Salvador, Brazil

Bon dia! Tudo bem? We arrived in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil at about 6 am (0600 hours for us ship dwellers) on February 5^th. Now, any of you who are following the trip by using the Semester at Sea website itinerary might be saying (but more likely you're not saying it), "But wait, it says 0800, and ships are always prompt." This might be true, but we arrived in Salvador on the final day of a little celebration called Carnival. Maybe you've heard of it. Millions of people fill the streets of Salvador, as well as the other cities in Brazil and dance as floats and musicians pass them. Not only were millions of people going to be in Salvador, but along with them, six other cruise ships were scheduled to come into the same port at 0800. That just wasn't going to work for the MV Explorer so Captain Roman pulled some strings and got us into port a few hours earlier. And boy am I glad he did. As we were pulling into Salvador the sun was just coming up behind some of the skyscrapers in the business district. It was a slightly overcast day, which made the sunrise and the clouds mix causing the sky to look as if it was on fire. It was a very interesting ride into port. We passed huge carrier ships sitting right next to small, rickety boats with local people working at sunrise to bring money home to their families. As we departed the ship, Bahian women dressed in elaborated colored dresses complete with hoop skirts tied "bonfim" bracelets to our wrists. They are tied three times and the wearer of the bracelet is supposed to make three wishes. When the bracelet naturally falls off the wishes come true, but it cannot be removed.

Salvador was built on a hill by the Portuguese to protect it from attacks. Today there is a large elevator that takes residents and visitors to the upper part of the city. The upper city is called Pelhourino and it is an "old town" district that still has a very traditional feel. The streets are paved with cobblestones and the streets are very narrow similar to some of the areas in Europe. (or at least similar to the two areas in Europe that I've been to). This is the district that we spent most of the first day in Brazil shopping, eating lunch, and being slightly paranoid about the night's events. Now, before we arrived in Brazil, certain members of the faculty had scared us slightly about Salvador and Brazilian locals. I think the majority of the students were convinced that they would not be returning to the ship completely in tact. The night before we reached Salvador, a few faculty members and Brazilian students did what they could to calm us down, however it still seemed that there was some nervousness mixed in with the excitement. As it got darker, we returned to the ship to get ready for Carnival. My friend Katrina and I were with a tour group that was going to take us up to the Pelhourino district for a more traditional Carnival where we would later meet the rest of our friends who were basically doing the same things we were, they were just smart enough not to pay the $35 for the tour. The tour guides led us up to Pelhourino, however this time, we did not take the elevator. No, we walked up to the district through a neighborhood that would be considered a less than desirable location, for those of you in the real estate business. It felt like we were walking through a movie set, none of it felt real. There were dogs roaming around, children sleeping on the streets, men in the windows of their houses staring out the window at us. Fortunately, we had been escorted through the neighborhood by security staff, but our tour guide told us after we were safe to, "forget that street exists. Take the elevator back down." (Sorry Mom and Dad). We were greeted in the Pelhourino by dancers and musicians all singing and dancing with their different groups. In front of us was a huge stage lit up in a mosaic type pattern reading "Capoeira," the Brazilian martial art dance, which is very popular in Salvador. Two men mimic kicking and hitting each other to a very intense drumming music. This scene was all over Salvador on the night of Carnival.

We walked around Salvador dancing to the music, and watching brass marching bands stroll down the streets followed by people dressed in costumes made of all types of material, including some elaborate costumes that look as though they were made of foil.

Down the street, the modern day Carnival was taking place. As we walked to the elevator we passed huge floats with bands playing on top of them. Some of the most famous performers in Brazil were present for the event including Ivete Sangelo, the proclaimed Queen of Carnival. This was as far as we were willing to venture, for down the road as the scene paraded closer to the beach, activity became a little less "family-oriented." My Carnival was cut short because I had to meet in the ship's Union at 0230 to head to Rio de Janeiro, however since we have returned to the ship, Carnival stories have been spreading like wildfire. Several people were punched and had things stolen from them, girls were pushed to the street, someone saw another person get their hand cut off for stealing, and I think there were even some UFO sightings. Who knows what really happened, but Carnival was complete mayhem; for most of us, in a very wonderful way.

I arrived back on the ship at around midnight, tried to get a few hours of sleep and then stumbled to the Union at 0230 to head to Rio de Janeiro. There were two groups heading to Rio. Mine, which left at that ungodly hour, and another group, which did not have to leave until 0615. Can you guess which group got there first? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't mine. We had a 0445 flight out of the Salvador airport, which was about an hour and fifteen minutes to Belo Horizonte, where we had a three hour layover, before leaving at 1035 to Rio. We arrived at the hotel at 1200 only to find out that Group B had arrived at 1000. Oh well, at least we have a story about our 7 hour travels to Rio. (By the way a direct flight is an hour and forty minutes long). That day we didn't do a whole lot. It was raining when we arrived to Rio meaning that we couldn't see much when we flew in or drove to our hotel. That was ok because most of our eyes were closed anyway. We ate lunch at a little restaurant near our hotel and then spent much of the rest of the day watching the WB in English! This was all ok because the next two days were jammed packed with Rio de Janeiro action. We woke up at a reasonable hour, waited for the students who had not gone to bed at a reasonable hour and then left for Mangueira, a favela (slum) in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. If you've ever seen pictures of Rio, you know it is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Steep hills jut out of the city and out of the surrounding ocean. At the heart of the city is the Tijuca rainforest, which houses some of the greenest areas in the world, just minutes away from skyscrapers. The city has just about everything, except maybe skiing.

Recently, Mangueira has received large donations from people and several companies, who have built sports complexes and schools in the middle of the slum. Since the project was developed, Bill Clinton and several other names have visited the area. The soccer field had artificial turf and was well maintained. The community has even sent several athletes to the Pan-Am games. Prior to the donations, Mangueira had approximately 45% of its children enrolled in schools. Today, 95% of the students go to one of the local schools. The reason for this spike is that since the sports complexes and extracurricular activities were added to the community, a rule was put into place saying that if a student is to participate in any of the complex programs, they must be regularly attending school.

Carnival in Rio is different than in Salvador. The favelas each have samba schools that build the floats, construct acts, and write songs for the parade where they are judged and given prizes. Mangueira is one of the samba school powerhouses in the area. We were able to visit the school in which they practice from July until February every year. Unfortunately, we arrived just days after Carnival and the school was empty, however we were able to see the pink and green colors of Mangueira draped all over the large space. The equivalent of luxury sky-boxes surrounded the second floor of the building looking our on the samba activities, with the names of the box owner painted on the outside.

After Mangueira, we took our tour bus out of the favelas and to Sugar Loaf mountain, a tall, narrow mountain right on the edge of the water. To get to the top of Sugar Loaf, we had to take two cable cars. These aren't cable cars like in San Francisco, no, they are literally little cars that hang on a cable and ascend the mountain in mid-air. They're fun as long as you don't think about what would happen in the cable snapped. When we finally made it to the top, the view was gorgeous. We lucked out because the day before the city had been completely overcast, and apparently on days like this, nothing is visible from Sugar Loaf. Although there was still some haze, from the top we could see everything in Rio; Copacabana beach, the city, the landscape and the famous Christ the Redeemer statue on top of Corcovado Mountain peaking in and out of the clouds. The view was spectacular, although this was only the third most memorable event of the day in most of our minds, meaning that the day only got better from here.

After Sugar Loaf it was about two in the afternoon and if you can imagine what it's like being around seventeen starving twenty year olds, let's just say it's a good thing we were on our way to lunch. We loaded into the bus and headed to Marius restaurant along Copacabana near our hotel. Marius is a churrascaria restaurant, which are numerous in Brazil. The restaurants are all you can eat buffet style. But these are buffets as we generally think of them, with semi-edible food that has been sitting out for awhile and is picked over. This buffet had every type of seafood, fruit, vegetable, sushi, soup, dessert you can imagine and that wasn't even where we got most of our food. When we sat down, men dressed somewhat in pirate garb walked around with meat on large trays and some with huge slabs of steak on skewers that they carved off right onto plates. In the middle of our outdoor, cabana-like restaurant, a group of performers walked in. Three men playing drums and guitars and one woman costumed similar to a Vegas showgirl began playing, singing and dancing for us, getting their audience involved by having us wave our napkins in the air, homer-hankie style. This performance lasted twenty minutes or so and by the end of the meal, we were completely stuffed and ready to rest up before one of the highlights of the trip. Futbol!

The futbol game was not originally in our itinerary, but our tour guide was able to get tickets for both groups of Semester at Sea students. We arrived at the game dressed in our somewhat touristy outfits of tennis shows, t-shirts and the ever prevalent money-belt, but one of the guides found a man on the street selling jerseys and was able to talk him down to 30 reais each. The stadium was huge, the biggest in the world fitting 160,000 people with a view of Christ the Redeemer just opposite our seats. There was nowhere near that many on the day of our game as it was just a Rio de Janeiro league game between Flamengo and Volta. Flamengo, from what I gathered, are the Yankees of the Rio league. They have a history of being the best and you either love 'em or hate 'em. For the night, we were on the side that loved them. Sixty Semester at Sea walked into the mostly empty stadium into the most crowded section. Fans were covered in black and red attire and just before the kickoff, people raised monster sized flags and started waving them as the rest of the crowd sang. We figured that this was just their kickoff tradition, however this continued the entire game. The fans sang song after song in Portuguese while waving these huge red and black flags, only letting up for halftime. It really put most of our sporting events to shame. Flamengo won the game 2-1 although there were a few scrambles for the ball right in front of the goal for Volta with under three minutes left. We left the stadium exhausted and happy, ready for the next day's events.

The final day in Rio we woke up to an amazing complimentary breakfast of fresh fruit and pastries before climbing into twelve seater open air 4x4 jeeps to Corcovado and Christ the Redeemer. We drove through the Tijuca rainforest for about an hour. On the way to the rainforest, we were driving through the city in these jeeps and a bus driver begins to honk at us and point at the front of our jeep. My immediate thought was that we had a flat tire, but the driver opened the passenger door at a stoplight, closed it and continued on with the trip. We made it up to Christ the Redeemer with no problems, but remember that little story because it will be relevant a bit later.

The Christ the Redeemer statue was massive and truly awe-inspiring. Tourists crowded around to take pictures. People were lying on their backs to get the entire statue in the frame. It was built in the 1920s to celebrate the Brazilian independence centennial and has recently been named one of the new wonders of the world. And of course, like every other elevated area in Rio, the view was spectacular. This day was much clearer and we were able to see the water sparkle, and the few clouds roll over the mountains. Although it is spectacular, the number of tourists makes it difficult to stay at Christ the Redeemer for too long, so our group proceeded down the mountain to our jeeps after about forty minutes.

When we got there, the first jeep was there, but there was no sign of the one that I had traveled in. Our guide informed us that it did in fact have a flat tire and would be there shortly after it had been changed. It finally arrived and we began to drive back down through the rainforest, this time with a view of one of the largest favelas in Rio. If you've never seen a favela, I highly recommend you look them up because they are an incredible sight. Typically they are built on hills because the government can't do much with this land. The areas are uneven, crumbling "house" on top of uneven, crumbling "house." They are amazing to look at, but then I found myself remembering that people actually live their daily lives in these areas. I would look at the people and think how different I am from them, but then I would see children playing soccer or catch with each other and teenagers sitting in the grass with their friends and it really made me realize that I do have something in common with them, and that could have just as easily been me in that situation but somehow, sitting here on a ship around the world, typing on my laptop in my air conditioned cabin, I really got lucky. Anyone able to read this email did, and I realized how easy it is to forget that, but seeing the way some of these people lived really put some things into perspective.

So, I was sitting there in awe of these hillsides, when we all started to realize that our jeep wasn't going very fast. On the two-way street, cars were honking and passing us and again, pointing at our tire. The driver and our guide were talking in Portuguese, which I've been told is like a Drunk Frenchman trying to speak Spanish. The guide turned around and informed us that the tire had been changed, however the one they put on it, they were now realizing, had no air in it. So we're driving down a very steep hill in the rainforest with a squeaking, completely flat tire, with cars whizzing past us. At least it makes for a good story!

We returned to Salvador that night on our direct flight (!!) and collapsed into our beds. The final day in Salvador, we were able to reconnect with our friends, share stories of the last few days and get some last minute shopping done before we returned to the ship for a barbeque with Brazilian musicians and a lot of ice cream. The ship departed from Salvador and we are now on our way to Cape Town, South Africa, a port that many of us are very excited about.