Carnaval de Salvador

The preparations have begun for Carnaval de Salvador in full now. Yesterday Danny, Dean and I trekked out to Aeroclube, a shopping centre, where they sell tickets for the various parties. Tickets for the parties are a t-shirt called an abadas, which you have to wear to get and stay in the party. Since the adabas are pretty ugly there are lots of places where you can get them altered to be more flattering for about R$10 (AUD$7). There are two different types of parties at the Carnaval, blocos and camarotes. Blocos are parties centered around a procession of trucks with a sound systems that slowly drive around the streets. These last for 5 to 7 hours and the trucks have bars and bathrooms, so you don’t have to stop and potentially lose the bloco. Camarotes are clubs built for Carnaval that look onto the bloco routes. Tickets range from R$80 (AUD$50) to R$1000 (AUD$700), and they’ve been selling out pretty quick.

The tickets for Saturday night we wanted to go to were sold out when Dean and I tried to get them, but we were able to trade an abada I bought for a different camarote the same night and a bit of cash for some at a makeshift market in front of Aeroclube. We’re a little skeptical of the authenticity of the abadas. But it was fun to organize and do the trade, and I’m sure we’ll have a great night nonetheless.

We ended up with tickets for the Afrodisiaco bloco, the hottest band of the summer... hopefully a good thing, a Saturday night camarote and the Fatboy Slim bloco on the last night. We also got tickets from our landlady for a more traditional bloco that her husband is in and will just hang out on the streets the other nights.

We checked out the old part of town last night which had a great vibe and was already getting a little crazy with people and music everywhere. There were some amazing drummers that were juggling their sticks in between hitting the drums.

It really is going to be crazy here over the next week... thank God.