Brazil: Lencois and CARNIVAL!!!

Wednesday, February 21, 2007 @ 14:40

Day 1: Coming into Salvador during sun rise wasn’t nearly as good as Puerto Rico. The sky was hazy making the sun just visible through the clouds. After being briefed by SAS I jumped off the ship with a group and headed to Lencois for an independent travel trip (Indy). The trip was setup by someone before we started the semester. Our 6 hour drive to Lencois (Chapada Diamantina) was beginning. Driving through Salvador started the whole smack in my face, in a culture shock way. The favellas or shanty towns could be seen for miles. It was an ocean that didn’t end. I was expecting all of this, but not on that kind of a poverty level. Leading up to Salvador we learned of the huge gap between the rich and the poor, and the whole reason why the situation here is the way it is. Once outside Salvador we began our journey through the country side of Bahia (the state in Brazil that Salvador and Lencois are located). I can’t even explain how beautiful the country side was as we progressed further on into Bahia. We came through a small town and had lunch. This was my first experience with Brazilian food and I must say it’s not to bad. We finally started to hit the mountains and I realized I was in the heart of what Brazil really was. Arriving at our villa that we where staying; we immediately went into town to be greeted by a NGO (Non Government Organization) of which the kids and adults performed, danced in traditional Brazilian attire. We proceeded into this room and our first interaction with people of another culture occurred. We introduced ourselves and asked questions to each other. As the night went on the questions got even better. Such questions as “What’s your view of the western influence on your culture?”… WOW!! Are you kidding me? I ate this stuff up; I loved every minute of it. This happened to be the best part of the trip. We walked from the school to a Brazilian barbeque and finally got the chance to relax. The rest of the night was spent checking out Lencois and drinking the national drink of Brazil, Caipirinhas (Sugar cane rum, limes and sugar, kind of like a mojito).

Day 2: Today we woke up early and drove to a town to start our trek to “smoke falls”. This is said to be the second highest water fall in Brazil. But more recently someone with a GPS measured both and according to the GPS it’s actually 5 meters higher making it the highest in Brazil. As a side note you will see pictures of me and our two guides. Our guides were locals right from Lencois. For all the SAS trips, SAS used guides from other parts of the world who “knew” the area. All I can say is everyone who paid for the SAS trips paid twice as much as we did, and saw half as much. Ok back to the trek…. We drove for two hours to a small town to start our trek. It began as a 1 ½ hour trek up a mountain that really gave us a beautiful view the further we got up. After we got to the top it was another 1 ½ left of flat ground trekking to reach the waterfall. It rained in the weirdest spots at the weirdest times making the trails wet and at times ponds (As you will see in the photos). After 3 hours of trekking I was finally standing in a spot that had the most amazing view in all of Bahia. I can’t even explain how high a 1200ft water fall looks like. It poured off the side of the earth and went down but towards the end it sort of “smoked” because it was so high. We crawled out on a ledge about 50ft above the falls and looked down with someone holding our ankles, it took my breath away (The picture that Carleigh took of me is the exact moment my breath was taken away, see the pictures). The total trek today was 15km of which 1 ½ hours was up hill. On our way back out of the town we pulled over on the side of the road to a large stream. We trekked down the side and came to an awesome waterfall and a spot to swim in. The first thing I did was run up the marble slate that the water was running down and sat myself under the waterfall. Once back at the villa we washed up and headed into town for a nice dinner. They brought out this beef still sizzling on this elevated platform, similar to a fajita plate. Dinner was great, did some shopping and went to bed.

Day 3: The day started out again with another trek of 10km. We arrived at this enormous cave that some people actually bungeed off the top, not for me. I realized after how professional the team was, that was my main reason for not signing up before Lencois. The guy actually was a camera man for ESPN and they use his jumps on TV and such. We walked around inside this cave and our guides lead us by lantern deep within. We arrived to the place the water had risen to the ceiling and we could go no further. Our guides told us to sit and relax. They then proceeded to turn off the lanterns and said “Think, you can feel your life through these walls”. It was pretty cool seeing absolutely nothing but hearing the sounds of water rushing by in a cave, you could feel your life. So we ate lunch; hung around the cave and watched people bungee. It was in the mouth of the cave so the people would jump and bungee like normal. But after they finished a guy would repel down next to them, hook them on to his harness. He would then detach the legs from the bungee and repel himself and the person down to the ground. It was crazy to watch. We got back and I showered to head into town with some people. I meet up with a few of my real good friends on the ship: Lindsay, Garrett, Alexis. I had some food and chatted with them for a while. The children and people from the other day had arrived back at our villa so I went back after a couple drinks with my friends. The guy who owned our villa cooked pizza in a wood fire over! I can’t believe I was in Brazil and having the best pizza I have ever tasted! Again, after dinner we walked into town and socialized with the locals at a couple of the local bars.

Day 4: I woke up on my last day in Lencois and headed into town, yes I am in love with this town. The people are amazing; the shops are mom and pops style which gives the town a charm. To make it better its way safer then any city in Brazil as crime is pretty much non existent in Lencois. After our six hour drive back to Salvador it was 6:00PM… again 6:00PM remember that.

CARNIVAL: Let me explain CARNIVAL for you. Salvador is a city of 3 million people. During carnival the population goes up to 6 million people. During this time there are 30 daily flights from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador and 50 flights from Sao Paulo to Salvador. Salvador holds the guinness book of world records for the biggest party in the world. I’m going to do my best to explain how carnival works. Walking through the streets are vendors, small parties and just people all over, I’m talking blocks upon blocks. Take the East End Fest in Rochester and multiply it by a thousand, yes I’m serious by a thousand. There are 3 major routes in which the trio eletricos travel through. A trio electrico is an adapted truck, with giant speakers and a platform where musicians play on. Around this are many people that make up the entire “bloco” and an army of people holding a rope that surrounds this bloco. In order to get in you must have an abida (shirt) for that bloco. For example Daniela Mercury (A huge singer in Brazil) was the performer of ours, and fat boy slim was actually behind our bloco. Our bloco had about a thousand or more people in it.

We arrived at the ship and had to be at our bloco at 6:30pm. We got there and the people holding the rope hadn’t even arrived so we made it in time. Standing with other people from our trip (about 25 of us) we relaxed and took in the atmosphere. My first clash with another culture was about to occur. Minding my own business drinking a beer, a beer can was in flight and flying into our group bouncing off some ones shoulder and then off me. “Why are they throwing beer at us” says the girl… No girls, the Brazilians aren’t wasting there beer on us… idiots, that’s urine. It amazes me how oblivious some can be to this entire situation. We are in a foreign country, we are of a different culture, and we look different. We stuck out like a sore thumb, we were the minority here. To make a long story short we had about 4-7 of those specially filled beer cans thrown at us as well as cigarette butts with the cherry still on fire. Thank god I wasn’t one walking away with a tattoo of a cigarette on me. Got to love being an American. I don’t want this to seem scary it’s only a select number in Brazil that feel this way, not everyone. Finally the people arrived and held the rope and our truck started to move. It was now safe on the inside and on the outside… well your at your own risk. It was awesome once Daniela started to perform. I had no idea who she was but by the reactions on the people in our bloco she was a big deal, she lived up to the hype. As a side note, Fat Boy Slim was in the bloco behind us and man… he was killing the beats he was mixing. It was nice to hear an American DJ and some hip hop. Wait I’m in Brazil… oooo yessssss, our pop culture is in every corner of the globe. We proceeded on the route for about 4 ½ hours before half of us decided to bust through the rope, venturing off into no mans land to leave early. I really can’t explain the atmosphere during carnival other then chaos and energy. We walked the streets and found a cab back to the ship. The walk from outside to finding a cab was intense. The looks from people, being called a gringo once again… made this experience one of a kind. Never have I ever felt so uncomfortable and outside of my comfort zone. Tonight defined what my comfort zone was. Once in the cab I got to the ship and walked straight into my shower clothes and all, and showered for a good half hour. Soaked my clothes in my sink and washed the nastiness out of them. I went to the 7^th deck on the back and ordered a cheeseburger and cheese hot dog with a smoothie to wash it down. I had a natural high from my experience and used this time to absorb everything while eating my proud to be American post carnival meal.

Day 5: Well after an interesting night our last day was finally here. I explored Salvador and all the shops and such it had to offer. I was able to buy a couple awesome Brazilian soccer jerseys at a good price. Today was nice spending it with my friends from the ship who I didn’t get to see but once while in Lencois.