an ancient piece, but still has some years left in it. With little success, I worked out and ran around town with Mariana and Gisa doing various things and having lunch at Nanda’s dad’s house. That evening, while Nanã was at school, Murillo and I went to see the Benjamin Button movie. I’m a huge fan, and it was interesting to watch since it had Portuguese subtitles and the audience commentary was all in another language. I believe I was the only English-speaking native in the theater. We had intended to make an 8:20 showing, but Murillo is kind of a space cadet and he got us all turned around and lost. So we made a later showing at a mall next door. Afterward, Murillo and I had a reflective discussion about age and how age is a state of mind only. The actors in that movie made a great point of that, so Muro and I rapped for a while. Then he took me home and went to his place to get up early. Poor guy has class every day at 7:00 in the morning.
Thursday, February 12th. To offset the lack of activity from the day before, I had a super long day Thursday. After waking up quite early to walk to a corner store and buy that-morning-fresh mango and eat it, Nanda and I cleaned up and drove all over the place for her job. I was her chauffeur that day, so I got to butt heads (but not bumpers) with the stubborn maniacs on the road here. After two successful errands, Nanda told me to wait for her while she ran inside to deliver a Process Suit. She said if anybody needed me to move, I should just circle the block and come back to the same spot. Assuming this was easy, I moved when a huge truck behind me needed the road space to drive through. Nanda didn’t really explain that the downtown legal district is like a bowl of Angel Hair pasta with one-way roads and freeway onramps and stuff. So, following her advice to circle the block, I ended up driving way south on the freeway and having to double back and BS my way through traffic to get roughly to the same spot. All the street names sound the same to me, so I didn’t know exactly where to go to find her. And, of course she had her cell phone but I had none. So, I parked illegally and bought a phone card, then called her cell phone from memory. Thankfully, Bruna happened to be at the same Forum we were, so she and Nanda vectored their way over to me and got me un-lost. Whew. What a fiasco. After another two hours in the car, during which I had to do the same routine again (wait idling, move if someone comes, circle the block) a few times, successfully, we went to meet Nanda’s boss and cousin, Chila. Chila’s newborn baby daughter is named Manuela, so we all cooed over her for a while and I borrowed formal clothes from Chila’s husband for a dance we were planning to attend that night. We killed some time, then got dressed up (Nanda was very posh in her black dress with sparkly silver sandals) and picked up her friend Dalila and her boyfriend Nelio to go. The graduates of law schools here traditionally throw a massive celebratory party. Each graduate can invite up to 100 people, and there were 18 graduates at this party! It was thrown in an old water park (which closed down since nobody wants to pay for water activities when the ocean is a 20-minute drive away for free), so there were slides all over the place and the bandstand was at the deep end of a giant, empty wave pool. It was freakin’ sweet. Everything was free, to the guests anyway, and the food was banquet quality. Desserts, fried shrimp-and-cheese balls, quiche, smoked cheeses and deli meat, uhhh, cake, ice cream, fried hummus balls, all kinds of stuff. Oh, and every single corner within the place had a loaded wet bar with top-shelf booze and specialty shots. Everybody was drinking flaming shots, Stunned Mollets, Mai Thai Bingos (a MaiTai in a festively carved coconut), and caipirinhas. Since I didn’t have to drive, I indulged myself quite a bit. Then we danced for about two hours to a very famous and popular Bahia band called Via Circular and yakked for a while after that while we waited for our ride. Fernanda works with this character named Gustavo, who was busy hitting on a floozy from the office, so we had to wait a while for him to seal the deal and give us a ride. Gustavo drove us home, along with his new lady friend, Fabiana, and we drifted off at about 3:00 in the morning.
Luckily, there was no work for Nanda the next day, so she slept in a lot and I was up writing for a while in the morning. After lunch at Eduardo’s, Renata came over and we had a musical afternoon. Rena doesn’t play guitar, but loves to sit with it in her hands as a good prop, so I taught her some chords. She’s a great singer, so we sang some tunes together, then she and Nanda cracked me up by singing together. Later, we all split up and Nanda and I went to swim at her aunt’s apartments. Each coastline apartment building has a trolley directly from the Rec Room right down to the ocean, so we had a private little pier and cabana to ourselves. I have some pictures somewhere, I’ll try to post them. After watching the sun set on the ocean (something I’ll miss intensely when I go back to Reno), we made our way to a large outdoor amphitheater to buy tickets and watch a band/guy called Manu Chao. Apparently, he’s very famous here. He speaks Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and English, so I thought he’d be really great. However, I think he must be an idiot in all five languages. I’m not a fan at all of his music, although the show was really high energy and the trumpet player was great. We coincidentally met Milena’s boyfriend Artur there (I thought his name was Arto up until that night) and hung out with him for a while. After fighting our way out of the crowd and back to Nanda’s car, we decided that more live music was in order and met up at a place with a decent Beatles cover band with Bruna. Also there was Gigi, one of the girls that I originally met in Reno in the winter of 2006 with Fernanda, and her boyfriend Vicente (AKA Tio Vi), who is a riot. The band was decent, and it was nice to know the music that was being played for a change. Bruna arrived with her current “paquerinha,” or potential boyfriend, Edu, who is also very cool. He’s a doctor on Morro de São Paulo. When we were there, her most recent boyfriend before Edu, an idiot “bro” named, stupidly, Ubu, was also there, which incited Bruna and the rest of us to take tequila shots. Apparently, the most socially awkward situation is to be at a place with a current and a former boy or girlfriend. It’s better to be flatulent and obscene or to wet one’s pants than it is to have two lovers present at the same time. They even have a name for such an event, but I forget the name. Hours passed there while we hung out, and Edu knew the band so I was offered the chance to rock out with them. However, since I despise jam bands and much prefer well-rehearsed music, I politely declined and said I was enjoying them play as is. Finally, we went home and slept.
Saturday the fourteenth. We got up early and drove to the Villas to stay at the beach for two days at the house of the twins, Abdul, and Abdul’s son Tadeu. All three families have adjacent houses, which is totally sweet. Block parties are plentiful. I forgot entirely that it was Valentine’s Day since nobody celebrates it in Brazil, so I’m sorry in advance for all the special people in my life that I neglected to contact. The love is still there, of course. The whole afternoon, we partied at the twins’ friends house with a pool, live music, acarajé, and cocktails. For the first time on the trip, I went overboard on the booze and ended up passing out by the pool for a couple hours. Whoops. Still, we had lots of fun. That night, we went to the Three House block and I met Milena and Renata’s parents and younger sister, plus some other family friends and Nanda’s cousin’s son (and her godson), Caulí. He and I are goooood buddies now. He’s five, and his energy could power the state of Florida overnight if he had plugs in him. Then early to sleep.
Next day, we got up early and walked the two blocks to the sea and started swimming at high tide. I met Nanda’s uncle Tadeu at that point. He’s been deemed legally nuts by the state and is now a ward of his parents. He’s not stark-raving or anything, he just did a lot of LSD in the seventies and is basically a stoner and a musician. He plays guitar like Eddie Van Halen! Super good, real amazing bravado stuff like Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Joe Satriani, Santana, and speed metal. He hates Brazilian music because it’s all about dancing and is usually pretty mediocre and simple music except for the percussion. So, Nanda took her shift getting beat up by Caulí while I struggled to listen to Tio Tadeu. Even though he knew I couldn’t fully understand him, he didn’t care and just talked at normal speed about his love of music and pit bulls. He’s a big fat guy with crazy hair and crazier eyes, and he and I have a very good understanding. The simple life is the way to go. For a few hours, we roughhoused with Caulí in the surf until low tide came, then we used the snorkeling gear and looked around at the colorful fish and urchins in the tide pools there. We saw a bunch of jellyfish floating right near us, so it was prudent to get out. After cleaning up, Nanda, Renata and I went to meet Gigi, Vicente, Bruna and Lara (another one of the girls that originally went to Reno in 2006) at a crepe restaurant for dinner. Renata’s new interest, Gabriel, met us there after a little while. I wasn’t impressed, but who cares. We ate some really delicious food followed by the tastiest dessert I think I’ve ever eaten. Then, back to the houses to sleep.
Tio Tadeu had some stuff to do the next day, so he tagged along with us when Nanda and I left to get her work errands done. She got stuck in an office for about an hour, so he and I stood outside talking. Or rather, him talking a lot, me talking almost none at all but trying frantically to keep up. He’s nuts, but really funny. We made it to Eduardo’s for a delicious lunch a la Julia, then he rocked out on the guitar for me for a while. Then back to Lauro de Freitas, then home to nap. It was Bruna’s birthday that night, so we went to a party at her dad’s pizzeria. Ross and Ian were there along with four English friends of theirs and twenty of Bruna’s guests. Everything was delicious and free, even the plate of brigadeiro candy for dessert. Midway through dinner, it rained like a monsoon in Thailand so we relocated indoors. For Bruna’s birthday present, I gave her a photo of me in my suit with the caption on the back, “now you can tell all your friends that you’re friends with James Bond.”
Feb 17th. Tuesday mornings, Nanda has class, so I woke up and tried some catch-up on my blog posts. See how well it works? Then off to Shopping Barra, again, to buy myself a sunga (like short shorts for men, very handy and great for tan lines) with Murillo. Nanda had stuff to do all day for school and work, so he and I rented two guy movies, Hitman and Shoot ‘Em Up, and drank beer in our underwear for hours. Sweeet. Then, his mom and stepdad, Agenor, returned from a wild night on the town all dressed up. She was a bit tossed, so we had fun speaking Spanish together. She’s learning and has almost nobody with whom she can speak it, so we trudged through a conversation about children and morality. Interesting subject matter for two drunk people in a non-native language. Then, Nanda picked me up and we drove back home to watch some Futurama and crash.
Monday, 02-09-2009, was basically my first uneventful day. I cleaned, learned how to cook some dishes with Ana, and hung out doing crossword puzzles in Portuguese and watching Two and a Half Men with Mariana. I’m actually getting much better at the puzzles (called quebra-cabeças). My problem is not forming clear ideas in the language, it’s just that I have almost no vocabulary to work with. A year of studying would do me a LOT of good and I can probably be to a highly conversational level within one year if I want. [This is a note to myself as well as an observation for you readers. I need to see my motivation when I read over this the next time.] Nanda went to work in the morning, and in the evening, we went to her classes. Her friends all gave her a load of grief for “dragging me along” to something boring like college, but I of course found it interesting. Especially her first professor, Senhor Bernardo. This guy is a trial attorney, and a damn good one from what I hear, as well as a professor. His gaze shows how much he knows and how keen his wit is, but his expressions, animation and delivery of speech says that he’s a high school freshman in theater class! He’s extremely funny and had me riveted, even in a boring subject in a language I don’t speak. So that was fun. The next class was numbingly droll, but a unique experience anyway. I met Nanda’s classmate, Wagner, who is a charming goofy guy with a lisp and a great laugh, and we screwed around in class quite a bit. I felt sheepish, but they didn’t care. Afterward, we visited a bit, all went our ways, and Nanda and I went home to relax and sleep.
Tuesday, the Tenth, another uneventful day. Nanda worked, I wrote, finished the book “Fight Club,” which is as utterly enlightening as it is gruesome, I highly suggest you read it if you want a twisted but accurate look into the manic male mind, and hung out some more. Nanda’s boss, who is also her cousin Tila, was really riding her, so I laid low. I ran some work errands with her, then we attended class again, only these ones were different. We ate temaki afterward (gigantic sushi cones), then drove around and visited a bit. Then bedtime.
Wednesday, February 11th, I spent the morning fixing Nanda’s laptop, which is an ancient piece, but still has some years left in it. With little success, I worked out and ran around town with Mariana and Gisa doing various things and having lunch at Nanda’s dad’s house. That evening, while Nanã was at school, Murillo and I went to see the Benjamin Button movie. I’m a huge fan, and it was interesting to watch since it had Portuguese subtitles and the audience commentary was all in another language. I believe I was the only English-speaking native in the theater. We had intended to make an 8:20 showing, but Murillo is kind of a space cadet and he got us all turned around and lost. So we made a later showing at a mall next door. Afterward, Murillo and I had a reflective discussion about age and how age is a state of mind only. The actors in that movie made a great point of that, so Muro and I rapped for a while. Then he took me home and went to his place to get up early. Poor guy has class every day at 7:00 in the morning.
Thursday, February 12th. To offset the lack of activity from the day before, I had a super long day Thursday. After waking up quite early to walk to a corner store and buy that-morning-fresh mango and eat it, Nanda and I cleaned up and drove all over the place for her job. I was her chauffeur that day, so I got to butt heads (but not bumpers) with the stubborn maniacs on the road here. After two successful errands, Nanda told me to wait for her while she ran inside to deliver a Process Suit. She said if anybody needed me to move, I should just circle the block and come back to the same spot. Assuming this was easy, I moved when a huge truck behind me needed the road space to drive through. Nanda didn’t really explain that the downtown legal district is like a bowl of Angel Hair pasta with one-way roads and freeway onramps and stuff. So, following her advice to circle the block, I ended up driving way south on the freeway and having to double back and BS my way through traffic to get roughly to the same spot. All the street names sound the same to me, so I didn’t know exactly where to go to find her. And, of course she had her cell phone but I had none. So, I parked illegally and bought a phone card, then called her cell phone from memory. Thankfully, Bruna happened to be at the same Forum we were, so she and Nanda vectored their way over to me and got me un-lost. Whew. What a fiasco. After another two hours in the car, during which I had to do the same routine again (wait idling, move if someone comes, circle the block) a few times, successfully, we went to meet Nanda’s boss and cousin, Chila. Chila’s newborn baby daughter is named Manuela, so we all cooed over her for a while and I borrowed formal clothes from Chila’s husband for a dance we were planning to attend that night. We killed some time, then got dressed up (Nanda was very posh in her black dress with sparkly silver sandals) and picked up her friend Dalila and her boyfriend Nelio to go. The graduates of law schools here traditionally throw a massive celebratory party. Each graduate can invite up to 100 people, and there were 18 graduates at this party! It was thrown in an old water park (which closed down since nobody wants to pay for water activities when the ocean is a 20-minute drive away for free), so there were slides all over the place and the bandstand was at the deep end of a giant, empty wave pool. It was freakin’ sweet. Everything was free, to the guests anyway, and the food was banquet quality. Desserts, fried shrimp-and-cheese balls, quiche, smoked cheeses and deli meat, uhhh, cake, ice cream, fried hummus balls, all kinds of stuff. Oh, and every single corner within the place had a loaded wet bar with top-shelf booze and specialty shots. Everybody was drinking flaming shots, Stunned Mollets, Mai Thai Bingos (a MaiTai in a festively carved coconut), and caipirinhas. Since I didn’t have to drive, I indulged myself quite a bit. Then we danced for about two hours to a very famous and popular Bahia band called Via Circular and yakked for a while after that while we waited for our ride. Fernanda works with this character named Gustavo, who was busy hitting on a floozy from the office, so we had to wait a while for him to seal the deal and give us a ride. Gustavo drove us home, along with his new lady friend, Fabiana, and we drifted off at about 3:00 in the morning.
Luckily, there was no work for Nanda the next day, so she slept in a lot and I was up writing for a while in the morning. After lunch at Eduardo’s, Renata came over and we had a musical afternoon. Rena doesn’t play guitar, but loves to sit with it in her hands as a good prop, so I taught her some chords. She’s a great singer, so we sang some tunes together, then she and Nanda cracked me up by singing together. Later, we all split up and Nanda and I went to swim at her aunt’s apartments. Each coastline apartment building has a trolley directly from the Rec Room right down to the ocean, so we had a private little pier and cabana to ourselves. I have some pictures somewhere, I’ll try to post them. After watching the sun set on the ocean (something I’ll miss intensely when I go back to Reno), we made our way to a large outdoor amphitheater to buy tickets and watch a band/guy called Manu Chao. Apparently, he’s very famous here. He speaks Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and English, so I thought he’d be really great. However, I think he must be an idiot in all five languages. I’m not a fan at all of his music, although the show was really high energy and the trumpet player was great. We coincidentally met Milena’s boyfriend Artur there (I thought his name was Arto up until that night) and hung out with him for a while. After fighting our way out of the crowd and back to Nanda’s car, we decided that more live music was in order and met up at a place with a decent Beatles cover band with Bruna. Also there was Gigi, one of the girls that I originally met in Reno in the winter of 2006 with Fernanda, and her boyfriend Vicente (AKA Tio Vi), who is a riot. The band was decent, and it was nice to know the music that was being played for a change. Bruna arrived with her current “paquerinha,” or potential boyfriend, Edu, who is also very cool. He’s a doctor on Morro de São Paulo. When we were there, her most recent boyfriend before Edu, an idiot “bro” named, stupidly, Ubu, was also there, which incited Bruna and the rest of us to take tequila shots. Apparently, the most socially awkward situation is to be at a place with a current and a former boy or girlfriend. It’s better to be flatulent and obscene or to wet one’s pants than it is to have two lovers present at the same time. They even have a name for such an event, but I forget the name. Hours passed there while we hung out, and Edu knew the band so I was offered the chance to rock out with them. However, since I despise jam bands and much prefer well-rehearsed music, I politely declined and said I was enjoying them play as is. Finally, we went home and slept.
Saturday the fourteenth. We got up early and drove to the Villas to stay at the beach for two days at the house of the twins, Abdul, and Abdul’s son Tadeu. All three families have adjacent houses, which is totally sweet. Block parties are plentiful. I forgot entirely that it was Valentine’s Day since nobody celebrates it in Brazil, so I’m sorry in advance for all the special people in my life that I neglected to contact. The love is still there, of course. The whole afternoon, we partied at the twins’ friends house with a pool, live music, acarajé, and cocktails. For the first time on the trip, I went overboard on the booze and ended up passing out by the pool for a couple hours. Whoops. Still, we had lots of fun. That night, we went to the Three House block and I met Milena and Renata’s parents and younger sister, plus some other family friends and Nanda’s cousin’s son (and her godson), Caulí. He and I are goooood buddies now. He’s five, and his energy could power the state of Florida overnight if he had plugs in him. Then early to sleep.
Next day, we got up early and walked the two blocks to the sea and started swimming at high tide. I met Nanda’s uncle Tadeu at that point. He’s been deemed legally nuts by the state and is now a ward of his parents. He’s not stark-raving or anything, he just did a lot of LSD in the seventies and is basically a stoner and a musician. He plays guitar like Eddie Van Halen! Super good, real amazing bravado stuff like Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Joe Satriani, Santana, and speed metal. He hates Brazilian music because it’s all about dancing and is usually pretty mediocre and simple music except for the percussion. So, Nanda took her shift getting beat up by Caulí while I struggled to listen to Tio Tadeu. Even though he knew I couldn’t fully understand him, he didn’t care and just talked at normal speed about his love of music and pit bulls. He’s a big fat guy with crazy hair and crazier eyes, and he and I have a very good understanding. The simple life is the way to go. For a few hours, we roughhoused with Caulí in the surf until low tide came, then we used the snorkeling gear and looked around at the colorful fish and urchins in the tide pools there. We saw a bunch of jellyfish floating right near us, so it was prudent to get out. After cleaning up, Nanda, Renata and I went to meet Gigi, Vicente, Bruna and Lara (another one of the girls that originally went to Reno in 2006) at a crepe restaurant for dinner. Renata’s new interest, Gabriel, met us there after a little while. I wasn’t impressed, but who cares. We ate some really delicious food followed by the tastiest dessert I think I’ve ever eaten. Then, back to the houses to sleep.
Tio Tadeu had some stuff to do the next day, so he tagged along with us when Nanda and I left to get her work errands done. She got stuck in an office for about an hour, so he and I stood outside talking. Or rather, him talking a lot, me talking almost none at all but trying frantically to keep up. He’s nuts, but really funny. We made it to Eduardo’s for a delicious lunch a la Julia, then he rocked out on the guitar for me for a while. Then back to Lauro de Freitas, then home to nap. It was Bruna’s birthday that night, so we went to a party at her dad’s pizzeria. Ross and Ian were there along with four English friends of theirs and twenty of Bruna’s guests. Everything was delicious and free, even the plate of brigadeiro candy for dessert. Midway through dinner, it rained like a monsoon in Thailand so we relocated indoors. For Bruna’s birthday present, I gave her a photo of me in my suit with the caption on the back, “now you can tell all your friends that you’re friends with James Bond.”
Feb 17th. Tuesday mornings, Nanda has class, so I woke up and tried some catch-up on my blog posts. See how well it works? Then off to Shopping Barra, again, to buy myself a sunga (like short shorts for men, very handy and great for tan lines) with Murillo. Nanda had stuff to do all day for school and work, so he and I rented two guy movies, Hitman and Shoot ‘Em Up, and drank beer in our underwear for hours. Sweeet. Then, his mom and stepdad, Agenor, returned from a wild night on the town all dressed up. She was a bit tossed, so we had fun speaking Spanish together. She’s learning and has almost nobody with whom she can speak it, so we trudged through a conversation about children and morality. Interesting subject matter for two drunk people in a non-native language. Then, Nanda picked me up and we drove back home to watch some Futurama and crash.
Morro de São Paulo, the absolutely most amazing place on Earth
For this post, my style will change a bit. We left Friday morning with Murillo to go to a small island about 70 kilometers southwest of Salvador called Morro de São Paulo (which I announced in an earlier post). I’ll just list things I did there rather than a detailed order, since it was more magical than reality and I can’t really remember the order so well. Lots of distractions, action and alcohol.
Made the journey there in a made rush thinking we’d miss our ship only to wait for a half hour at the dock, rode to the island in a catamaran, met some cool people in a volunteer program called Cross Cultural Studies (CCS) named Amber, April, Christina, and Gary (from Bolivia, New York, North Carolina and Oregon respectively). Made an afternoon out of checking into our Pousada, or small hotel room, and touring the tiny island ourselves, saw a pavilion full of live jazz and African drum circles, danced and drank for hours under a full moon, hit a crazy, huge outdoor dance club called Funny Bar and shook our groove things to a great mix of American and Brazilian music, randomly met Murillo’s friend Thiago (the funniest person I’ve ever met), his brother Bruno, and Bruno’s girlfriend Lorena, took shots and waded in the bathtub-warm water after midnight (under the fool, er, full moon). Next day, we slept in, fought our voracious hangovers with a delicious and free breakfast courtesy of the Pousada, took an all-day boat tour of three nearby islands (one deserted with a nude beach and salty, violent waves, another with only about 5,000 square feet, and the other one called Gamboa was basically the most beautiful place on the whole planet hands down) with Thiago, Bruno and Lorena and some snotty Argentinian hoochies that Thiago knew, bumping loud techno and hip-hop the whole time on our private boat. Caught small crabs on the Gamboan beach with our hands, I got pinched, watched small white monkeys fight over fruit, bathed in silty red mud called lama that sprung forth from a natural spring on the side of some cliffs, met a bunch of exchange students there from Minnesota and Germany, ate a massive moqueca lunch and passed out for about an hour in the shade afterward, headed back to Morro to clean up and sleep, watched the sun set in a 490-year old Portuguese fort, went out again for dinner, more moqueca and about four caipirinhas each (the beginning of a very sauced night), window shopping for art and admiring the full moon, watching live reggae bands for a while, more dance floors, more exchange students, and finally sleep again at sunrise. Following a sleep deeper than death and shorter than breath, we ate another delicious breakfast and set out for Beach Four at low tide, fed fish as they swam all around us in the hundreds, received deep but painless cuts on the razor-sharp rocks, watched a guy windsurf like at the X Games, drank coconut water, did crosswords on the beach, ran about two miles with Murillo through high tide (I didn’t think I’d survive that portion of the trip) only to charge up a one-mile hill and ride a half-mile zipline called the Tirolesa. It’s at least 150 feet above the ocean and super long, quite the view. Then we ran back to meet with the rest of the gang, grabbed our bags from the Pousada and check out, ate a little before catching the catamaran home, thankfully bumped into our CCS friends, waited for about an hour with them for some technical issues to resolve themselves with the boat, and THEN began an epic journey home. Rather than a two-and-a-half hour boat ride to the dock in Salvador, here’s what actually went down: an engine broke on the catamaran for which we had tickets, so they boated us to the island of Itaparica about 30 minutes away, boarded us onto a bus, drove about 2 hours to the north side of the island, dropped us off at the wrong location where we waited for about an hour in line to get enough ferry tickets to ferry everybody across to Salvador at about 9:30 pm, waited another while for the ferry to let us on, crowded aboard the massive ship with a bunch of cars, other tourists, poor and tired people, watched a fight break out on the upper decks between some zealous soccer fans as they watched a Bahia versus Vittoria match, watched a lady puke from seasickness, drank a bunch of Skol beer that a guy was giving away since he couldn’t have it in his car when he drove off the ferry in Salvador, eventually made it back to mainland, got picked up by Murillo’s mom Teresinha, and made it home around midnight. Our four p.m. catamaran ride ended up with a 12 a.m. arrival time. But hey, it was still really fun all day. I heard some great jokes and told some great jokes in return, more material for the rest of my trip. There’s an expression here that says, paraphrased, “we locked up our travels with a golden key” to mean that the trip ended on a great note. Muro said that right as we made it to the dock on time in Morro, at four in the afternoon. I asked him if maybe he wanted to take that back when we got home to sleep at one the next morning.
Made the journey there in a made rush thinking we’d miss our ship only to wait for a half hour at the dock, rode to the island in a catamaran, met some cool people in a volunteer program called Cross Cultural Studies (CCS) named Amber, April, Christina, and Gary (from Bolivia, New York, North Carolina and Oregon respectively). Made an afternoon out of checking into our Pousada, or small hotel room, and touring the tiny island ourselves, saw a pavilion full of live jazz and African drum circles, danced and drank for hours under a full moon, hit a crazy, huge outdoor dance club called Funny Bar and shook our groove things to a great mix of American and Brazilian music, randomly met Murillo’s friend Thiago (the funniest person I’ve ever met), his brother Bruno, and Bruno’s girlfriend Lorena, took shots and waded in the bathtub-warm water after midnight (under the fool, er, full moon). Next day, we slept in, fought our voracious hangovers with a delicious and free breakfast courtesy of the Pousada, took an all-day boat tour of three nearby islands (one deserted with a nude beach and salty, violent waves, another with only about 5,000 square feet, and the other one called Gamboa was basically the most beautiful place on the whole planet hands down) with Thiago, Bruno and Lorena and some snotty Argentinian hoochies that Thiago knew, bumping loud techno and hip-hop the whole time on our private boat. Caught small crabs on the Gamboan beach with our hands, I got pinched, watched small white monkeys fight over fruit, bathed in silty red mud called lama that sprung forth from a natural spring on the side of some cliffs, met a bunch of exchange students there from Minnesota and Germany, ate a massive moqueca lunch and passed out for about an hour in the shade afterward, headed back to Morro to clean up and sleep, watched the sun set in a 490-year old Portuguese fort, went out again for dinner, more moqueca and about four caipirinhas each (the beginning of a very sauced night), window shopping for art and admiring the full moon, watching live reggae bands for a while, more dance floors, more exchange students, and finally sleep again at sunrise. Following a sleep deeper than death and shorter than breath, we ate another delicious breakfast and set out for Beach Four at low tide, fed fish as they swam all around us in the hundreds, received deep but painless cuts on the razor-sharp rocks, watched a guy windsurf like at the X Games, drank coconut water, did crosswords on the beach, ran about two miles with Murillo through high tide (I didn’t think I’d survive that portion of the trip) only to charge up a one-mile hill and ride a half-mile zipline called the Tirolesa. It’s at least 150 feet above the ocean and super long, quite the view. Then we ran back to meet with the rest of the gang, grabbed our bags from the Pousada and check out, ate a little before catching the catamaran home, thankfully bumped into our CCS friends, waited for about an hour with them for some technical issues to resolve themselves with the boat, and THEN began an epic journey home. Rather than a two-and-a-half hour boat ride to the dock in Salvador, here’s what actually went down: an engine broke on the catamaran for which we had tickets, so they boated us to the island of Itaparica about 30 minutes away, boarded us onto a bus, drove about 2 hours to the north side of the island, dropped us off at the wrong location where we waited for about an hour in line to get enough ferry tickets to ferry everybody across to Salvador at about 9:30 pm, waited another while for the ferry to let us on, crowded aboard the massive ship with a bunch of cars, other tourists, poor and tired people, watched a fight break out on the upper decks between some zealous soccer fans as they watched a Bahia versus Vittoria match, watched a lady puke from seasickness, drank a bunch of Skol beer that a guy was giving away since he couldn’t have it in his car when he drove off the ferry in Salvador, eventually made it back to mainland, got picked up by Murillo’s mom Teresinha, and made it home around midnight. Our four p.m. catamaran ride ended up with a 12 a.m. arrival time. But hey, it was still really fun all day. I heard some great jokes and told some great jokes in return, more material for the rest of my trip. There’s an expression here that says, paraphrased, “we locked up our travels with a golden key” to mean that the trip ended on a great note. Muro said that right as we made it to the dock on time in Morro, at four in the afternoon. I asked him if maybe he wanted to take that back when we got home to sleep at one the next morning.
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