seamail no. 15 - carnaval and more

about a week ago, we were in rio de janeiro. On 'fat Tuesday' (as americans tend to call it) or 'shrove Tuesday' we were sitting in our hotel room, watching carnaval (supposedly the biggest party in the world) on tv. Not rio carnaval, but the one in salvador (a city in the brazilian state of bahia), which looked like much more fun. Why weren't we out having fun? Because Rio, and Carnaval, were overall disappointing. They both had some really good qualities, and we had some real memorable moments, but how about I just tell you about it.

Carnaval started for us on Friday afternoon when we went to the official opening ceremony. This was where the mayor of rio handed over the key to the city to king momo, a mythological figure who is king of the night and of dreams. Accompanying momo were the queen of carnaval, various samba functionaries, and the rio couple, a pair of strangely dressed folks on stilts whose main job it seems were to try to get the small crowd of about 100 tourists (none of whom, it seemed, spoke portuguese, which is strange since the ceremony was in portuguese) to dance. The main attraction to this ceremony were to see king momo and the queen of carnaval, since we probably wouldn't see them otherwise. Their costumes were a trip. King momo, whose main job requirements were that he weigh over 130 kilos (about 280 lbs) and be friendly, was dressed extravagantly and heavily in colorful court jester garb with billowing sleeves, legs, and a puffy hat. The queen of carnaval was, of course, wearing as little as could possibly be acceptable (by brazilian standards). Her diamond studded thong bikini had no straps, which meant that somehow it was affixed to her skin both in front and back, and it must have been affixed pretty well because the way she was samba-ing, the bottom looked like it easily could have fallen off if it hadn't. She also had a feather boa and a huge silvery-feathered headdress, and some of the highest heels I've ever seen, which made her taller than king momo, and most everyone at the ceremony. We took a few photos, just to remember the costumes, and I even posed for one with king momo.

If you are anything like we were, you probably think that Carnaval is just a crazier version of Mardi Gras with a Brazilian touch. Not so, not so, my friends. Carnaval is all about SAMBA - make no mistake. Have you ever heard true samba music? The kind that Brazilians go crazy for? It is solely drumming, and someone yelling a song (that is usually unintelligible). There are few other instruments, besides drums, and you can rarely hear any of them (although maybe a tambourine if you are lucky). And the louder the drums are, the more the people like it, and the louder they are in turn. Upon a first hearing, you may find yourself wondering "is this it? there has got to be more to this, doesn't there?" Well, you are out of luck, because every song sounds the same - every band sounds the same - every singer sounds the same. The samba songs for the best samba schools are played everywhere leading up to Carnaval, and so what little you can decipher from the songs gets stuck in your head SO easily that you find yourself and everyone you pass on the street singing "Salgueiro! Vermelho! Balancao a coracao do gente!" Which is vaguely pronounced: sahl-geh-rhow! (the name of the school) ver-mehl-yo! (red - the school's color) bah-lahn-cee-oh ah co-da-sow do shgen-she! (balancing the heart of the people), for those of you who would like to join us in song.. We're still singing these songs two weeks later...I'm afraid they may stay with us forever.

As for why Carnaval was disappointing, it's hard to say. We never seemed to be in the right place at the right time, for one thing. Rio is a big city, and the festivities don't just happen just in one place. There are events every day in nearly every neighborhood, but as we found, the quality of them varies widely. One of the most popular things for people our age to do is to pay anywhere from 15 to 50 dollars to get into a Carnaval Ball at a club. Everything we heard about these made it pretty clear that they weren't our scene (supposedly, half of the party goers are half-clothed, and the other half are photographers trying to get photos of half-clothed people), and so we stuck to the free events all over the city (all the stuff we read said street carnaval is what it's all about). The first night we went to the Rio Follies, which seemed to be just a few thousand bored looking middle aged people eating, drinking beer, and listening to old, washed up brazilian male musicians in tight white pants singing lounge type music. This is just one example. The other parties and events seemed more or less the same. The whole thing seemed thrown together at the last minute, and not much more exciting than any kind of free concert in any city you could visit. There were usually lots more people on the streets than would normally be there, but at least 40 percent of the people were vendors or were there because their family had decided to sell something on the streets. The sheer amount of vendors was actually one of the more amazing things about carnaval. How can that many people make any money selling the same three things - bottled water, coke, and beer?

But the great parts about Carnaval included the main samba parade that happens at the sambadrome (see seamail 14 if you don't remember) on the Sunday and Monday nights of the festivities. We bought tickets for the Sunday night parade ($3 each), and sat in some of the bleachers with real die hard samba school fans (there were no other tourists in sight!). Being a fan of a samba school is like being a fan of a sports team. You know everything about all the best people, cheer when their faces come up on the jumbotrons (yes, there were jumbotrons), you wear the team t-shirts, their hats, you wave their flags. You know every word of their fight song (in this case, samba song) and know every play (in this case, hand motions that accompany the song). It was great to see these people get so excited and jump up and down, and snap pictures. We were singing and dancing along, watching the parade of samba schools, and watching the crowd. The schools that paraded our night were not the favorites to win, but they were all very good. Each school has 80 minutes to parade through the stadium, between 2500 and 4500 people, and between 5 and 8 monstrous high-tech floats. A HUGE spectacle, and something I'm glad to say I saw.

Another high point was when we went to Ipanema and found the 'affection is almost love' band, a group of 'batistas' (drummers) followed by a flatbed truck filled with sound equipment and the singers parading down the streets, followed by hundreds of dancing people (and, of course, street vendors rolling their coolers on dollies selling "ah-GUAH gel-AH-DAH!"). This type of thing happens all over town during the day, before the evening festivities begin. It's one of the more popular ways to celebrate carnaval. And actually, this can be quite lively. One problem is, they're hard to find. There are literally dozens of these groups, but the list of their parade times and meeting places was usually not correct. Another problem is, it's samba music, which gets boring fast. And the bands repeat the same song over and over, so after ten minutes or so, you're sick of dancing to that song. Yet another problem is that everyone wants to be as close to the truck as possible (which I can't understand because the music coming from the truck is so loud that the further away you are, the better it sounds) so people are all crowding together, pushing forward. This is made worse by the street vendors with their rolling coolers, who constantly run over the back of your feet. It's hard to dance long even if you want to!

Tuesday was probably the biggest letdown, though, because we were expecting it to be at least a little lively, and it seemed to be the most boring day of all. We went back to the Rio Follies to see a costume contest, which was supposed to be based on originality and a culmination of carnaval costumed fesitivies (which may as well have not existed). In actuality, it was dozens of groups of young men dressed in frilly, puffy costumes with tights and hats and with either small flags or parasols. Their costumes all matched, and were all basically the same, even from group to group, except for the fact that each seemed to advertise a different animated movie or tv show. There was the little mermaid, and space jam, and even animaniacs. There were also a few samba bands parading that night, but none were very good, and 3 of the 4 were religious groups so they were even less lively than usual. Then we walked over to the Lapa neighborhood for their big event. When we showed up there was hardly anyone there, aside from about 15 costumed folks dancing around in a circle in the middle of a big open space. After a few minutes they moved on stage and started singing anti-war songs. One was particularly interesting, from what we could understand. They were evidently singing about the Taliban, and calling themselves the Tali-bombas (bomba means bomb). When they started singing about how terrible the American government was, we decided to denounce our citizenship, at least for a night, and tell anyone who might ask that we were Canadians. Actually though, the talibombas were some of the most spirited, festive people we saw. Most people around didn't seem to care about dancing, or singing, or having fun.

The main activity at the street fairs and neighborhood parties and concerts is to sit at plastic tables and chat and drink beer. Nothing in the public areas is raunchy, or in any way inappropriate, so kids are everywhere, and usually they set up war fields in front of the stage wherever there might be someone playing music where they have battles with spray cans of foam. Since this area is occupied, I think even fewer people dance to the music than might normally, and those that do seem to just dance on their own in some isolated area. Certainly not the crazed masses of dancing, mostly naked folks that we had imagined and heard about. Rio's carnaval has a reputation for making New Orleans' mardi gras look like a church service. If so, mardi gras must be really tame.

When we left the states, we knew that one thing we wanted to do in Brazil was see a soccer game. Brazil is often considered the soccer capital of the world, and they have won the most World Cup Championships of any country - five - the last one being in summer 2002. After doing a little research, we figured Rio would be the best place to go for a game, since it is home of Maracana Stadium, once the largest soccer stadium in the world. Apparently, it used to hold about 200,000 people - that was in the 1950s when Brazil won the World Cup in 1958. The stadium also holds the world record for most number of people attending a concert of a single singer - this was at a Paul McCartney concert, but I'm not sure when. In the past few years, however, they have put in seats. Previously it was just concrete stands, and they could sell as many tickets as people wanted to buy, but now the seating and bleachers holds a mere 80,000. It was pretty disappointing when we got to Rio and didn't think there were any games going on during Carnaval, so as consolation we went to the stadium's museum and were allowed out in the stands to see its (fading) grandeur. We were surprised at how shabby it looked, compared to football and baseball stadiums in the US - the locker rooms were a mess, old rusted lockers with the doors falling off, only 2 or 3 showers, some plastic patio chairs...definitely not something that American professional sports players would put up with. We were also surprised, and refreshed, by the lack of advertising on and around the field. The museum was pretty tiny and boring, but we did get to see the famous Pele's footprints! One of the best parts of the museum was the other people there - a lot of men dragging around their families while they took tons of video and pictures of anything and everything pertaining to Brazilian soccer.

So we were resigned to having that visit to the stadium being our Brazilian soccer experience, when we learned that there was a game going on the very next day! We met two Norwegian guys at our hotel who were planning to go, and set off to see the Rio de Janiero state soccer (here it's futebol, said foo-chee-bowl) championship between two rival Rio city teams - Flamengo and Vasco da Gama. We bought tickets, $3 each, for the section next to where all the die hard fans sit. Before going to the game, we'd read a little bit about the best (and safest) places to sit, and it was always advised that we not sit with the true fans. Good advice. The true fans fill up the entire bleachers section, have HUGE flags that they wave constantly, a drum section that never stops during the entire game, one flag that can cover the entire section, and just hundreds of crazy screaming people. So not only did we feel a little safer not sitting with them, but we could see them better as a whole from where we were. We ended up sitting with the Vasco fans, and quickly learned a few of their most popular chants, one just being "VAAAHSH-CO! VAAAHSH-CO!" I must say, I have never seen more passionate sports fans - these people were constantly screaming, jumping up and down, singing passionately about their teams...until their team does something wrong, and that is when the kicking chairs, throwing cups, and hitting themselves in the head begins. But all is better in 30 seconds when the singing resumes. One guy behind us was particularly attached to one obscene phrase, which he kept hurling over and over at certain members of the opposition, and another guy a few rows down had one of the huge flags that seems to take tremendous strength and skill to wave vigorously. Overall, it was a lot of fun, and a real peek into Brazilian culture. Our team, Vasco, won the championship that day, though the game ended in a tie, and ran around with the cup and came over to bow down to their ever-loving fans.

Enough on Rio now...since then we've taken a lot of very long bus rides. We've been moving north bit by bit, and our first stop was the tiny town of Itaunas. We arrived in a neighboring town by an overnight luxury bus, which meant that our seats reclined fully into beds, they gave us a blanket, sheet, pillow, bag of snacks, and free water! The only downside is we arrived at 7 am, and had to get dropped off at some crossroads in the middle of nowhere to wait for our next bus. That was a little odd, but we made it. Itaunas seemed to us a lot like Montezuma in Costa Rica (see seamail 12 for more on Montezuma), in that it was a real hippie-ish town popular with young people from Brazil and elsewhere. We were there to visit the Projeto TAMAR station, which happened to be in collaboration with the Parque Estadual de Itaunas (State Park of Itaunas). The state park was created to protect the wildlife of the area, and also to preserve some really impressive sand dunes that engulfed the original town of Itaunas around the 1950s. Since then, the town has moved inland, and consists mostly of pousadas (hotels) and restaurants.

The TAMAR station there was very very small, understaffed, and having a lot of problems this year with turtles being caught in fishing nets. During the 2002-2003 season, 37 turtles were found dead on the beach. This included adults and juveniles, victims of drowning in fishing nets or the consumption of trash, such as plastic bags, bottles, etc. Probably the worst part about this is that before this year, there were only 9 known leatherback turtles that feed and nest in the waters and shores of Brazil. Unfortunately, two of these turtles were among the dead this season in Itaunas. Leatherback turtles (the largest species of turtles. we saw one in Costa Rica) are the ones most in danger of extinction and this is a real tragedy for a species whose numbers are already so severely depressed.

Getting out of Itaunas was an adventure of sorts. We took one bus to Conceiacao da Barra, and then another to Sao Mateus. There we learned that in order to get to Salvador (our desired destination) we would either have to spend 17 hours on an un-air conditioned, crowded, no bathroom conventional bus, or we could wait two days until the next better one left. So, we decided to take a decent bus to Ilheus, halfway to Salvador, and go from there.

Ilheus was an average sized Brazilian city...nothing too exciting, but not a bad place to hang our hats for a night. One attraction is a smaller, more welcoming looking version of the Christ statue that overlooks the bay. Another is the Jorge Amado house - Mr. Amado is a famous Brazilian novelist who died just two years ago. We've never read anything by him, or really know very much about him, but we've walked through his house! Apparently his works are translated into 43 languages.

The next day we finally made it to Salvador, which is a really interesting colonial city with a lot of history. Tourists are drawn to the Pelourinho district, which has been very well preserved and now holds many hotels and restaurants, not to mention churches. Pelourinho actually means 'whipping post' in portuguese, and the name refers to the large number of slaves who were brought from Africa into the port of Salvador and sold onto cacao plantations. Walking through the streets of this district was an experience - there are the hundreds of vendors who are pushing their wares at you (hats, musical instruments, bracelets, bottled water, leather sandals, etc.), the african-brazilian women who are dressed in traditional bahian dress cooking and selling bahian food (which smells SO heavy because it is made with a particular type of oil - dende oil), the semicircles of capoeiristas doing their dancing/fighting routines, the waiters from restaurants walking around with menus trying to beckon you into their eatery, not to mention all the other tourists snapping pictures! It's all a little overwhelming at first.

This whole time in Brazil we have been moving north, and upon leaving Salvador, we finally made it to the final northern destination - Praia do Forte. It was a wonderful place, our favorite in all that we have seen of Brazil, and would heartily recommend it as a beach vacation destination. It is a small town, really only one main street that is lined with small hotels, shops, and restaurants. At the end of the main strip you come to a small colonial style church, and, behind it, a Projeto TAMAR station. Upon arriving we unpacked completely (HOORAY!! You don't know how exciting it is to take everything out of our backpacks...so often we're only in a town long enough to dig out a few shirts...unpacking is really a treat) and decided to stick around for almost a week. Our hotel was lovely (we had a veranda!), the beaches were beautiful, my interview with a man at the turtle station went very well, and the whole place had a very laid back feel to it.

Unfortunately, we had to leave there this morning and return to Salvador...this is an interesting place, but it makes me nervous and the hotels we can afford are generally not so nice, unlike most other parts of Brazil. A lovely start to our Salvador return was to find the bus station full of police with machine guns. They had a large section of the station roped off and there were ambulances and TV cameras and huge groups of people just standing around watching - we found out from our taxi driver that someone was shot and killed inside a pharmacy at the bus station earlier today. I'm just glad we are leaving here soon. Friday morning we fly back to Sao Paulo for our last 4 days in Brazil - lots of last minute errands to run before we leave the Americas. On the 25th of March we fly, via Johannesburg, South Africa, and Mauritius, to the Seychelles. Exciting stuff.

That is all from here - we love you and miss you lots,

Liza and Jerad

Music pick of the week goes to badly drawn boy for the second time. This time for his newest disc, have you fed the fish (another great title eh?). we've been looking for this disc in every cd store we went near in latin America and finally found it for 8 dollars. It's really good: very melodic, with only slight inklings toward a strange circus keyboard/organ sound. Standout song: tickets to what you need. Also, deserving a mention is basement lard, a band emma, liza's sister told me about. They're funny and strange in a monty python/british humor meets brak from space ghost sort of way. Worth a listen at www.basementlard.iwarp.com. Enjoy!