Carnaval: Day 3, Part 2

When we got back from our site seeing on Monday afternoon, there was a Bloco just starting not far from our pousada. It was raining like crazy by this time, but we decided to go join the party and just get wet...we'd need showers before going out that night anyway. This one had a beach theme, so the rain really just added to it! We got absolutely drenched before going back and getting ready for the evening. Neither of us had played in the rain for quite a few years, so it was a lot of fun!

After getting cleaned up, we met up with the other two couples and we walked over to where another Bloco was just beginning to gather and get ready to party through the streets.

(I tried to get Eric's hair up in a mini-mohawk, but all the hair glue in the world didn't want to hold it...we just went for the 'crazy party hair' instead. hehehe)

I'm fairly certain Eric and I were the only ones concerned about the power lines these guys were really close to!


After dancing through the streets for a while, we went down to the parade route and watched several great samba school parades. We have lots of pictures...

Not sure what this guy was supposed to be, but I do know that his fingernails and toenails were painted bright red.

This little one was adorable. She did the cutest samba too!

At the end of each parade a group of the city's street sweepers walked along right behind the last float and swept up any trash, feathers, and other costume pieces that might have been dropped along the route. They were dancing to the beat of the samba drums and having a blast. Every so often they would all raise their brooms over their heads and do this little dance routine-it was hilarious! They were having fun and really enjoying their job. It was so refreshing to see that!
The fella (YES, fella) was quite the character and enjoyed hamming it up for the camera (or maybe for my husband..hard to say which. HA!)

The samba parades at Carnaval include everyone: rich, poor, young, old. . .






This next picture illustrates the back , or rather lack of a back, on the costume bottoms! A little fringe is all that's needed (and sometimes not even that much!)
There isn't much to some of the tops either!



And on those days you just can't decide which top to wear...paint yourself gold and strategically throw some hair over your shoulders!

In case you were wondering how the floats here in the small cities were powered: MANpower.
The samba drums... these guys were awesome on some drums!


No gender discrimination here! There were girls playing samba drums, guys wearing... (but doesn't he have great legs! Oh, so jealous... And would you believe he didn't fall in those heels!)

Each day the parades got better and better. We had to leave Tuesday to get home so Eric could work Wednesday, but I can't imagine how incredible they must have been on Tuesday for the actual day of Carnaval!

Coming up Monday: A few final thoughts on our first Carnaval.

Carnaval: Day 3, Part 1

It had quit raining Monday morning when Eric and I got up, so we decided to do a little sight-seeing around São João Del Rei for the morning. The other two couples wanted to sleep in and relax, so we ventured out on our own for the day.

We walked around the city and looked at all the old churched in town (most were built in the late 1700's) and did a little shopping. I know we post a lot of church pictures, but they really are the defining feature of these old colonial towns and we find them beautiful.


This first one cracked me up. Not because of the church, but because of the people. All the people sitting and standing around the church were enjoying some 9:30 am cerveja (beer!)

This next one was our favorite, but I think it was mostly because of the landscape around it-just gorgeous!

What's another day in the life of my blog without a transportation picture, right? This truck was smaller than any I've ever seen in the USA. Smaller than a Ford Ranger, those little old Isuzus...seriously, it was tiny (and hauling 2 Port-A-Potties...uphill!)


About 11:30 we had pretty much seen all that São João Del Rei had to offer, so we hopped in the car and drove about 15 minutes over to a neighboring town, Coronel Xavier Chaves. We had read about an old cachaça (sugar cane liquor) factory that was still operating and read that they offered tours. We thought it would be interesting, so we set out to find it.

Lunch was our first stop and we ate at the only restaurant we found in the little town. It was an adorable tiny Ma and Pop place that was attached to the couple's home. It had a lot of character and the couple's kids and grandkids walked through a couple times. (Another family with a small child came in to eat after us and the husband ran into the house and brought back a highchair-that his grandkids use, no doubt-to the table for them.) It seemed so personal; it felt like I could have been eating at my Grandma's house (if my Grandma were Brasilian that is!) After coming out and asking us what kind of meat we wanted, the grandma went back into the kitchen to cook our meal. The grandpa brought it out to us. It was a great experience. The food was served family style and we ate on pink floral antique-looking china. And oh, man was it good stuff! We ate enough for four I think(and still had tons left over! A lot like my Grandma's come to think of it...)

After lunch we set out to find our cachaça factory. The guy at the restaurant told us where it was, but on our first drive by, we didn't think it was the place we were looking for, so we set out driving around the back country roads for a little "Sunday" drive (on Monday.) We saw tons of little farms. It was a really pretty dirt road drive!

This first picture looks back into the little town (off in the distance).

Every so often we would pass over a cattle gate in the road. At first it seemed strange, but then as we saw tons of cows and horses walking in the road grazing the ditches, well...it all made sense!

After a while, we decided that the place we passed must have been the factory, so we drove back there. By the sign, maybe you understand why it wasn't quite the 'factory' we were expecting!This is the shed where they husk the sugar cane (by hand, no less!)

And here's a little shot of the inside where they make the stuff. Hmmmm...makes me glad that it is alcohol. (That kills germs, right?) It was a cute place and the only person working when we got there told us that not much of anything has changed in the last 250 years that they've been making cachaça there. He said they make between 35,000 and 75,000 bottles per year here, depending on their sugar cane harvest (they grow their own). They weren't cooking any last week, as they were waiting on more sugar cane to mature in the fields.
Below is the "tasting room" we read about. We enjoyed a little taste and then bought a bottle of 2007 cachaça for R$12 (or US$7). They had some as old as 1985 for R$200! A little rich for our blood, especially because we really wouldn't know the difference between the good aged stuff and the newly bottled.
This is a shot from the outside, it was a pretty place.

We have some great pictures from that night, but it is going to have to wait for the next entry. Since our dining rooms chairs were delivered yesterday and we are a little more set up for entertaining, we are having company over for supper tonight and I need to get a few things started. Hopefully I'll make it back online this afternoon to post Part 2!

Carnaval: Day 2

Sunday morning we decided to all go to Tiradentes. It is another colonial town that is just about 10 km from São João Del Rei. There is an old fashioned train that runs between the two cities, so we decided to take the 30 minute ride and enjoy some countryside on our way there.



Both Tiradentes and São João Del Rei have rotundas to get the engine turned around for the return trip. It is kind of interesting to watch, as they just have guys get down and spin it around instead of using a motor or something less labor intensive.

We spent the day walking around Tiradentes, checking out little shops, eating some lunch, and seeing some rather intriguing decorations for Carnaval.

This one just made me feel skinny-a good way to start your day, don't you think? It is a good example of the Brasilian bikini though. I've seen quite similar things on real people.

Much like Ouro Preto, another colonial town we visited a few weeks ago, there are a whole bunch of churches. None of them were quite as ornate as the ones in Ouro Preto, but they were still very old and pretty.

This first one was the first one we've been in that allowed you to take pictures inside. Not nearly as impressive inside as the ones that don't allow pictures, but still nice.

The shot below is of the ceiling.

This next one was interesting. It looks like the right side fell off...

We are always amazed at the transportation and some of the ideas we find. This trike had an add-on motor kit on the front end. Eric was very impressed.

Yeah, no explanation at all for this one, sorry.

Tiradentes has one of the prettiest settings: tucked away with beautiful views of the mountains!




I like it that even the animals get into Carnaval. This first one is just a random street dog that someone decorated.

And even though the horse's hat fell off to the side before we took this picture, we thought it was fun. We saw this horse and buggy several times and the little dog was always riding right there!



When we got back to our pousada in São João Del Rei that afternoon, it was just starting to rain. It rained, and rained, and rained hard for the next 16 hours or so. (Carnaval really shouldn't be during the rainy season!!!) The six of us went out to supper downtown that night, but decided to just call it a night afterwards since none of us were really feeling like partying in the downpour! It didn't stop the mass majority of people though. From the restaurant on the second story, we sat next to the window and did a lot of people watching. The one on the right with the crown and the one on the left in the fuchsia colored outfit are not girls...they are 13 or 14 year old boys! The bloco that night had a cross-dress theme: funny stuff, wish I had seen more of it!

So Day 2 of Carnaval we did lots of sight seeing, but we were back at the pousada by 11:00 pm. (Yeah, the rain made party-poopers out of us all!) Eric and I watched a movie in our room and then just as we were about to go to bed, we remembered it was Superbowl Sunday! We flipped around channels and found a replay of the superbowl with Portuguese commentary. They sped it up so that there were no commercials (dang it, the best part!) and they cut out all the play clock time, only the actual plays were shown. So we watched the entire superbowl in about an hour and a half. At 2:30, we decided we should probably get some sleep so we could make the most of our last full day of Carnaval!

Carnaval: Day 1

Eric and I spent a lot of our time trying to figure out how to describe our first Carnaval experience. The only thing we could really come up with is CRAZY! We had such a good time, but it is so different from anything else either of us has ever been to (and this comes from the girl who was at Mardi Gras 2002 in New Orleans' french quarter!) Brasilians are so full of emotion and they do Carnaval with so much passion. We drove the 3 hours to São João Del Rei on Saturday and arrived around lunchtime. I have so many pictures to share I think I will have to devote one blog entry per day to get it all in. So here is our Saturday:

We checked in to our Pousada (which is sort of like a bed and breakfast in the US). It was the first time we've stayed in a pousada and we were really impressed. It was a really cute place, all the staff remembered who we were and our room number and treated us very kind.

This is inside our room, just before we left to go get a bite of lunch and wait for the other 2 couples to arrive.

That afternoon, we met up with Fabiana, her boyfriend, Carl, her brother and his girlfriend. They all wanted to rest a little so they would be ready to go out that night. Eric and I welcomed the chance to go out to the Pousada's pool for a little while and relax in the sun.

About 8:oo we all got together and walked a few blocks to the downtown area. There was a Bloco happening when we got there. Basically, what it amounts to is a group of people who might live in the same neighborhood, or in this case, live in the same building at the university, getting together and dancing through the streets. There is usually a theme and the people from that Bloco dress up. There is a big truck with speakers (that you can just barely see in the background of the picture below) that plays samba music and drives along slowly with a mob of people dancing along in front, beside, and behind it. It is shoulder to shoulder packed in craziness and you just kind of fall in and dance along with the crowd as it makes it way through the streets. Our first impression was something along the lines of, 'Is this safe? A big truck driving through a crowd of people??' (And actually, the next day there were news reports of the brakes going out on one of these trucks in another city while the truck was going down a hill. I think 2 children were killed and a whole bunch of people were seriously injured.)

After about an hour and us moving just two blocks with the Bloco, it ended and the truck parked and everyone just hung out in the streets dancing, drinking, kissing (more on that in a later post) and just generally cutting lose. There was a stage set up and a band that was getting ready to come on and play,we thought, so we hung out there for a while. Street vendors were everywhere selling beer, water, mixed drinks by the cup that they have mixed up in old 2 liter bottles, kabobs of chicken or beef cooked on a tiny little grill set up on the sidewalk, and, as the yellow sign over my shoulder in the picture states, cachaça (sugar cane liqour very popular here) with honey served in bamboo for 1 Real (about 55 cents in USD.)

This is Carl and Fabiana. Fabiana is one of the secretaries in Eric's office, and her boyfriend, Carl, just came back to Brasil for 6 months from Sweden to study Portuguese and be able to spend some time not-an-ocean-apart from his girlfriend. (It made our 1 year of dating Iowa-Georgia seem really not so long distance anymore!) They are both really nice people and we had a lot of fun with them!

Curiosity got the best of us and we had to try the cachaça and honey. I thought it was pretty good, but I was in the minority with my group. They decided caipirinhas are much better.

After a while, we decided to walk down to the main street where all the parades take place. The first parade was a pretty simple one compared to the others we would see through the next 3 days. But the participants were having fun!

Another parade started pretty quickly after that first one. This one had a theme of Brasil's early history. It depicted poor treatment of the slaves, the Portugal crown ruling over the country, and then Brasil's independence at the end. It was really nicely done and the costumes were great.

After the parades, it was about 11:00 and we hadn't had much to eat yet, so we made our way up the street to where a lot of food tents were set up. They had actual refrigerators to store their uncooked meat in, so we felt a little better about eating from there versus the guys grilling on the sidewalks storing meat in busted up styrofoam coolers. As we were walking down the street (which appeared to be closed off to traffic, for goodness sakes there are tents set up in one lane of the street and tons of people walking around!), Eric was discussing with me the hotdogs and how they appeared to be in some sort of spicy sauce and how he thought he might want to try one of them. Next thing I know, he lets out a yell. A loud yell. And we discovered that he doesn't yet think in Portuguese because in this moment of panic he was yelling out English words. I looked up to see a car stopped...on top of his right foot. The woman driving the car stopped when he started yelling (just as she started to run over the side of his foot) and was just staring blankly at him as he yelled at her to get off his foot (in English). She finally let off the brakes, Eric's foot became free, and he began jumping around on one foot, continuing his English ranting. He had drawn quite the crowd at this point - everyone staring at the crazy American (only one or two others actually saw the car stopped on top of his foot.) After a few minutes he decided nothing was broken and he would be alright, so he got some chicken on a stick and we started walking back up to where the band was set up. Here is a picture of the damage. You can't make out much in the picture but that is a bruise in the shape of tire treads just in front the the ankle bone.

He was sitting on the bed as I took the picture, and then he asked me if I'd bring him some water to drink. I must have given him that "you have 2 legs" look, becasue then he said, "I was run over by a car today!" Alright, it's not everyday you get to use that line. I figured I'd let him milk it for one day.

So in summary, Day 1 of Carnaval: Eric gets run over by a car. (I really wish I had it on video too, because I am cracking up at the scene just thinking back to write about it! No, it wouldn't have been funny had he been hurt, but he wasn't. So in hindsight, we both agree it was just absolutely hilarious!!!)

Oh what to wear, what to wear?

Well, Carnival is here! This weekend (well, actually I guess this whole last week) kicks off the beginning of the celebration that we've heard so much about. Lent begins on Wedneday, but before the Brasilians go about the self-deprivation, you better party it up like the best of them and get it all out of your system for awhile. And heck, even if you don't do the whole Lent thing (which from what I gather, about 95% or so don't) that's okay, you can come out and party too!

From the time we arrived in October, everyone has been asking us what our Carnival plans were. We really want to do Rio, because, well, an American can't be in Brasil for Carnival and not see Rio. But, we decided we should save that one for next year when we are a little less American (and a lot more fluent in Portuguese!) A few weeks ago, one of the secretaries at Eric's office invited us to join her, her boyfriend, and her brother, and go to São João Del Rei for the 4 day weekend. It is a small colonial town just a couple hours away. The pousada (like a bed and breakfast) they were staying at still had a room available, so we booked it and tomorrow morning we head that way!

So now the only question that remains is what do I wear??? I searched the internet for some inspiration and I'll tell you one thing: feathers are in! ;)








Oh, don't worry. I'll have lots of pictures to post when we get back on Tuesday night! (Well, okay it may be Wednesday before I have caught up on sleep enough to post...we'll see.)