Survival Guide to Carnival in Salvador

Many people have asked me to describe what Carnival is like in Brazil. It is not an even that is lived, it is survived! It is an assault on the sense and even for someone who has a space bubble as small as mine there were enough people to make me glad that I didn't have social anxiety disorder. Everywhere celebrates the festivities, but there are two major hot spots in Brazil for the week. Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia.

Rio is a great town with some amazing beaches and is know throughout the world as THE place to be for Carnival! From some first hand accounts that I have heard this is very true as many international tourist come here to catch some sun, music, and exotic diseases. Rio has the a stadium built on a stretch of road exclusively for the Carnival Parades. In theory these are the best parts about Carnival in Rio, and these are exactly the reason why we went to Salvador.

While all of the international tourists flock to Rio; all of the Brazilian tourist exit en masse to Salvador. While all those people are in the stadium watching the parades, in Bahia we were people Rio have got nothing on the Guiness Book of World Records largest street party in Bahia estimated at well over 2.1 million people each year. Throughout this post there are pictures from both as we watched the Rio parades on TV as a break from the dancing in the streets in Bahia.


Dave and my Peace Corps from Panama friend, Jon, met us in Bahia for the glorious week of chaotic madness. We spent the days laying on the beach taking momentary dance breaks from our attempts to turn our skin color into that of a lobster. Once it would cool down in the evening we would go out to the streets with several million of our favorite pick pockets to watch all the famous musicians from around the world perform on their moving stage.

We would take turns buying beer in the streets, dancing as the floats went by, and trying to get the other two to look at (in that special way) the pretty girls with five o'clock shadow, hair legs and baritone voice. I will admit to being headbutted by a pair of flying lips from a dude in a pink leotard and bunny ears who was almost a full head taller than me. I had no idea it was coming. After five minutes of laughter Dave said he saw the whole thing coming, could have stopped it, but then decided it would be funnier to let the whole thing play out as he said "naturally".

part of the parades. Lastly all theI wish we could have taken more pictures, but due to security concerns we did not take our cameras out for more than one hour in the week. One is just asking for trouble taking a camera around, even a disposable camera. Everyone is a pick pocket during this time. It is not that they are malicious about it, Brazilians just feel like if they can buy the next round on your dime they will. Being tall and blond is as good as wearing a neon sign that says ROB ME! We never had more than $15 each at any given time, and thought it would be fun to write offensive phrases on bits of paper and stick them in pockets like folded money.

One pickpocket earned himself a cuffed ear from Hospital (aka my left fist), he's lucky I didn't turn the other way otherwise he would have run right in Cemetery. Dave still got the best of one pick pocket by complete accident. He felt the ominous pokes of interested fingers, waited for the smash and grab, and when it happened he turned and pushed the guy right into a line of police that he had not seen. The cops caught the guy as he stumbled back, looked right at Dave and in a language that sounded like the adults in Peanuts asked a question. It did not matter that we do not speak Peanuts Adult-inese, we understood the question perfectly. "Yes," Dave responded and pointed at the guy, "he tried to rob me." and with that the public beating began. Dave and I walked off as the judge, jury, and executioner hauled the would be robber off for a fun night of pissing blood at his local cell.

After a couple of days the quantity of people started to get on our nerves. We were tired of feeling on guard all the time. We didn't get tired of the random girls coming up and kissing us though. We learned the all important lesson that one may not speak the same verbal language, but we learned that all speak body language.

At this point I shall leave the reader to use their imagination to fill in the details...