Make Time: Carnival Hindsight Highlights (long version)

So it's been a few days and a ton of drinks since I left Rio and Carnival, but I'm gonna outline some highlights from the week I was there.

1) The Hostel: all the hostels during Carnival are priced 3X to 4X more than normal, so it cost me $60 a night to stay in a room with 5 other people. Unbelievable right? Could have been worse though - there was a room with 18 people in it and no AC, so I was in a good spot. My roomies were at first these two dudes who lived in New Zealand, but one was from the Philippines and the other was from Chile. Funny to here a New Zealand accent on these guys, but they couldn't have been nicer and they were all over the city in the three days they were there. When these two guys left they were replaced by two 18 year olds guys from the UK and then another two girls from the UK as well. The guys ended up being fun and I hung with them a bunch, but it was funny for me to be hanging out as the old guy in the crew. I never really feel old but it's hard when these kids were half my age. Classic. The hostel itself is located in Copacabana, and it's called El Misti. The location is about 5 blocks from one of the most popular and touristy beaches, but wow it was beautiful. I have pics on my camera which I will upload when I get the computer powered. Might not be until I get home. El Misti is mobbed with people from all over the world, and it's by far the most crowded and insane place I've stayed. But hey - it's Carnival, and you've gotta be prepared for chaos. Bathrooms were gross and never available, and I was in the only room in the hostel with AC - a heaven-sent. The staff were helpful but English was not a great suit of theirs.

2) The Crew: Already mentioned the British 18 year olds, who were great vibes and actually very mature for their age - always up for a good time and easy going and just into seeing as much as possible while at Carnival. Then there was Lucy and Malcolm, my Cambridge friends who I met on the Inka Trail, and who I was lucky enough to meet up with in Buenos Aires and again in Iguazu Falls. They are on their honeymoon and are a complete inspiration to me. Such great people. So much love between them. They are constantly laughing, dancing, and wanting to be in the middle of the fun. From the minute I met back up with them in Rio I knew it was going to be an amazing trip!! They also met a German girl named Katryn when they were in Buenos Aires, and she was in Rio and hung with us for much of the trip. Funny chica with tons of energy and a camera trigger finger that would embarrass anyone. Next there are about 4-5 dudes from São Paulo, Brazil - all staying in my hostel. My first interaction with them was seeing one dude, Lauro, who looks like the MMA fighter Anderson Silva - ripped and mean looking. His friend Guilherme, is a spitting image of Obama, and the last of the look-alike-trio is Antonio who we dubbed Lebowski because he sleepsa lot and didn't meet up with us at first because he was the slowest of all them. They have a few other friends who come as well, who are equally as hilarious and fun. They all think I look exactly like Will Ferrell, so that's my name with the group, just like their names are Obama, Silva, and Lebowski. Love it. They are the best English speaking Brazilians I have met so it's nice to roll around with native Portuguese speakers. The last one of the crew is my favorite - Reka, the Norwegian. He introduces himself to everyone as David cause his real name has a bunch of weird letters and no one can pronounce it, but he lets me know his friends at home call him Reka as a shortened version of his last name. Apparently Reka means Shrimp in Norwegian - random but great. He works in finance and tells me he was once on the national golf team. We rage like its going out of style and I can safely say he's been my closest travel friend my entire trip. Reka is someone who I've danced till 7am with, but at the same time we have had very serious conversations about life, love, and happiness. And of course, in order to be my closest friend thus far, you can imagine that he's a bit crazy as well.

3) Tourist Day and first Bloco: So the first day I was in Rio I was solo and all I did was hit both Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and then just sit in a beach chair under an umbrella and drink a few caipirinhas before heading back to the hostel and chillin. The next day I met up with Katryn and Reka to check out one of the biggest mountains in Rio - Sugarloaf. We take a few buses to get there and then a gondola to get to the top, and wow the views are unreal. I took pics with my camera but cannot upload at the moment. After that we took a bus over to Santa Theresa, a neighborhood which houses a beautiful artistic set of steps, which an important Brazilian artist did. Also I have pics on my camera which I will upload some day :( As we get to the top of the steps we see droves of people dressed up and walking even further up the hill. Apparently there is a huge bloco (block party) going on and everyone is hammered and heading that way. We three walk with them and stop for a quick lunch first before heading into the chaos. Lunch was actually amazing - this back patio overlooking the hills of another neighborhood. Pics to come. We go from lunch into the chaos and man it was PACKED. You couldn't even move when we got into the crowd so we retracted and found a balcony to watch the scene, which included cars trying to get through and everyone jumping on them and yelling. Comedy. If I had a dollar for every time a drunkard dry humped a car I would be rich :) again I have amazing pics but can't upload yet. This was a perfect entry into the bloco scene although unfortunately the rains were coming so no band actually played. We just got to see how rowdy it gets. Think Mardi Gras and any other shit show and that's what I was in. Amazingness.

4) Beachfront Bloco: The morning after the first bloco, I got up and was planning to go to the neighborhood of Leblon for, apparently, this amazing bloco with thousands of people there. The problem is we got up too late and there were no cabs available anywhere. Every street was filled with people trying to get cabs so after about a half hour we said screw it and we grabbed some drinks and headed to Copacabana beach, which is just a few blocks away. Yes, our consolation and sad end to not making the big bloco was to go to our amazingly beautiful beach ;) I'm with Reka and an Australian couple who I've met before - real good people. We walk towards the beach and notice the main street closest to the beach is closed. Maybe it's just a Carnival thing? No, there is a MASSIVE truck pulling a platform of singers and dancers down this main street!! Ha - we miss the Leblon bloco only to run into an amazing beachfront bloco right by our hostel. We are all laughing out asses off at how easy this all was, and before we know it the band and singers are upon us and we are dancing feverishly. The Australians had to leave to go to a BBQ with some of their friends, but me and Reka stayed and absolutely tore it up. I remember at one point I was listening to the music and dancing, thinking about how amazing this sounds and how I can't stop moving, and around that time I turned around (I was in the front row) only to see EVERYONE behind me in a huge and energetic dance party. Old people. Young people. Pregnant women. Women holding babies. You name it - everyone is jumping and absolutely going for it! This was def one of the biggest highlights of my day. So many happy people and so many smiles. We really had a blast. And it just goes to show - sometimes what we are looking for is always right there in front of us. We didn't even consider the fact that we had the best party right there next to our hostel!

5) 1st Pro Futbol Match: Through the hostel I heard about a pro futbol (soccer) match being held at the Maracana Stadium, which is the same place where the championship match of the 2014 World Cup will be held, so I really wanted to check it out. Malcolm, Lucy, Katryn and I got tix together and headed over on the subway. An easy trip and we were there in 30 mins. The two teams playing where Flamenco, from Rio, and Iguazu (another team from Rio). Flamenco is the home team and very favorited, but the game really wasn't that great. And actually the stadium wasn't more than half full, but the best part of the night really was the stadium. It seats about 80K people and was just refinished, and whoever did it really made it comfortable and elegant. The stadiums seats, the grass, the concessions, the helpers - everything was top shelf. So the game was pretty lame but overall it was fun to be in the place that's going to host the most insane soccer game in the world. Very inspiring but also somewhat sad because that money could have gone to helping build more infrastructure into Brazil and Rio.

6) Flavela Tour: Reka and some others told me about a tour of the largest flavela (ghetto) in Rio. The neighborhood is called Rocinha, and it's world renowned as an incredibly dangerous and scary place, so I was a but hesitant about doing a tour at first. Also, I wasn't too keen on the idea of touring someone's neighborhood and looking at them as if they were zoo animals. Reka reassured me that this was not the case, so I booked a tour with Katryn and we got picked up by our guide Rodrigo in Ipanema beach. Rodrigo is from Rocinha and has since gotten married to a girl from California and moved to a better neighborhood, but he has much love for his home neighborhood and everyone there still knows and respects him. There are about 6 of us on the tour and Rodrigo takes us to a bus stop where we are picked up by a smaller white van. Apparently Rocinha has its own unmarked busses which you get on and pay like any other bus, but no tourist would ever know about it because its unmarked and usually goes to just one neighborhood. About 30 minutes later we pull up to the base of Rocinha, and immediately you can see the chaos, clutter, and dirtiness of this compared to Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon. There are some pics below which I hope do it some justice. I also took a lot of pics on my nice camera which I will upload eventually. We get off the bus and Rodrigo quickly pays for each of us to take a motorcycle taxi up into the heart of the flavela. Motorcycle taxi? Random. Dangerous. I like it. I jump on the back of this bike and the driver immediately guns it, riding up incredibly steep hills in between cars, small vans, trucks, and pedestrians. At a few points I thought we were gonna get hit head on, but somehow he driver would slow or swerve and we were back on our path and flying once again up the hills. About 15 minutes later we get near the top of the flavela where everyone gets off - laughing and in shock from the ride we just took. These motorcycle taxis are an invention of the flavela community, because regular taxis do not operate within its borders (too dangerous). These motorcycle taxis only go from the bottom of the flavela to the top (or somewhere in between) and they provide an invaluable service for people who don't want to trek up and down the steep hills everyday. Very cool. Also much cheaper than a regular taxi. So we walk from the drop off point to the top of the flavela where Rodrigo knows a man who lives in a big house overlooking the city. We hang there for a bit and he tells us more about the flavela and how it's changed alot since he was a kid. Apparently drug dealers controlled the entire flavela for years and years, and they had over 1000 dealers at one point. Just like any gang there was a top leader, and he was essentially the mayor of he flavela. If you had beef with your neighbor - talk to the mayor. If you need money - talk to the mayor. If you don't talk to the mayor before acting ok things in the neighborhood it could be deadly. But if you kept to yourself and lived a normal life then all was fine and you even felt safe because you knew the mayor-figure would protect you if necessary. Then a few years ago, when Rio knew they were getting the World Cup and the Olympics, the city decided to do a "pacification" of the flavela, which means they sent in a military force to take out the drug dealers and implement a police force. Unbelievably this had never been done before. The city let the flavela operate independently and they never sent police in there. Also keep in mind many of the streets and alleys in the flavela are not named, marked, or easily found. Mail does not get delivered. Packages do not get delivered. So police really don't know their way around, which can be very dangerous. So this pacification occurs and eventually cops come into town, but according to Rodrigo, no one in the flavela is in favor of this. Police in Brazil are easily paid off, and this can create real problems. Whereas in the past the drug dealer would pacify and govern a situation, now it was someone who didn't know the neighborhood. Furthermore, drug dealers could not be paid off because they ready had more money than they needed. So there has been a ton of backlash to the police presence in he flavela. Our tour continued through tiny little alleys where we saw kids playing samba and dancing in dirty floors, and where you could buy anything from food to electricity to new clothes. Apparently one scene from the Fast and the Furious was filmed in a rooftop here, and we were able to see this and take some pics (one pic below). We were really able to see the energy and character of the flavela, and Rodrigo even brought us to his grammas house and then to his parents house, where we fawned over his wedding pics. Apparently Rodrigo met his wife during Carnival years ago when she and some friends decided to party late night in the flavela. He walked up to her and told her to leave because its not safe here for her, but she stayed. Later that night he saw her lost and trying to find her way out of the flavela, and so he walked her out and got her safely on a bus and the rest is history. A great story, and they are happily married now. They might even move back to California someday, which would be amazing for Rodrigo - to go from flavela to Cali. A great story. I really can't say much else about this tour other than Rodrigo was amazing and he made me feel like a friend of his rather than a client. Never did I think we were exploiting the neighborhood. On the contrary we were buying clothes, food, and jewelry along the way. It was a special experience I will never forget, and it's made me realize just how lucky we are in the US.

7) Brazilian Steakhouse: This last story is a quick one, but there is some funnyness to it that I had to share. Reka, Katryn, me and Jake (one of the 18 yr olds) decide to do a Brazilian steakhouse one night. We have them in the US, where servers come to your table with huge slabs of meat and to decide what you want on the spot there. For $40 we got all you can eat, including a salad bar and a sushi bar which were both amazing, not to mention the meat was perfect. So we are hanging at dinner when Katryn sees a guy come in who's obviously looking for his friends. He keeps looking at her so she waves and he actually comes over. Ends up the guy is from DC and he's working at the US embassy in Brasilia, which is the capital of Brazil - but not really that cool of a place. So we invite him to hang out and he is def a little boozed up. We laugh about brazil and Carnival and decide to head out together to do some dancing and partying. As we are walking out the door I hear a huge noise behind me and notice that DC-guy has slipped and completely wiped out. I'm talking - his feet out from under him and he was up in the air - drink everywhere. He's stunned. We are all laughing our asses off uncontrollably, and DC-guy gets up and now his ads is killing him. Classic. Hadn't laughed that hard in a long time, so I had to include that and mention that I think that's he only reason DC-guy joined our crew - pure comedic relief. Honestly - not much else to this story. We went to a small bloco near the restaurant and then lost DC-guy, and then we walked to the beach and partied till about 6am. Standard Carnival style :)

8) Sambadrome: As I've described, there are at least 20 street blocos a night during Carnival, but every night there is also a very formal parade called Sambadrome, where professional Samba schools dress up in elaborate outfits and march down a huge stadium. There are many professional samba schools on Brazil, but the best ones come out later in the week, so we bought really nice tickets to see a night where really good dancers and musicians were set to march. Unlike the chaos of the street blocos, Sambadrome is very formal with scan tron tickets and concession booths and all the trapping of a professional event. The stadium is basically built around a long corridor, or street, and then you have huge stadium seating on either side of the street. The further down the street the cheaper the seats. We got great seats near the front of the parade and wow the colors, floats, dancers, and music was unreal. My favorite was always the band that accompanied each samba school, because its basically hundreds of drummers and noise makers, all pounding out this intense rhythm that the dancers and singers and matching. Such intensity. Such elaboration. Such a fun time dancing in the stands with Malcolm, Lucy, and Katryn. We got there around 9pm because they wanted to see the beginning, and we left around 2am. We missed two more schools of samba which lasted until 5am! It's amazing how long and late people party at Carnival. And it's not just young people. It's older people. It's children. It's everyone, and it's a big part of their culture. Enjoy life. Enjoy music. And DANCE!!! Such a fun night -some pics below. Yes I got my face painted :)

9) Trust Drunk People: Reka and I decided that we needed to figure out who in the crowds of people would be the ones that might try to pick pocket and rob us. We thought about old vs young, make vs woman, and even black vs brown, but in the end it came to us very simply: don't trust anyone who's sober. We would look around and see a completely sober person staring at the crowd, seemingly seizing it up, and we knew he was bad news. On the other hand the drunk party goers were too busy trying to make out with girls to worry about stealing. This proved true on a number of occasions when we would eye up guys who were sober and they would walk away, cause they knew we were onto them. So here's your first and only rule of Carnival: trust the drunks! Hahah.

In summary I really had the time of my life. Met great people. Danced my ass off. And heard some amazing music. It was a life changing event and I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world.