February 17th (Part 2 CARNAVAL)
So after we got back to the ship, Priya and I fell into our beds and slept for about 3 hours straight. Yeah, we were exhausted.
When we got up, we had only 5 minutes to make it to dinner so we ran and had a quick bite in the dining hall.
After that we wandered past the piano lounge and found a bunch of girls congregating. I started talking to the few that I knew and found out that they were going as a huge group to carnaval. We decided to join them, so we rushed back to our rooms and got ready.
This time, all the money went in to our shoes and bras. And not just in any part of the bra, but on the side part of it. We were well aware of all the crazy groping that was about to happen.
At the piano lounge, there were close to 15 people which was pretty exciting. There were 2 guys among us. (the ship has like a 3 to 1 ratio of girls to guys) We were all really excited but honestly didn’t know what to expect.
We divided up into cabs and headed to Barra, which was the place the cab drivers recommended we go. There were 4 of us squished into the back seat of the cab, but the driver didn’t even care. I guess that’s how it is in
The drive was about 15 minutes. There was a lot of traffic. Once we got as close as we could get, we poured out of the cab. Now came the whole fiasco about the fare. The driver wanted $25 US, and we only paid him 25 reals. We knew that he was jacking up the price because we were tourists and because it was carnaval. I think we ended up adding another $5 US, but it was alrite. The people in the other cab got ripped off though, and paid a ton more than they should have.
But they had no time to be pissed off. We were at carnaval and we had to stick close together.
So we walked towards all the commotion and lo and behold, there was the intersection all lit up and jam packed with people. It was crazy. There were so many people in the street, waiting for the trucks to pass by, and when you looked up, all the windows of the buildings were full of people. There was faint music, but it was mostly people singing and yelling. It was a great atmosphere.
I don’t know where they found these guys, but there were two guys there who had done SAS a few years back and they were backpacking the
To get into carnaval mode, I got a large can of Skol. (the most popular Brazilian beer, kind of the equivalent to bud light in the States) I drank and thought of you Muna! I also got this popcorn where they poured something over it that tasted like a cross between maple syrup and condensed milk. It was really good. When we finished up eating, a truck came along with a band and it was AMAZING. The music was loud and so chill we were dancing, jumping up and down with all these people.
When the truck left, another truck came pretty much right away and there were tons of fans on the back of the truck which made it even more loud and crazy.
After that one left, we all decided to actually go into the street and be IN the parade. We could do that as long as we didn’t go into the territory of the bands and their trucks, which were marked by people holding ropes and moving along with the truck.
Now this is where the true madness started. In order to not get separated, we all walked in a line holding hands or hanging on to each other’s shoulders. At first it was ok, but once the truck closed in on us we were pushed forward by the people holding the ropes. It was so much more fun though dancing in the street, because you were actually participating!
The people from the camarotes would cheer us on.
Once the street started filling up with more people, that was when all the groping and wild stuff happened. Liz was in front of me and she has blonde hair. The guys would try to kiss her and grab her hair. Then they would look at me and yell “Japonesa!” and do the same to me. I swear we were all grabbed so many times we didn’t even know what was going on. We mastered the art of wiggling and slashing left and right pretty quickly to get away from it though.
There were some parts where the crowd was so big that we were literally squished and some of the girls who did have some money in their pockets had them stolen. This was also the area where the mud started to get worse. Since it had rained earlier, that added to the spilled beer and made a whole slimy mixture throughout the streets. All of us were caked with mud, but we didn’t care at all. We were having such a great time.
At one point, we came across a stage that was set up on the side of the street and we stopped there to dance. It was so much fun, mixing with the locals and having kind of a dance-off. There were some girls in our group who were making out hardcore with some random Brazilian guys, but for some reason it didn’t seem to disgusting. We were definitely sucked into the atmosphere of carnaval.
Every time we were ready to move on, we would all make sure that we had everyone and would hold hands once again. We all held on tight. It really felt like it was our lives.
There were some intense moments though.
There would be a line of police force marching through the parade to keep everything relatively in order, and people would literally separate like a wave when they came through. There was no messing with them. We saw them sometimes carrying people that had been injured or gotten too wasted to even function. That really was a sobering scene.
We continued down the street for a while, trying to scope out a side street we could escape into. One of the girls, Caitlin kept on saying “I think all the guys think I’m a lesbian just because I have short hair, and they don’t mess with me.” That was actually true it seemed. So she became our protector, along with the other guys.
Oh, and it was around this point when all of us realized that one of the guys we initially had with us was missing. Now if this had been a girl, we would have freaked out but it was a guy so we kind of shrugged it off. In reality though, I think a lot of us were a bit concerned. Carnaval was not a place to be alone, especially if you were a tourist.
The crowd seemed to be getting rowdier as the night progressed, so we decided to make an escape. We literally ran and wove through the wave of people and got on to a side street. We looked back, and three of us were missing.
We had zig-zagged and made sharp turns, if they had let go of our hands there was almost no chance they would know where we were.
We had all sort of gave up and started reassuring ourselves that Caitlin was with them and she’s strong, blah blah blah when miraculously they appeared out of the crowd!!
That was a gooooood reunion.
So our walk in search of cabs started. We passed through streets that smelled like pee (which were a lot of them) and drunken people being supported by friends. We walked for quite a bit. It really does make a difference when you’re in a huge group of people. The security level is so much different.
We did pass by some fights though, that were pretty violent. There were some warnings to really stay away from those especially since weapons could come involved quickly.
The cabs were nowhere to be seen. We ended up walking all the way to the main street and were about to catch a cab when we saw Josh, one of the SAS alum guys that had been MIA a few hours back. He was sitting in a bus and saw us too.
The bus was stuck in traffic, and it was so hilarious because Josh crawled out of the bus window onto the street! When he was going through the window, the guy on the bus who collects the fares grabbed him and we all thought he was trying to pull him back in because it was dangerous. Turns out he was only trying to get the money from him. He didn’t give at all that Josh was trying to jump out of the window into traffic. Hahaha.
So that was another great reunion for us.
We had completely missed the chance to catch a cab, so we just walked along the road and asked random bus drivers that were stuck in traffic where they were going. SAS had warned us not to take the bus at night, but there were so many of us and a lot of people from carnaval that we didn’t care.
We finally found a bus that stopped at the bottom of the elevator, so we hopped on. Then began our long journey home. Added to the cab ride, we had moved quite a bit when we danced down the street in the parade. Plus there was a bunch of traffic.
I saw a clock on the side of a building and got a bit nervous to see that it was already 12:30. That was because I had to meet up with my Amazon crew at 3:30am to get to the airport, and I hadn’t even packed yet.
OHHHHH boy.
The bus got to the elevator and we walked back to the ship.
Once in the room, I saw it was a little past 1. I threw random stuff into my bag, washed my ridiculously muddy feet and fell into the bed for about an hour.
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