On the other hand, "How was Salvador," you ask?? "BELEZA," we answer!
As of the 14 of March, we have been in Santiago, Chile getting back to our Spanish, after 3 months of pure Portuguese. Though we could talk about Santiago, we thought we were overdue for an update about Brazil.
To recap, we were living in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil for about a month and a half. We were studying and practicing Portuguese, being tour guides for Loxie (Caitlin's mom), relaxing on the beach, and finishing it of with bang during our six days of non stop festivities aka Carnaval!
Salvador was all in all a unique city, very different from Florianopolis or any other part of Brazil we visited for that matter. It is known as the capital of Afro Brazilian culture and was once the largest slave port in Brazil. Because of this, Salvador has a special vibe and the people and city itself embrace and express their culture with pride. In the Historical center, Pelourinho (literally, the whipping post) someone is always playing music or doing Capoeira. Salvador wears her heart on her sleeve, and it is possible to feel and experience her soul even as a tourist visiting for a short time.
As Caitlin wrote in the last post, we had a bit of a hard time adjusting to Salvador at first. It was a big city, that wasn't very clean, and didn't feel very safe. Our little knowledge of Portuguese made it more difficult as well. Thanks to giving it some time, our room mate Aurora, Cora's Portuguese classes, and the visit from Loxie, we soon became comfortable in the city. Aurora, a lovely french lawyer who was in love with Salvador, introduced us to her friends in the city, spoke with us in Portuguese, helped us feel more comfortable in our apartment, and called us "Queridas (little loves)." She was really wonderful and helped us adjust a lot. With Cora's Portuguese classes, we both had basic Portuguese skills, so that helped to get us around the city more easily. It also gave us access to lots of tourist information, which was really helpful. Once we had these things, Loxie's visit was like icing on the cake. It was great for Caitlin to get to see her mom and catch up. It was nice for both of us to have a mother around as well and helped us to feel a little bit more safe and taken care of. Loxie coming also forced us to be tour guides and see the rest of the city. Up until then, we had spent most of our time on the beach. We took Loxie to see all the sights, visited beaches we hadn't been to, and celebrated Cora's birthday with a home made birthday cake!
Loxie's return home marked the end of our time in Barra, the neighborhood we had lived in up until that point. The day after she left, we made a move to Rio Vermelho, a new, quieter, less touristy neighborhood where were would spend Carnaval. We moved to a lovely little 20 person hostel called Albergue Pedra da Sereia, run by an American guy named Michael. It was a beautiful place, right on the beach 500 meters away from the main Carnaval circuit, so we could escape the crowds and the party when we wanted to. We stayed there for two weeks, and got to know all the other travelers as well as the staff. The small size of the hostel was really nice because we ended up going to Carnaval with the other travelers and getting to know them. We were all in the same boat not really knowing what to do, so it was a good set up.
Carnaval in Brazil is a huge deal and Carnaval in Salvador is as big as it gets. Salvador is known to have the biggest street Carnaval in all of Brazil, and it is apparently the largest street party in the entire world. The population of the city quadruples during this one week every year. Also, according to Lonely Planet, and Brazil's youth, Salvador's Carnaval is the best in Brazil. We thought it was pretty cool too.
Carnaval in Salvador is not at all what comes to mind with you think of Brazilian Carnaval. Most of us have the image of Carnaval in Rio (IE Brazilian Samba queens in sparkly Bikinis and feathers, dancing down the street.) Salvador's Carvnaval is more like the Rose Parade mixed with the new years crowd in Time Square. Famous singers get up onto huge floats called "trios electricos" and sing all day and all night. Each trio electrico has a group of fans, who dance behind the float in colored t-shirts, called a "bloco." The bloco is surrounded by a group of security guards and a rope. People pay money to be part of the bloco for the security, the chance to see their favorite artist, and the t shirt, which serves as a entrance ticket. The two other options for celebrating Carnaval are to be "pipoca" or popcorn, which means you are watching the parade on the street, which can be dangerous, or to get a "camarote," which is a sort of box seat, where you can watch the Carnaval parade pass by. All the buildings on the Carnaval circuit get transformed into camarotes. These camarotes can be as simple as fenced off bleachers or as fancy as a VIP club with included food, drinks, and DJ's.
In order to get the full Carnaval experience, we decided to try out each option. For our first night, we choose to get an all inclusive camarote so we had the chance to get a feel for Carnaval, while inside the safety of the camarote which was set up in a hotel, and away from the huge crowd. We had a great time styling our t-shirts before hand and were all decked out for the fiesta! We got to watch tons of singers at eye level, eat good food, and dance to the DJ inside in our camarote. They even had a hair stylist and massage tables. It was tons of fun, and perfect for our first night out! Because of the mobs of people, Carnaval can be completely overwhelming and so the camarote was a great way to get into it!
For the next four days of Carnaval, we chose to be popcorn. We spent our days relaxing and then went out to the party at night with the rest of the people from our hostel. Carnaval has three circuits so we went to each one of them. Each circuit had a different vibe, and it was great to experience them all. One of our best nights, was when we went to the traditional circuit in Pelourinho and watched the Afro dance groups preform away from the main crowds. It was chill, and we had a great time!
The last night of Carnaval we had a bloco! We joined the bloco of Parangolé, a really popular Pagode artist from Salvador itself. We had been listening to his songs the entire time we had been in Salvador and thought it would be fun to see him live. It turned out to be a bit overwhelming and we had very different opinions, about it. Cora thought it was amazing, and the most fun we had the whole Carnaval, but Caitlin was not a big fan of it. Though it wasn't fantastic for both of us, we still danced until morning and finished the night out watching Will.I.Am, and David Guetta, two famous western artists that we love! It was a great end to our Carnaval, and though we didn't go at it all day and all night, like the Brazilians, we still enjoyed it and got our fill!
After Carnaval we stuck around Salvador for a five more days before heading out for Chile. During that time we got to see the Camarotes deconstructed, where as we'd spent the first month and a half in Salvador watching them get built!
Today we read our friend Nina's Blog, who is traveling in Nicaragua at the moment. She has been writing a lot about the injustice and poverty she is witnessing in Nicaragua. We thought that even though it sounds like we have an easy trip, we should talk a little bit about the Salvador and the problems we see that Brazil has. We feel we witnessed first hand the economic gap there, and how it effects not only the people who like there but the cities themselves.
When we first arrived in Salvador, we thought that it looked almost as if you had taken San Diego, and stuck "Slumdog Millionaire" poverty all around it. Brazil has a huge gap between the wealthy and the poor, and Salvador shows it in not only the people, but also in the architecture of the city itself. It is a rapidly growing city, full of beautiful beach front property, high rise buildings, and fancy malls, surrounded by hills of favelas (slums). Like a lot of places in the world, the richer people are lighter-skinned, and the poorer people are dark-skinned. In Salvador, where there is a huge Afro population, and comparing it to Floripa, this statistic is thrown right in your face. The moment you hit the air conditioned, pristine malls, everyone inside is much lighter skinned. In Floripa, which has a huge European influence, the people are lighter skinned. We noticed this again during Carnaval. Our Camarote, which was beautiful and expensive, was full of lighter skinned Brazilians. In the Pelourinho Carnaval circuit there were certain blocos you couldn't be a part of unless you had dark skin. Many of the more traditional blocos had Afro music and dance and were created for Afro Brazilians, and lighter Brazilians were not accepted there. It was interesting and sad, to see the economic gap that Brazil has. There is seemingly no middle class, and it is very difficult to move from one class to another. There is a huge amount of poverty, and is visible everywhere. Though we have poverty in America as well, it is rare to see a person, who looks as if they are starving walking around the streets. Many of the street children look as if they haven't eaten in years. The streets are kept clean by people who collect cans to then turn in for money, and people will do anything for a bit of extra money. It seems that thought Brazil is had a booming economy, not enough of that money if going to the hands of the poor.
On a completely different note, we are now in Santiago, Chile which is very different than Salvador. Not only is Santiago the cleanest city we have been to so far, there is a sense of safety here that we haven't felt in a while. So far, we are both really enjoying Santiago and spending our days walking all over the city and seeing the sights. We visited a the Centro Cultural Palacio la Moneda, yesterday and saw two really interesting exhibits. One was on Violeta Parra, a famous Chilean singer and activist who we are both very interested it. Thanks to Lydia, we know some of her music and a bit about it. The second exhibit we visited was an art show about bringing the Americas together. It was a collection of art, from artists all over Canada, North, Central, and South America. There was also a huge outline of Canada to South America filled in with pieces of wood people had written or drawn on in chalk with words of inspiration for the continents and the others who would view it. It was really interesting to see what other people had written and we got to write our own message and add it to such a multicultural piece. All in all, though we miss Brazil's beautiful beaches and Portuguese, it's nice to be back to speaking Spanish, and it's very refreshing to have dry heat and not sweat all day, and we're enjoying the nice cool nights!
We're now being tour guides and exploring the city with Chris, Caitlin's brother who decided to spend his spring break in Chile! Lucky for him the weather is a lot nicer here than in the Bay Area!!!!
Our plaques we made in the museum
The entire project
A little taste of what the streets were like during Carnaval!
The Plaza de Armas, the main square in Santiago, Chile
La Catedral in the Plaza de Armas
