21/02/2020 – Carnival, Salvador, Brasil

We got up and had breakfast at the pousada, which was a delicious buffet, including fresh fruit and the cheesy dough balls that I love so much! The tortoises were mating in the hallway as we walked past. We all showered and then headed into town to find a cambio and a cash point. It was quite atmospheric in town and there was definitely an air of excitement around. It took a while to find a cash point as lots of ATMs have been borded up in preparation for carnival. We stopped at Casa de Roja, the restaurant Josh and I had been to a couple of times already, and had a cheap lunch - rice and beans. We bought some beers, a couple of bottles of water and some rolls from the bakery opposite our pousada on our way home and giddily went up to our room to start getting ready for our first blocco. We put some music on, had some drinks, showered and got into our sailor outfits, which were hilarious! I had glitter so we got that absolutely everywhere too. We had some photos in our outfits downstairs before ordering an Uber. Our Uber driver was called Bruno, and explained it might be a bit tricky to get to our destination because of the road blockages for all the street parties. We put our trust in him and just asked to get their safely. We drove about 1Km in about 1 hour, it was total chaos on the roads, complete gridlock with mototaxis whizzing past. We asked if we could walk but were told it would be very unsafe, so just asked Bruno to get us there somehow as we were already running late to meet our other friends. In the end Bruno drove us to his house, and then kindly walked us through lots of his local street parties for about 30 minutes until he told us we were in a safe area to walk. He told us which way to walk and got quite emotional when we tipped him for helping us out so much and caring about our wellbeing so much. He was a really friendly guy and genuinely seemed to want us to be careful and enjoy ourselves in his city. It is really hard to explain what walking through carnival for the first time is like. We were a bit nervous as we have been constantly informed and reminded that there is a fair amount of danger and violence during carnival. But we also had butterflies from excitement. There are street vendors selling £1 drinks from cool boxes lining the streets, there are huge lorries with massive speakers booming music of all kinds, there are people in their blocco t-shirts, drunk and bumbling about, dancing and excited. There are people begging for money, there are people with sacks collecting drinks cans from the streets in order to make money. There are sweaty people so out of it on drugs, cross eyed and swaying from side to side. There are people smoking what we assume to be crack on the side of the streets. There are huge happy groups of people dancing samba and spreading love, waving at you and laughing as you join in. It is such a mixed scene, but the huge atmosphere and excitement is palpable, the city is literally pulsing! We walked down to the beach using Brunos directions to eventually find our blocco, a mass of gay men in sailors outfits. We didn’t realise but Rohit and his Brazilian friends are gay so we are heading to predominantly gay bloccos. The bloccos get led by huge lorries, one at the front booming the live music of the singer who is doing a performance on the top of it with dancers and all frills attached. There is then a huge rope that is lined by employees, who act as security and kick out anyone not wearing the sailors outfit. The employees carrying the rope are local Brazilians and some of them beg us for money and even for our sailor hats so they can go in to the blocco party for a bit. The rope goes from the leading lorry all the way down past masses of sailors and beyond 2 more support trucks, one with a bar and an on board moving toilet. We have been warned not to be too near the rope as the streets either side of the blocco are filled with locals and can be a bit more at risk of violence. The side streets are absolutely packed and beyond that there are huge nightclubs with tiered steps which people have paid to stand and watch the bloccos from. Eventually, somehow, we found Rohit amongst a sea of sailors, and started to relax into the party a bit. We had some very cheap rounds of drinks from the cool boxes, and danced around a bit. It was the sweatiest party I have ever been to! Joe and Josh got hit on by some of the gay sailors, which was amusing. Every so often if you stopped moving forward the security at the ropes at end of the blocco would physically push the crowds forwards, it was pretty crushing - Joe had to put his arms around Henna and Josh around me to stop us being properly squished a few times! After the blocco ended at around 23:00 we walked through the street parties with Rohit for a bit, and joined some of the free bloccos, dancing some samba and enjoying the fun of carnival. After walking a little way we found a taxi that took us to our pousada in Pelhourinho, about a 20 minutes drive away. There was a local street party at the end of our street, which was nice and relaxed and family friendly, so we chilled there for a bit. Henna and I went home to bed at around 0200 and Joe and Josh joined an hour later after sending Rohit back to his hotel in a taxi.