Friday, February 04, 2005
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil trip - day 8
[ Thursday, 3 Feb 2005 ]
Breakfast is lunch at Ramma again. Açaí with strawberries (morango) is addictively delicious! We spend the afternoon taking care of errands in preparation for the Alerta Geral bloco tonight, which basically consisted of shopping at the local mall, "Shopping Barra", looking escpecially for white shoes to go with the white outfit theme of this bloco. Also found some artwork and otherwise enjoyed the "scenery".
Our bloco was scheduled to begin at 9pm, with a recommendation to be in the vicinty at 8pm. We show up and join the only other two people who apparently adhered to the instructions: two German guys, Pier, an online journalist, and Andreas, a computer programmer, from Cologne. We later met up with some other friends of Bob's, Patrick and Burdeen, from Oregon, who were kind enough to have continued standing in line to wait for shirts while Bob went to meet me at the airport last Saturday.
Things finally got underway well after 9pm. The bloco consists of a roped off area surrounding a "trio" and a beverage/bathroom truck. Those who purchased bloco shirts can dance inside the roped off section between these two trucks. The "trio" is a vehicle that is a larger that a semi truck/tractor trailer/big rig/18 wheeler. Imagine something bigger than a semi with both sides made out of perforated metal behind which is a solid wall of speakers. On the tail end add one more wall of speakers. Add a staircase to the top where the samba band plays and the real dancers show off. Also on top add lighting structures and other infrastructure for a concert. It's huge. The bevarage/bathroom truck is the same, only it's all beer concessions.
Somewhere around 10pm we probably start the parade. Lots of samba dancing, drink consumption, pushing and bumping, photographs, and other parade activity. Around 1am, after achieving an Olympic speed record of approximately 1 city block per hour, we exit alley left and head home to recover.
[ Friday, 4 Feb 2005 ]
Robert has been under siege internally since yesterday, and as such has spent most of today in bed. I ran into Patrick, Burdeen, and a friend of their's who had just arrived from Oregon, Robin. Robin is a nurse, who speaks some Spanish, and helped me purchase some antibiotics from the nearby pharmacy. So, later that evening Bob started a short regimen of antibiotics. At least he didn't have to listen to a trio truck blasting a Portuguese version of Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again".
I've just been strolling around town on my own, finally feeling comfortable with the local geography -- as long as I keep clear of the bloco preparations!
