Carnaval in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the world’s biggest street party. Some 800,000 visitors flood into the city from throughout the world and in total some 2 million people will celebrate throughout 25 kilometers of streets, avenues and squares.
Occurring around Lent every year its pretty much a week of parties. Id been scared senseless by all the warnings- from Quintessentially suggesting I needed a security guard, through to friends telling me I needed to carry nothing and put money down my knickers through to others suggesting that watching it on TV was the safest way of seeing any Carneval in South America. I, of course, ignored all- although I think in this photo you can see my money in my bra!!
I warmed up slowly by going to a street party the night before Carneval started. Thousands and thousands of people littering the street, some wild costumes, tents selling nothing but beer, every now and again a band pushing its way through the throng with all these people in the same coloured tshirts dancing behind them in a roped off area as they moved. It was a nice, slightly chaotic way to start Carneval.
When one thinks of Carneval they picture brown gyrating bottoms and a lot of peacocks and ostriches who didn’t see the end of the year. But its the Rio one that is all samba and costumes. Salvador Carneval is actually known for “
Trios Eléctricos”. This concept started in 1953 as a result of two musicians who decided to go out into the streets playing on top of an open float. The idea caught on and since then Salvador’s Carneval is like one big moving rock festival. On each of some 60 foot long semi trailers, spaced at regular intervals, there is a popular and famous Brazilian singer accompanied by scantily dressed dancers and a full band belting out their hits from some 10 metres high in the air as the truck drives down the street.
There is a choice of how to watch the Carneval in the area I went to. Either join a bloco (which involves being in a roped off area behind the singer’s truck…along with another truck holding a bar and toilets…and walk in this space, wearing a group t-shirt and dancing all the way around the route) - or in camarotes- which are grandstands lining the street that the trucks drive down. Of course there is also the final way of doing it which is just mill around in the streets watching the trucks and blocos past….but this is definitely the least safest way.
I decided to do the camarote thing. Now Carneval isn’t cheap….this was some $500 dollars for entrance to the camarote I was in - Camarote Salvador, which is the biggest and the best. I'd been given different views as to what a camarote was - one person said it was a grandstand I was going into (which was sort of correct as it turns out), another a balcony (also correct)…but I think either of those English translations misses the entire thing.
My camarote was a huge area containing…..and here I'm hoping that I didn’t miss any areas…. a massage tent, a makeup stage, a hairdressers stage, a nightclub, a ginormous tent serving up unlimited food from sushi to iberia ham, a vodka bar, a beer bar replete with a stuffed camel, an alcoholic fruit cocktail stand, a kodak photo stand, a band stage, a few cars being given away, a corporate area, a dressup costume area with photo stage, a beach with outdoor DJ, loungers and palms, massive screens playing anything from Red Bull Extreme Sports Movie clips through to images following the theme of the night (Egyptian), entertainers, you name it, it was there!
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| massages |
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| nightclub |
Add to that- multi tiered red carpeted open balconies running the length of the circa 150m enclosure so that you were level or higher than the trucks coming down the street, waiters circulating with bottles of Ballantyne’s or Vodka and mixers……amazing night.
Now after hob nobbing with the hoi polloi, dancing with strangers (synchronised dancing seemed to be very popular amongst the girls……..also quite worringly silver and blue eyeshadow!) and, given that few people in Brazil seem to speak English- talking to myself a fair bit I crawled out at around 5am- very merry and happy. However suggest you don’t do a camarote by yourself- grab a friend as its more fun!
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