Travel facts!

Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, probably Olinda too is crazy during the carnival! I can just say BE CAREFUL! Don’t be even close to the “pipoca”. The pipoca is the people that are standing “outside” party looking when the trucks pass by. This people don’t have enough money to buy a T-shirt and join the party so they participate by looking at the carnival. In the pipoca there is always people that are there for get some money by robbing tourists (even Brazilians!)! As I said before DON’T go close to the pipoca! By the way, it’s called Pipoca (popcorn) because look like popcorn from the side because they are jumping up and down on the same spot!

Carnival is crazy, DON’T carry your camera if you can’t afford to lose it (only in the camarote). DON’T have pockets on you shorts, even if you’re not carrying anything it’s not very pleasant when you have someone’s hands around your private parts. If you’re a girl DO use shorts in the bloco, otherwise you will for sure have some people’s hands between your legs during the time in the bloco, not so nice! DON’T bring your passport or other documents if you don’t need too (there is a law for Brazilians to bring but nobody do – I don’t know the law about this for tourists but wouldn’t bring my passport anywhere during carnival). During the six days of carnival 1100 documents was found! So I just wonder how many was lost totally????

Travel facts!

Favela

Cause thats the life when ur

Living in the ghetto and

Eating in the ghetto or

Sleeping in the ghetto

Did you know that the Brazilian economy is the tenth strongest in the world?! But in Brazil there is also one of the biggest gaps between rich people and poor people. One third of the 188 millions of Brazilians are living in extreme poverty.

The definition of a favela is a neighbourhood where people are building houses on land own by the government. The favela grows without any control and has no real roads. The favelas are very often controlled by drug kings and they are also the ones keeping everyone safe inside the favela. Thefts inside the favela are taken very seriously.

Nowadays all the favelas have electricity and water because of the investments the Brazilian government made a few years ago. The government has also tried to move out people from the favelas by building free apartments for them to move into, but that resulted in people selling their apartments short after they moved in there and then moving back into the favela! For the money they gained by this affair they could buy bigscreen TV and some other stuff that they always wanted but never could afford.

Jair's nephew's band inside Jair's favela

Travel facts!

Salvador da Bahia - Little Africa in Brazil

Salvador is the capital of the state Bahia and is situated at the northeast side of Brazil. It’s perfectly shaped as a natural harbor, so when it was founded it quickly became the main harbor for sugar and slave trades. This has made Salvador to what it is today – little Africa! Salvador has a population of 3.8 millions of people and 80% of them have Black African ancestry!

Because of its history Salvador has an amazing Afro-Brazilian culture which reflects itself on music, sports, food, and traditional clothing. Salvador is also known by the name “Brazil’s capital of happiness”, because of the easygoing people and all the parties! I wonder how the people of Salvador became this way, maybe the slaves decided to never work again after they got released and they are still celebrating with a lots of parties?!

People from other states usually refer to bahianas (people of the state Bahia) as lazy and slow, so if you there make sure you aren’t in a hurry! I have never been so relaxed as I’m when I’m there. Nothing matters, time is just a time and the Bahia time is always a few hours after, no rush!