Anyway, today's update has a short Spanish lesson.
Word 1: Las playas
Definition: The beaches
In the last update, we were in Jericoacoara, awaiting the impending arrival of my brother Andrew (from Australia, via New Zealand, LA, Atlanta, Recife and Fortaleza - urg...). We managed to meet him successfully, and we've been travelling together since then. In fact, he is about to jump on a plane back to the States, joining a cruise ship to Mexico for his class reunion. Don't you wish you were in his class?
Anyway, we chilled out successfully in Jeri for another couple of days, managing to squeeze in a couple of swims and a game of soccer on the beach with some of the locals (our team won, believe it or not). Once we had fully relaxed, it was time to jump back on a long bus
ride, this time heading for...
Word 2: Los carnivales
Definition: The carnivals
Our first carnaval experience was in a town called Olinda, just north of the larger city of Recife, in north-eastern Brazil. Olinda has a nice historical centre, and a very friendly carnival. We were there for three days leading up to the official start of carnaval, and each night the vibe of the town was getting more and more excited. There were several street parades, and one in particular with a group about 20 drummers, 20 percussionists, and 20 dancers, all of whom happened to be female (this fact did not effect our bias whatsoever). And each night there was a free concert, mostly made up of musicians in their 50's (or later). Apparently the good Carnival music has been around for a while...
Next, we pulled what we now refer to as 'The Salvador Stunt'. We were going to be in Salvador for the first official night of Carnaval, but we didn't have any accommodation booked, partly because it was expensive, and partly because we had a couple of contacts who we hoped would hook us up. This didn't end up working out, so we decided to revert to our uni days and attempt an all-nighter.
Unfortunately, it turned out that we didn't really like the Salvador style of Carnaval, which seems to consist of rock bands perched on top of big trucks which are about 80% loud-speaker, all at 110% volume. These 'blocos' move around a loop, followed by people who have paid up to AU$1,000 for the priviledge of owning a brightly coloured t-shirt (the same as their fellow bloco members), surrounded by a large rope around the truck and the followers, and watched by people on ground-level (known as 'popcorn') and others perched high in balconies in the surrounding buildings.
After a couple of hours of being popcorn, we decided to cut our losses and worked on killing time in other creative ways. Our primary strategy was 24-hour fast-food restaurants. First, we hit Subway, but discovered that the special Carnaval prices were too much for us. On the way out, we bumped into a guy who was offering massages for 1 Real (about AU$0.67) per minute. We weren't really interested in a massage, but still had about 12 hours to kill, so we chatted with him for about an hour or so, after which we felt kind of obligated to actually pay for his time. A really good ten-minute massage each later, we were feeling relaxed and refreshed, and ready for the next stage of the plan: McDonalds.
We arrived, made the obligatory bathroom stop, and ordered a meal. Three hours later, we were running out of conversation points and started noticing that there were less and less people in the restaurant. It turns out that contrary to our earlier impression from a Portuguese-speaking attendant, the main restaurant was in fact NOT open for 24 hours.
For lack of a better place to go, and encouraged by the rain now falling outside, we decided to see how long we could stay inside before we were kicked out by an irate staff member. Our strategy involved not leaving our seats, and avoiding eye contact with all employees. The drive-through stayed open, so several staff stuck around, and so did we. At about 2am, the manager started removing the tables from the room, often having to snap them off the rusted bolts that were holding them onto the floor.
This seemed like a somewhat odd thing to be doing, but we stuck around anyway, until we were sitting at pretty much the only table still standing.
Deciding that our options were fairly limited at this point, we finally gave up our table to the wrecking crew. The staff turned out to me pretty friendly, and the manager even gave us a quick samba lesson (conclusion: Brazilians are good, we suck), and we moved on - back to Subway.
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