Salvador, Brazil

02/05
Hoy from Salvador, Brasil!
Today has been such an amazing day, and I haven’t even experienced the craziness of Carnaval yet!
I woke up this morning at 5:15 a.m. (2:15 a.m. EST) to watch the ship pull into the dock. The sun coming up behind the city skyline was phenomenal – I took a lot of pictures but I won’t be able to upload them until I find an internet café, and for the next few days that’s going to be next to impossible because everything is closed for the celebration.
We got off the ship at about 9 a.m. I was with a big group of friends, six guys and five girls.
There were women with ribbons waiting as we loaded off the ship. In Carnaval tradition, someone ties a colored ribbon to your wrist and you make a wish. Then you can’t untie or cut the ribbon – it has to come off naturally. When it does, your wish comes true. My lady triple-knotted my ribbon, so I have feeling I’ll decide my wish isn’t worth it (I wished for a pair of Christian Louboutin stilettos) and cut it off or else I’ll be stuck with it indefinitely.
The heat was stifling – I was wearing shorts and a tank top and I felt dizzy from the heat. I finished off my bottle of water within a few minutes of stepping off the ship. Before disembarking, I had loaded up on sunscreen, but the tip of my nose got a little burned anyway.
We separated into three groups and each group was supposed to take a cab to a part of town called Barra, which is supposed to have good restaurants and shopping. Our cab driver misunderstood us, however, and we ended up about a mile and half away from our other group members (he took us to the Shopping Barra – the mall, which was closed). It was a nice part of town, though, and we walked around for a little while, checking out the locals in their preparation for Carnaval. Ironically, the other half of our group, who we’d been separated from, was walking in our direction, and we ended up meeting again on the street by coincidence.
All together, we visited a lighthouse that overlooks the ocean, took a few pictures, and briefly walked on the beach. Then around noon we found a small café for lunch. We shared a few Portuguese pizzas – ham, egg, olives and basil – and the tab ended up being about 8 raels each, or about $5.50 per person, including drinks (Stol beer).
After lunch we wandered around for awhile, looking for some places to shop, but most of the stores were closed. We took a taxi back to the center of town, and went up the famous Elevador Lacerda to the higher level of the city. Up there, the streets were brimming with activity – there were literally hundreds of street vendors selling coconuts with straws poked into them, drinks, and small crafts.
A Capoeria group was showing off in the middle of the street so we stopped to watch them and got a few pictures. It reassured me that there were a lot of police officers stationed around busy streets – the Dean gave a lecture last night about the frequency of robberies and fights that tended to break out on the street.
We walked for about 4 or 5 miles, looping around the inner part of Salvador. As before, very few shops were open, but I did manage to find some postcards and a small souvenir for someone. We bumped into a lot of SAS students doing the same thing we were doing, and by the time we started walking back we had a much larger group than we started with.
At around 4:30 p.m., we decided we needed a break after almost eight hours of exploration, and walked back to the ship.

Salvador is a very pretty city – most of the buildings are on the top of the hill overlooking the water, which is bright blue. The buildings are very colorful – bright blue and bright pink most often. The downtown area is nice, with fountains and places to sit.
There is a lot of trash lying around, which discouraged us from wanting to swim at the beach because we weren’t sure what kind of things were in the water. It seems like people also frequently use the streets as a bathroom, but that could just be because of Carnaval. The smell was pretty foul.
A lot of young children came up to us asking us for raels in exchange for a picture (some of them were so cute we took them up on it).
I was very suspicious at first about the honesty of the taxi-drivers and merchants, but when I didn’t notice that I had dropped a 2 rael bill inside a shop, the shop-owner picked it up and gave it back to me. All of our cab rides were fairly priced – usually 10 rael (about 6 USD) for a group of four for a 10 or 15 minute ride. By comparison, in Puerto Rico it was usually $4 per person just for a quick drive into Old San Juan.
The festivities begin tonight when the sun goes down – more to come soon!

02/06
Carnaval was just unbelievable! It was such an amazing party – thousands and thousands of people dancing in the streets; I had an awesome time and took some great pictures.
I was very nervous when we first stepped into the crowd of people, and I was clutching my bag (even though my money was tucked into my shoes, my bra, and my money-belt) and watching carefully for anyone who came too close. I had bought a disposable camera because the Dean said digital cameras were often stolen. I was on my guard the whole night but after being led into the crowd by two teenaged dancing girls, I loosened up a little when I saw they didn’t want money – they just wanted me to dance and were trying to show me how.
I was with a huge group, probably fifteen of us, with lots of guys, so I felt very safe within my group. Locals would dance with us, wanting to talk to the gringos, and we met a lot of natives who jumped in our pictures with us, especially one 16 year-old kid named Gilvan who thought we were really cool and wanted to learn everyone’s name.
In Carnaval, huge buses drive slowly around the loop of upper Salvador, blasting music while singers and dancers ride on top, revving up the crowd. Each time one of the buses went by, every 30 minutes or so, it was accompanied by hundreds of costumed dancers in the street, who would give out high-fives and beads as they danced by. A singer would ask a question in Portuguese and the entire crowd - all six thousand of them -- would cheer in response.
The Dean had said that sometimes Brazilian men would harass women by grabbing them or kissing them, so I had my guard up about that as well, but besides a few blown kisses, no one tried anything inappropriate. The men who danced with us just wanted to shake our hands and pat our shoulders – I think they understood that we would be uncomfortable with anything else.
We’d gone out around 7:30 p.m. and stayed out until about 1 a.m. The original group was still together: no one had been robbed or hurt, no one had had too much to drink, and everyone was exhausted from dancing and laughing so much. It was a great success!