Brazil was incredible. We saw the coast pop up on the horizon a few days before our arrival, it was rumored that Nianius (our beloved capitan) had slowed the ship down as an attempt to steer us clear of any Carnivál tragedies. Apparently a few years before, they hit Brazil mid-celebration and immediately lost several students to the enchanting powers of the country. They simply chose not to go back to the ship.
Different from Venezuela where I knew the native language well enough to get by, Brazil was truly foriegn. It sounded familiar but I couldn't make out any of the words, Portuguese was NOT like Spanish, not a bit. Glascow lied. I was bit terrified and a bit lost as we hadn't the faintest of idea as to where to go. We had heard about Peleourinho, the West Village of Salvador, it was filled with artist boutiques and gift shops and the decorations were intact from their very own Carnivál celebration. Huge Clowns with bright red noses and electric purple and turquoise banners were strewn from window ledge to window ledge through the pastel village nestled high on the hill above the main city. To get there we walked from the ship yard through downtown, past the Marketplace and to the elevator. A giant elevator that carries people from the lower city to the upper city for five cents a ride. It was the neatest thing by far, since we had all found Mc Donald's and had our Big Mac fix.
At the top of Salvador we walked east and then west and basically all around seeing all we could see in a day, children selling goodluck ribbons, women smelling pungent dried shrimp delcacies, Men selling helados, Payphones that looked like coconut trees and easter eggs, walls in colors of Tangerines, Gooseberries, Limes and Lilacs and cheerful Birmbaum music filled the alleyways, Capoeristas feigning combat on the corners of Pastel buildings and in antiquated courtyards children laughed, cheap beer and dancing children, brilliant liquors and bountifully bussomed women, Brazil was beautiful to say the least. Filled with enough culture to absorb for years on end.
It did smell funny however, I'd be lying if I left that out, and not funny in a way that makes you laugh, but funny in the way that makes you pull your collar up overyour nose in hopes that your perfume might overpower the stench. It was definitely not a good smell. Mostly I believe it came from the fritter like sandwiches the women sold on the streets. That and the smell of rotting coconuts and sugarcane. It probably one of any of those tasty delights which help me for the first time ever encounter food poisoning. Boy that was fun, I never knew one could excrete fluid from every cavity of their body at one time, I didn't know it was possible, oh the things you learn when you travel the world!
While I was there I went to a little circus in a tent that seemed to be pitched on the side of a highway, rather randomly and far from town. It was the Projecto Axé Circus, a group that takes some of the absurdly high numbered homeless children in Bahia and makes them circus stars, well I guess it's one way to keep them off the streets. They were actually quite good, and they all were SO beautiful. They had clowns and they had trapeze artists and they had contortionists and gymnists, it made me want to run away and join the circus. These children had such grace and dexterity I was floored in amazement!
These kids had so much strength in the face of their adversity and I couldn't help but think, here we are these snotty rich upperclass kids floating at sea on a virtual palace in comparison to thier homes or lack there of, and we we think everyone is out to have what we have and hold so tight and cling so close to our world goods as if it symbolizes and contains who we are, and these kids who have nothing give of themselves and their belongings so openly and freely and with such adoration of the world.
For example on the beach not far from the city my friends and I were approached by a man who was crossed legged and hopping around the sand with his clenched fists, he had obviously been afflicted with some terrible disease and could not walk. My friend, started to gather up our things and horde them beside her in fear the man would lunge at her take her gucci bag and race off down the beach. I was a little appalled by her attitude toward this man who actually cried at her reaction, thinking he had disgusted her.
Then again, there were other days I should have been more cautious, like the day my sneakers were stolen from my towel as I napped in the sun, and the time I was engaged in conversation with a man who called himself super boy, and who apparently thought I was his super girl, and who found it none too cool that I took his picture. Also there was the crazy lady who clearly forgot her medication that morning, and who tried to attack me, or maybe she wanted to steal my hair, I couldn't tell.
So Brazil wasn't safe, but what's an adventure without a little danger? I went around the world, not Epcot Center for god's sake!