I Love Brasil!

Bom dia! We left Salvador, Brazil 2 nights ago, and we are now on our way to Cape Town, South Africa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been thinking about how to start this blog since so much happened in Brazil, but I think I will just recount my days in order.
Okay, so we arrived in Salvador at about 6 am on Saturday, got our passports, and went to the Diplomatic Briefing. Throughout the briefing, which was extremely long, we were told countless times how dangerous it was going to be in Salvador, and all of these precautions we must take at all times. Basically, almost everyone (at least the people who paid attention) was completely terrified to even get off the boat. We kept hearing for the past week how at least some of us were going to be robbed, beat up, held at gunpoint or by a knife. Thankfully, I was traveling to Lencois (Len-soiz) for the majority of the time in Brazil, and that town is known for being safe. So after the briefing, the 24 of us who signed up for this indy trip to Lencois got on the bus immediately. We met our guide, Daniel, who we had all been corresponding with through e-mail since we first heard about this trip, and started our 6-hour drive. The beginning of the drive took us through Salvador, past the favelas, which were so interesting to see (I will post a picture even though it doesn’t do it justice). We stopped twice along the way- once for a bathroom/snack break at a gas station type of place and another at a restaurant for lunch. The restaurants in Brazil are funny you put whatever you want on your plate buffet-style and then bring it over to the register where they weigh it to get your price. Since I was somewhat terrified to eat the food, my meal cost only 2 reals, which is like 1 US dollar. While we were sitting in the restaurant it started STORMING outside- it got really dark and it was raining like crazy. The weather was like that for the rest of the bus ride. The rain slowed down a bit as we entered into Lencois, and as soon as we turned up the hill to our hotel, one of the girls on the trip spotted a rainbow- I guess you had to be there, but it was really cool because we were all marveling at the beauty of the city right before that. So we had like 5 minutes to drop our bags off in the hotel before we had to get back on the bus, and nobody knew where we were going. The bus dropped us off in town and we walked a few blocks in the rain to a community center. I can’t remember the name of the center even though I asked about 50 times, but it is an NGO that helps build community in these Afro-Brazilian towns. We walked in here, soaking wet, to find about 25 men, women, and kids playing instruments, singing, and dancing. Being the shy United Statesians and 1 Canadian that we are, we all just stood there watching until they started pulling us into the circle and dancing with us. After listening to them sing the most beautiful song I have ever heard (I will go into further details later), we did a dancing train to a different room. Here, we all took our shoes off and stood in a huge circle. Some of the girls at the center had scripted a welcome to us, but it was in Portuguese so we had to have Daniel and Cesa (I’m sure that is not spelled right) translate for us. They taught us a few songs and dances to go along with them. One of the songs, which is in Portuguese, translates into something about a snake losing a part of its tail (?), and the dance for that was nuts. 3 people start it out and go around the circle, and each time they get to this one part of the song they point to someone in the circle. That person has to crawl under their legs and then get behind them and start a train (or snake in this case), they go around doing this until everyone is in one of the 3 lines. Eventually, the 3 lines come together, so by that point everyone would have crawled under everyone else’s legs. It was really fun, and probably a good place to indicate the start of the relationship we all formed over those few days. For our last song of the night, we got into a large circle and a smaller circle inside of that. We all interlocked arms and were told to close our eyes and sway our bodies. All of a sudden one of the girls started singing a slow song and I am not exaggerating when I say that she had the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. After that we all sat in a circle and opened the floor to questions and comments. We had dinner at a restaurant in town and then walked back to the hotel, got our rooms situated, and went to bed.
The 24 of us were split into 2 groups, so the next morning 1 group left at 8 to go hiking up the waterfall, while my group left at 8:30 to go hiking through a cave. I am not going to write all of the details of that day because there are far too many. In a nutshell though, I have never done something so difficult in my life. I climbed through a cave in pitch dark. I don’t think I have ever been so scared to do something. We had to climb up rocks with nothing to hold on to and I slipped quite a few times. I was so proud of myself that I made it all the way through that. I don’t think I could begin to describe my feelings after we got back to the hotel. My first instinct was to just cry because of everything I was feeling. If there were some sort of scale for how much one steps out of their element, I would have been off of it. I exceeded any expectation I could have ever had for myself, so I know I exceeded expectations that others had for me.
More happened on that trip then just hiking though. We got to a place in the cave that had a body of water we were able to swim in. We were all disgustingly sweaty, so it felt amazing to swim in this freezing cold water. After we were swimming for a while, Daniel asked that we all sit in a circle in the water. After saying some prayers and Oms to mother nature, he turned off the one lantern that was lit. We could not see a thing; we were in the middle of a cave with no light. Daniel told us to keep our eyes open because we can still see the energy. This lasted for a while, but again I’m not going to get into all the details. It was an amazingly spiritual moment for everyone though. Also, when we got to the other end of the cave, some people hiked a little more to the top of the cave opening and bungee jumped off of it! I was terrified to do that of course. I got to take pictures of everyone hanging upside down though, and I got to see their faces when they got down. For a minute I thought I was going to regret not doing it because everyone was talking about how amazing it was, but I don’t. I did more these past few days than I could have ever imagined myself doing, bungee jumping would only be extra icing on the cake that I don’t need. That is only the first full day, if that is any inclination to how amazing my time in Brazil was.
After dinner and resting on Sunday night, we all got ready and took a bus to Palmeiras, which is a small town about an hour away from Lencois. In Palmeiras they have a traditional carnival unlike the ones in Salvador and Rio. I was so happy I got to experience this. It was just tons of dancing and having fun, It was also a good bonding experience for those of us in the group, Daniel, and Kikiu (another one of our tour guides). If I ever come back to Brazil for carnival, I’m staying there (I’ll describe my Salvador carnival experience shortly).
So the third day (Monday) we got to do what group 1 did on the first day. We hiked 9 miles! We hiked to the top of Smoke Falls (I forget the Portuguese name), which is the 2nd highest waterfall in the world. It was absolutely gorgeous, and it is definitely debatable which hike was harder. The first hour or so was just straight up vertical. My muscles have never hurt so much in my life. The next hour and a half was pretty much flat ground until we got to the waterfall. Hiking back down the mountain was quite the interesting experience as well. I, of course, was taking my good ol’ time because I was scared I would slip and go flying down the mountain, but there are these locals who like run down the mountain barefoot and don’t care if they knock into you. I did take one little spill and cut up my hand and legs a good bit, but nothing too serious. Everyone was so relieved when we made it back to the bus and then got back to the hotel.
Funny story: since leaving the community center that first night, you would randomly hear some of the people in our group humming or mumbling a song that they didn’t know the words to. We asked Daniel about it, and he said that the song is called Mama Africa by Chico Ceza. That is the song that they were singing when we arrived, and I am telling you it was just so beautiful it stayed in all of our heads. The entire time in Lencois people would randomly start humming it, or singing any words that they knew. So basically this is what you hear all day and night: Mamaaaa Africaaa haha.
The people from the NGO were supposed to be coming over at 8pm and it was about 6 at this point so Kim and I took a nap, and we were awoken by the sounds of the African drums. We got up, not bothering to see what we looked like (not that it mattered since our hotel room didn’t have a mirror) and joined the rest of our group and the adults and kids from the NGO right outside of our room. Here we were taught more songs and dances from their ancestors. We had another circle of questions and comments, but this one was a lot different. This time was more of a thanks and reflections on the past few days. Also, Daniel informed us that he would be leaving us that night because it was the only time he could get a flight. After all of the comments were said, and we thought it was time for dinner, Matt stands up and says the night is not over yet. I had no idea what was going on because apparently they had been planning something during my nap. Matt told us all that since they were so kind and welcoming to us, and taught us songs from their ancestors, that we were going to teach them a little song and dance from the States: The Hokey Pokey! It was cute to teach them that, and I think they enjoyed it. It is just so funny though because the things they taught us were so meaningful, such as the songs the Brazilian slaves, their ancestors, used to communicate with, and here we come teaching the Hokey Pokey, haha.
Anyway, after that we all went down into the kitchen and had pizza that the hotel workers had made (no such thing as ordering out). After eating, and attempting to communicate with some of the kids, we all said our goodbyes to Daniel. This was incredibly sad for everyone because he was definitely a major reason why all of us had such an amazing time in Lencois. Our new Brazilian friends stayed for a little while longer, and they sang Mama Africa for us because we were all begging them to teach it to us haha.
For our 4th and final day, we all had the option to either hike to another waterfall and go swimming or just stay at the hotel and explore the town until the bus back to Salvador left at 11am. About half of us chose to do the waterfall thing. My favorite part of the day: MONKEYS! There were about 6 tiny little Marmosets hanging out in the trees by the waterfall. I was literally like a foot away from them. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love monkeys, and these ones were really cute. There were some people there feeding them, but none of us had any food to give L. It was still cute to see them though. Around 11am we met our bus at a gas station to start the 6-hour ride back to Salvador. Since Daniel was no longer with us, Kikiu and Ari accompanied us back to Salvador, and also to Carnival at night for a little bit.
The bus ride back was pretty fun. Everyone was really excited about getting to go to Carnival, finding out about their friend’s trips to Rio and the Amazon, and just about getting back to the ship. When we got back to Salvador, Dave told us that we had 10 minutes to get on the ship, put our abada on, and get back outside to the bus. Well the line to go through security was more than 10 minutes long, but as soon as I got through I sprinted to my room and got ready. Dave and Kevin were still going through security as I was disembarking, so we did have to wait for a little while.
Now about carnival:
We got to our Trio electrico at about 6:45, and it was supposed to start moving at 7, but actually didn’t start until like 7:45. So all of us were just standing around waiting, and the local teenagers standing on the side of the street kept throwing water bottles at us. One kid flicked his cigarette, and burned Andrea’s arm. So we moved farther away from the side of the street, and I was keeping my eyes open and paying attention, but apparently not good enough. Someone, I don’t know who, threw a bottle filled with urine and excrement (trying to not be vulgar for my readers) and it hit a kid that I was talking to on the chest and sprayed all over me and about 6 other people. Right then I was ready to go back to the ship. I was so tired, sick of seeing drunk people, and I smelled really really bad. But I am a trooper and I stuck it out because “it’s all part of the experience”. Finally the trio started moving and we could start dancing down the street. It was a lot of fun for a while, but then our bloco just got extremely crowded all of a sudden. I could barely move my arms and we were all smushed so tightly together I could hardly breathe. So at around 9:45 7 of us made our way out of the crowd and to a smaller street. We found 2 cabs and made our way back to the ship. As soon as I got there I went right into the shower and literally just stood there for about 20 minutes. I have never felt so dirty in my life. After the amazing shower, I went up to the 7th deck and got a Gatorade, which I drank in about 5 minutes because I was so dehydrated, and a pizza, which was amazing. I think I consumed about 2000 calories altogether the past 4 days, it was crazy. I got an amazing night’s sleep that night.
On our last day in Salvador, Eric, Jaime, Max, and I (the Philly people) walked around the market and the upper city and went shopping. We were all pretty sick of the Brazilian food so we found a cute little Italian restaurant for lunch. After we were all pretty much out of money we found our way back to the ship and were ready to get back to the high seas. So right now we are sailing in the middle of the ocean, although we did pass some small island a little bit ago. Tomorrow (Saturday) is Neptune Day, and we have no classes! Woo hoo! On Neptune Day, it is a tradition for people to shave their heads, so last night we had a “Rock the Hawk Night” Where people who are going to shave their heads tomorrow would start by having a mohawk for 2 days. Today was quite interesting seeing tons of guys and girls with mohawks. Apparently King Neptune has more in store for us tomorrow, but it is being kept pretty hush hush. I guess I will let you all know what happens with that.
I didn’t get any mail in Brazil because the post office was closed for carnival and Ash Wednesday, so it is all being forwarded to Cape Town. I also didn’t mail out any postcards because I couldn’t find any stamps, sorry.
This is an insanely long post, and it is not even close to being everything that has been going on, but I feel like there is some stuff I have to keep to myself. I have learned so much about myself just in this past week; I cannot wait to see how much I will learn by the end of this voyage. I miss you all so much, and I will post pictures within the next few days I promise!! Love you!