Stop moving and get a baton to your back from the Military Police

Thus ends the first day in Salvador, Brasil, however it feels like I’ve been here a lot longer. Sitting in the bunk of my dorm at 3am I’m going to let grammar and structure take a back seat and just list todays accomplishments;

– First up was finding our way to the large Iguatemi Shopping mall in Salvador to colect our abadas. An abada is basically a singlet that allows you to follow an “Electrico trio” (a massive truck with an overload of speakers) whilst in a roped off area. The area outside the rope, although considered to be more dangerous, is known as the ‘pipoca’ (popcorn). After an eventful afternoon of walking around the mammoth mall and collection our abadas, a great steak from a fast food style food court was a great way to top off the afternoon. I would also highly recommend ordering the abadas online from Centro Do Carnaval instead of going through an agent with middle man fees. However also note that all is not lost if you decide to participate in Bahia Carnaval last minute, abadas can be purchased on the day at times and the evening of, there will always be guys walking the street selling last minute abadas, albeit at inflated prices.

Back at the hostel, new friendships were formed quite quickly to band together and create a group for the first nights outing onto the streets of Salvador during Carnaval. Our group in particuar consisted of 6 who decided to check out the pipoca as none of us had anything planned for the first night.

It is with regret that I inform any readers that I took no photos out of fear of pickpockets, and rightly so with 2 in our group having had their pockets thoroughly inspected whilst in the living mass of human flesh that is a pipoca, but I’m going to give it a go tomorrow; only live once. If words can help in painting a picture though, the night consisted of roughly 1 million people dancing on the streets at any one time, a whole lot of Skol and the great company of Aussies (way too many around here), English, Danish and Brazillians.

I’ll sign off with the only 2 photos I have of Salvador thus far, one is of the main Avenida circuit for the Carnaval and the other of an electrico trio. One of these also contains a landmark icon very commonly associated with Brasil…but I’ll leave that to the imagination.