Carnaval! Bahia Folia!

Well Carnaval has come and gone and Mitch and I now know what it is like to party with six million people; yet another big check for the to-do list. A party of pre-lent sinning where the booze is cheaper than water. I have never seen so much booze in my life, never mind in one city, or even one neighbourhood for that matter. The stores were stacked to the ceiling, people were loading their trucks and entire backseat compatments full and if all else fails we would see people carting wheel barrels full down the street to their party destination. As can be expected, this led to a level of debatchery I had never seen before. Men grabbing women as they passed by in hopes of the occational willing kiss. The women we equally forward and would grab my goatee or my hair or my ass as they walked by. While this was a little off-putting, I much preferred their attention to the gay men´s attention who were even more forward yet *shudder*. To be honest, carnaval seemed to be too much for me for the first few nights. A party of this magnitude was just a little overwhelming for me and I had a hard time relaxing. Fights were quite frequent and everytime it seemed I had relaxed after the last brawl had been quelched by the miliarty police and begin to dance to the next song, another fight would break out. I´m not a fan of violence (except for some good old controlled and regulated UFC) so this kind of wrecked my carnaval experience. The army of miliary police, patrolling and standing in posts with their billy-clubs ready, did a great job of keeping some fashion of order in such chaos, but it was still hard for me to really feel safe. The energy was intense though and it was quite an experience to be there even if I didn´t feel safe all the time. However, the last day and night proved to be a saving grace for me. We spent most of the daylight in the old city and got to witness some traditional costumes and drummers and the occational female dancer in not but festive paint. After heading back for some great home cooked pasta with our remaining roommates (some had left by this point for greatly reduced flight prices) we headed down to Barra for our final night. Mitch was pretty tired and not really feeling he had the energy until we found the best bloco we had seen all week. Shaped like a giant Skol beer can, this bloco rolled on by pumping some amazing electronica and house music that we could not resist dancing to if we wanted to! We followed the bloco for about 4KM until we reached the furthest end of Barra where all the blocos were parked and danced maybe ten more minutes until the sun rose above the horizon. Not only had we found the best music of the week, we had also met up with most of our friends from Itacare during the night and got to party away with each of them. To boot, the best part in my opinion, we didn´t witness a single brawl the entire day! I am really glad we were able to end carnaval on such a high note and can now leave Salvador satisfied. However, it turned out we could not leave fast enough as our druggie aparmtent owner decided to phone us up demanding more money for this and that and when we told him no, he yelled that he was coming over. Well after waiting all day he did not show and we left early this morning to avoid any other chances of seeing him. Spending 12 hours in the bus depot is well worth avoiding such an unstable man.
Next stop (after a 21 hour bus ride) is Fortaleza. Thanks for all the great comments guys, keep them coming!

Photos: A typical Bloco doing BOOMING sound tests outside of our apartment building (shakes the buidlings); Campo Grande circuit full of people; EVA's passing Bloco with people jumping for free stuff; 4 of the staples of Carnaval