!!!!!!!CARNAVAL!!!!!!!!

Not quite sure where to start with this one. I´ll kick off with a brief desciption. Unlike Rio which is more a spectators Carnaval, Salvador´s Carnaval is a monsterous series of street parades that happen all over the city. There are two main circuits Barra and Campe Grande. The circuits that the parade takes (each approx 8 - 10 kms) is lined with 3-4 story temporary multileveled stands that people watch the parade from. The parade itself consists of many Blocos. A Bloco is a huge modified truck (effectively a mobile sound system with massive speakers) with a famous band playing on the top of it. Back from this is a support truck with a bar and toilets in it. Surrounding all of this is about 500 - 600 people holding a rope and inside the rope is about 3000-4000 people seriously partying for about 5-6 hours as the Bloco slowly moves around the circuit. Some of these Blocos stretch about 1 km long. In each of the main parades there would be about 15-20 Blocos one after the other. The rest of the city is going off with smaller parades and lots of other activity. This is a MASSIVE party!!!!!!!! In the four days that we were involved were lucky enough to go in three Blocos and got free tickets through our friends in Salvador to the invite-only Military Police stand on the side of one of the circuits. Here we could look down on the party from funky couches with free food and drinks. During Carnaval there are only two speeds, on and off. When you are not partying, you are sleeping getting ready for the next party.

Recover......

The plan was after the craziness of Carnaval to chill out on the beautiful island of Morro de Sao Paulo, two hours off the Coast of Salvador. The problem with this is that a fairly sizeable chunk of the Carnaval goers decide to do the same thing. So the Carnaval effectively moves across to the island (as I am sure that it does to many other parts of the country as well). Morro is an absolutely postcard perfect tiny white sand beached island filled with funky pousadas (hostels) and a few bars and restaurants. At night the streets come alive with cocktail stalls where you buy freshly made fruit Caiprifruitas (fruit cocktails). During our three day chill out period here we managed to see the sunrise twice with Caiprifruitas in hand. So much for recovery...

The Long Haul....

After a day back in Salvador we hit the airport for a 6 hour flight to Santiago, Chile, and then a 4 1/2 hour flight down to Chilean Patagonia. Scottito had managed to get himself sick again at this point so spent as much time in the airplane toilet as his seat. Seriously bad timing. We arrive in Patagonia at around midnight and walk out of the airport in our shorts and tees from the extremely hot and humid climes of Bahia to be hit by the winds blasting up from the Antarctic. My God it is cold. We are in another part of the world now. We hit the trails tomorrow, time yet again for some sleep.........

PS Click here to see photos from Salvador and Carnaval
PPS Click here to access videos of Carnaval

time to chill

........unfortunately for us, the rains also decided to head north to the beach. We took a 22 hour bus trip (scheduled to take 16hrs) to Arraial D´Ajuda, a beautiful, albeit extremely touristy, beach resort in Bahia. The major highlight with the weather as it was, was a day spent in the biggest water park in South America. This place had a crazy cool collection of slides, pools, eateries, and bars. To top of the day they had a stage erected on the edge of the main pool and we had a huge dance party in the pool to a famous Bahian band called Olodum. These guys are wicked.

After Rio and D´Ajuda, and with the upcoming monstrosity of Carnaval looming in the near future, some balance was required. To the west of Salvador is a National Park called the Chapada Diamantina, with a cool little town called Lencois in the middle of it. Here we chilled out with a one day hike up a river to a water fall and another day checking out two sets of caves (one a huge walk thru calcified staligtite/staligmite styles, and the other submerged snorkeling styles, as well as some cool rivers and stuff). We could have seriously spent some more time here if time allowed, and they could seriously have spent some more money on the road and the bus that took us there. We never thought a bus ride could feel like a rollercoaster.

PS Click here to see photos from Lencois

....Rio

´The Marvelous City´ ...well, I certainly struggle to imagine a crazier or more beautiful geographic location for a city. This place is just gorgeous with hills absolutely everywhere. One hill stops to let another one start. Spread around the hills are lagoons and the most beautiful white sand beaches and coastline. We got an amazing view of all this from the top of Corcovado (Cristo Redentor), as well as got the chance to take some cheesy photos with some crazy English lasses hallucinating on Larium... (there were definitely NO monkeys! not even ones that resemble Fordham)

Here we experienced the first really social hostel of the trip so far, the Botafogo Easy Hostel, here we partied every night with the coolest bunch of people (both Brazillians and gringos) - as often as not initiated by us. It also became a default standard to have a leaving party when you moved on, even if you had only been there for 2 days!

We managed to get in a futbol game at the Maracana stadium as well. What an amazing experience. These fans seriously support their teams (even if they are crap); an exciting mix of joyous singing and aggressive edgyness that never feels far from escalating into full scale rioting. When we were there the stadium was only 1/2 full - it'd be amazing, but perhaps a little scary, to see it packed out for Brazil v Argentina... madness.

It was about this time that we discovered one of the absolute highlights of our time in Brazil (and perhaps Aaroncito's favourite aspect of Brazil).... the Kilograma, or more generally known as "Comida e quilo" -> "Food by the kilo". And eat it by the kilo we did... They had it all... salads, meat, veggies, meat, desserts, meat, seafood, and did we mention meat. The budget places you *could* get a wholesome, balanced meal for only NZ$2.50 and the more fancy places with a full on churrascuria (where you could get every type of meat imaginable, and beautifully cooked to boot) only cost about NZ$6. We say you '*could* get a balanced meal', because Aaroncito developed a passion for meat that Scottito had never seen the likes of before - he would proceed to load up his plate with every type of meat available (a real meat fiesta) in large-cat sized portions, and then grace his plate with just enough salad and vege to make a nice garnish... Hmmmm.... Needless to say, this meat-eating diet played havoc with his estomago...

We also took a tour through a Favela (slums that grow up on the hills surrounding the city). The land that the Favelas are built on is owned by no one (OK, loosely owned by the government but gifted to the masses) There are also no building codes, no taxation paid, people tap in and steal the electricity, and the whole place is run under the controlling eye of a number of drug families. We experienced this first hand when while walking down one of the numerous winding alleyways past the food sellers and kids playing beside open sewers, our guide taps us on the shoulder and tells us to blend into the wall to make way for a 14-15 yo kid with one hand full of cash, the other full with a gold plated revolver (status symbol, this guy is seriously high up the food chain) and with a couple of grenades on his hip (the latest fashion items). We also saw a lot of the arts and education programs that there are trying to put in place to keep the kids from working for the drug families and bringing in 3-4 times as much money as their fathers, tough ask!! If you are ever in Rio, this is a serious worthwhile thing to do. It is an incredible experience, and the money that you spend in the favelas goes straight to the people that need it. There are so many beautiful people trying to make an honest living against the odds, ´City of God´ is only one side of this.

.....then the rains came, we were lucky enough that after coming back to the hostel after an allnighter we still had enough energy (or alcohol) left in us to walk (4 of us arm-in-arm like the front row of a rugby scrum the whole way) and catch the first cable car up Sugarloaf mountain. This meant that not only did we have the whole mountain top to ourselves but we got back to the hostel as the rain started. This rain did not ease up for the rest of our time in Rio (and unfortunately stopped our plans to rock climb up Sugarloaf... bugger). Time to head north to the beach, we thinks...

PS Click here for photos from Rio