Eventually, after much pushing and shoving, we made our way to the central town square (normal capacity about 5000) where 100,000 people were dancing and sweating in front of a stage. The atmosphere was undeniably tense and electric, but despite the crush of humanity surrounding me I didn’t feel particularly threatened – besides, I had only the clothes on my back and my a few notes stuffed into my shorts. Anything I couldn’t afford to loose, like my camera, had to be left at home. As I shoved my way to the front I was sprayed with snow spray and had untold bags of flour emptied over my head. By the time I reached the stage I was covered from head to toe.
No sooner had we pushed our way close to the front, which was no mean feat, than the band started blasting out this year’s most popular carnaval song which is about a Brazilian guy who falls madly in love with an English girl and the problems he has communicating with her. The chorus is something like “blah blah blah latino americano…blah blah blah…thank you very much”. 100,000 people screamed ‘thank you very much’ and it sent shivers down my spine. I found myself screaming along in Portuguese much to the amusement of my friends. Like they told me, anything is possible during carnaval.
And then, just when I was losing myself to the music, a fight broke out. Quite how anyone had space to throw a punch was beyond me as I barely had room to breathe let alone flail my arms about wildly.
I think security handled this in a bit of a heavy handed manner as they went fists flying into the group of nuns which had started the trouble – surely no way to treat ladies of the cloth. Before I knew what was happening the night was a mess of flying habits, scattered rosary beads and dislodged wimples. Their opponents, a bunch of beefy black guys wearing nothing but loincloths and covered from head to toe in blue paint, dispersed quickly into the crowd. I thought about asking my friends if they had been beaten black and blue – but the translation was too difficult and I carried on dancing instead.
By now I was squashed in-between a group of rump-shaking pensioners on one side and a bunch of girls dressed as babies on the other. My shirt was covered in snow spray, water and flour that was being thrown around in liberal quantities (mostly by me I must add). The music never stopped, the band went from throbbing number to throbbing number without pausing. Even if everyone hadn’t known all the words and the dances it would still have been the most impressive show I have ever seen. The energy the band radiated was almost frightening.
At one point I was fighting my way through the crowds for a beer when the band started playing a song about drinking casacha (casacha nao e aqua…) and as if on cue everyone began to bounce backwards and forwards. The sight of 100,000 drunk, sweaty bouncing Brazilians all screaming their heads off is something to be appreciated – preferably from a safe distance, of a couple of miles, but definitely not from the middle of the crowd. As I bounced and groped my way to the nearest beer seller I bumped into a beautiful girl dressed as a devil. She smiled at me enticingly and I thought: if this is carnaval, I love it.
We planned to leave the next day under the vague pretence that I had to prepare my lectures for a trip to Europe and that we were all tired – real carnaval aficionados will be shuddering at this – but no sooner had we driven half a kilometre out of town than we were turned back by the police. They told us it was too dangerous to try and leave town now due to the number of drunk people around. It was 7am and none of us had slept. There was no alternative but to return back to the house and carry on partying.
So this I thought, rather sleepily, is carnaval. Stranded in the middle of nowhere under martial law in a beach house with 28 hungover Brazilians.
Read all five parts of the adventure:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
