Our first stop of many in Brasil during our 2007 tour, this was a bit of a nightmare to get to, thanks to the fact that Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano (Bolivian acquaintance: ”you booked with WHOM?”) had apparently gone bankrupt shortly before, with the senior management absconding with the payroll cash. That would explain why three of three flights we’d reserved with that airline were cancelled, and why, when pulling out of La Paz airport with our serendipitously arranged Aerosur flight to São Paulo, we saw a pile of luggage destined for the LAB flight, unceremoniously dumped on the tarmac in the rain, with no plane in sight.
The Salvador Carnival was a bit of a departure from others we saw in the area; most of the action was in “blocos” (dancing areas behind giant trucks with DJs or bands, bordered by heavy ropes forming a sort of party area, continually pushed outward by hundreds of workers, moving slowly up the parade route) and “camarotes” (private parties lining the route). The entry ticket to these things was a t-shirt, called an “abada”, with your particular event’s logo on it. Part of the idea is that women tailor their abadas to be as slutty as possible, while keeping the logo identifiable; the shirt will allow you to duck into and out of the party all evening.
There are also a bunch of uniformed carnival groups, most prominently among them the Filhos de Gandhi, in their distinctive white and blue tunics, who generally seemed to get royally trashed and hand out theme-colored bead necklaces to girls they like. I even got some, and I didn’t have to take off my shirt for them. They weren’t that drunk. A peaceable bunch, really. And, oddly enough, the Japanese community of the city has a drum corps, which showed up in caveman gear, rocking back and forth, making a huge but very precisely coordinated, racket outside of our hotel the night before it started. I was amazed at how much noise a little Japanese girl can make with a very large drum.
The photos aren’t great; I was afraid to take my dSLR into the fun.
Antony Baker Photography
Paper Shadows Photography
Peter Norby Photography
In Focus
The Big Picture