Descend into the Maelstrom

Now that I have been back home in New York City from Brazil for two months, I figured it was time to write about the trip.  Partly for myself, to remember what happened there, and partly to entertain and educate all of you with stories from a phenomenal vacation to a fantastic place.  I didn’t keep a diary, so this will serve as the official record of what occurred down there. (except for the "What happens in Brazil, stays in Brazil" sort of stuff.)  If you have never made it down to Brazil for Carnaval, I would recommend you do it once in your lifetime.  I’m not sure there’s anything else like it in the world.

If there were one word to describe the trip, I would say Awesome with a capital A.  It was undescribably Awesome.  From the moment we touched down at the airport for a layover in Sao Paolo, it felt so very far away from my life in New York.  Life in New York is hectic, and Brazil was meant to be an escape from that.  One week was also not quite enough- it went by extremely fast, not in small part to my being intoxicated much of the time.  However toward the end of it I was beginning to burn out- as the equatorial sun deep-fried my skin, and the torrid pace of partying took its toll on my body.  It was the first time I had ever sunburned; with my extended stays in Saudi Arabia and India, along with crossing the equator during a trip to Kenya and vegging on the beaches of Mexico, it’ not like the sun was a stranger to me.  This time the UV rays were simply relentless- and my skin probably hadn’t adjusted from its long mid-winter slumber North of the equator.  My nose was nearly removable- the top layer of skin slid around if you touched it.   

Since there is so much to tell, and I didn’t write down what happened from day  to day, I have decided to eschew the chronological narrative (On Monday we did this, ate here, went there; on Tuesday we got up, ate this, went there, did that with this person, etc.) format and instead will expound on my trip in sections of info broken down into functional groups of paragraphs. 

The Place

We weren’t going to the famous, commercialized, touristy Brazilian Carnavals like you would find in the big cities of Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo.  My three gringo friends and I went to Recife and Olinda, in the state of Pernambuco, in the very Northeastern part of the country which hugs the Atlantic Ocean.  My buddy Suncheth from L.A. had spent three quality months down there on his last visit, made numerous friends in the area, and picked up a fair amount of Portuguese along the way.  The idea for Carnaval 2006 was to do as the locals did, far from any other American tourists, soaking in an authentic Brazilian experience for one week.  Americans and English-speaking were so rare there that many people I met didn’t believe I was really an American.  Which was fine with me.  I wanted them to love me for my magnetic personality anyway.  While we’re on the topic of demographics, Pernambuco is the only place I have seen in the WORLD where there wasn’t a single Indian anywhere- besides Suncheth and I.  Not driving a cab, not working in a store, not running a restaurant, not operating on people in the hospital (not to say that I was operated on in the hospital or anything).  One of the fanciful ideas I came up with was to open the first Indian restaurant in the region- because there is no doubt in my mind that Brazilians would eat our stuff up.  That, and buying beachfront property down there for prices considered insanely low by American standards.

Recife is a city of about 2 million people and solid infrastructure.  It’s quite modern, with a massive skyline right near the beach, a large airport, huge air-conditioned malls, and new roads featuring late-model cars from around the world.  Many of the tall buildings are multi-million dollar apartments for rich people with a magnificent view of the ocean; other skyscrapers are offices.  Recife is broken into two parts, the new and the old, known as Recife Antigo.

About 20 minutes to the North is Olinda, a beautiful, hilly, historic little town that is much smaller, much quieter, and much older-looking.  Some of the buildings are three centuries old, the architecture is old European, and the roads are made out of brick.  In fact Olinda is supposed to be the oldest existing town in all of Brazil- although of course that’s disputed, as some other town lays claim to the same distinction.  I like to think that Olinda was the first place in Brazil to be settled- because that’s where we were bunking down.  Our rough itinerary was to spend time in Olinda during each day for the rowdy daytime Carnaval celebrations, and then hit Recife Antigo for Carnaval by night.

Very few people spoke English down there, even among the educated.  Of course I don’t know Portuguese either.   Suncheth, and the few people who did know English, played the important role of translators.  My Spanish knowledge also came in handy, as Spanish is similar in some ways to Portuguese.

Olinda, Recife, and the nearby beach town of Porto De Gailinhas which we visited reminded me a lot of the place I am from in India, Udupi.  Udupi shares much in common, such as the coconut trees, the climate, the beaches, and the lush greenery.  However a massive difference in my experience has been cultural: Brazil is quite liberal socially while India is very restricted socially.  Carnaval could never happen in Udupi. Although there are large Hindu religious parades and ceremonies throughout the year in Udupi, there is a serious lack of the aspiration to make a fool of yourself publicly.  I could argue that’s a form of worship in itself… Brazilians also seemed to be very religious, and of course Carnaval has religious roots.  However the faith manifests itself in different ways.

Portuguese

I learned something new on this trip: Portuguese is a gorgeous language.  It’s real smooth, almost like a smoother version of Spanish.  It’s prettier than French. It might be the most poetic language of them all.  Take the word kiss- in Spanish it’s "beso," which is hard-sounding even if a fly hot-blooded Hispanic honey is telling you that she wants one; in Portuguese the same word is kind of pronounced "bay-zhu."  The zh is soft, like the J in Jacques Chirac or Jean Valjean.  I was able to intuit many words such as this due to their similarities to Spanish (beer is pronounced sare-vay-zha)- and by observing gestures and mannerisms.

Even so the language barrier was extremely frustrating- for us and for the group of several dozen local twentysomethings we hung out with while down there.  I said how much it frustrated me in English, and they said the same thing in Portuguese.  I couldn’t rely on my two translators 24/7, as we would often separate, and also because I wanted them to have fun too, not to say that serving as my personal translator for a week wouldn’t be fun.  However, even the Portuguese I didn’t understand sounded pretty damn romantic.

The People

Language barriers aside, it became obvious immediately how great the people are.  Hospitable, friendly, easy-going, laid-back, fun-loving, open-minded, good-natured, I could go on with the two-word superlatives forever.  You don’t need to speak the same language to get a beer shoved in your hand just as you’re finishing the last one, nor to return the favor. Obviously they liked to have a good time and that’s why we were there.  By meeting several groups of people that Suncheth knew from before, all of whom were loosely connected to each other and around my age, we had a large ready-made social circle to hang with.

I can’t avoid making comparisons to the people I am familiar with.  New Yorkers, and maybe Americans in general, are different because of the amount of pigeon-holing we do.  In America, we define people by their alma maters, their jobs, their race, their salaries, their neighborhood.    With Indians it’s even worse.  Indians, both here and in India, define their very identities by their status in society- or how they stack up against everyone else.  Indians generally try too hard to impress, as if they have something to prove.  What they have is an inferiority complex.  Brazilians seem to act naturally regardless of who is around.  We were obviously hanging out with the economic elite, because our Brazilian friends certainly weren’t from the slums, or favelas that are dirt-poor.  Quite the opposite from the United States, the inner cities are where the rich people live, and the poor live outside the cities in the suburban areas- which are largely slums.  We did not see anything of the slums on this trip. 

Some of the guys we met were very good surfers.  We spent a day on the beach at a town called Porto de Gailinhas, where the waves looked great, and people of all ages were having a good time with them.  The surfer mentality, if there is such a thing, seemed fitting in that environment.  It was good to see a global phenomenon like surfing, many thousands of miles away from the U.S. where it probably originated and was popularized.  Brazilian women of all sizes, meanwhile, are serious about their thongs on the beach.   

Nicknames are big where we were.  I quickly got to be known as Abu, a take on the Indian character from the Simpsons- perhaps the only Indian some of the group had ever seen or heard of, and he’s a goddamn cartoon character.  Later this somehow morphed into Abu Bin Laden because people agreed I had a Middle Eastern look.  The guy who came up with this name for me is Jairo, so I shot right back and gave him the nickname Spyro-Gyro, which is hard enough to explain in English, and therefore beyond inexplicable to my Brazilian friends.  My NYC friend Jin Lee, who is Korean, alternated between "Bruce Lee," "Brother of Bruce Lee," and "Son of Kim Jong Il."  George, our other fellow NY traveler and of Colombian descent, was nicknamed Pablo Escobar.  Suncheth is not a far stretch from Sunsheff, partly because those dudes couldn’t pronounce the "th" sound easily, and partly because sunsheff means "your boss." That’s when people weren’t calling him "cosheeyo," a type of Brazilian dumpling Suncheth took a liking to- I guess you are what you eat. 

Almost everyone within the large clique had entertaining nicknames.  An extremely heavy drinker goes by "Cirrhosis," somewhat worrisome in itself, but even more so when pronounced in the Portuguese accent.  Our tour guide Bruno goes by "Quati," a type of bird, I suppose because he looks like a bird with his sharp nose.  Yet another guy whose real name I never really heard even once, went by "Pingusu," and I don’t remember what it means but guess what- he looked like a Pingusu. 

On to the subject of oral hygiene.  Something I found was that many people around my age, mid to late twenties, wore braces.  Pingusu had them.  Some attractive women did too- and you don’t know it until they smile!  It can be somewhat of a surprise- until you notice dozens have them.  My theory is that they never had the opportunity to get the braces during childhood- either because of the cost, or the unavailability.  Strange as it was in the beginning, I got used to seeing them.

As far as looks go- Brazilians are generally pretty good-looking.  Their skin color varies as they have different ancestry- African, native, Portugese- but for the most part you will find nicely bronzed skin.  Women in Pernambuco did not seem to work out at all.  I don’t think they did any of it- cardio, weights, sports, or anything.  This is based on seeing a lot of soft pudginess- a little bit of jiggle with the wiggle.  Almost no hardbodies.  No muscle.  To their credit, many of the women had perfect figures- which I think is natural, as opposed to earned by working out.   Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the spectrum you had the young men, who seemed to work out quite a lot.  From what I have heard, the women from the South of the country are supposed to be better-looking overall.  And Rio, the bedrock of the South, is like the NYC of Brazil.  However, you’re never going to hear me complain about Pernambuco.

Food    

Anyone who knows me could tell you that I’m much more into vegetarian food than I am into meat-eating.  I’ll enjoy a steak here or a turkey sandwich there, but it’s certainly not the norm.  Coming from me this should impress you even more: the meat in Brazil was DIVINE.  The night we got there, we all ate at an authentic churrascaria called Spatos, and I fell in love with the entire experience.  Here we were, sitting down to our first meal on the first night of our trip an entire continent away from home.  There’s anticipation, mixed in with the giddying effect of summer weather in February.  There’s the excitement of seeing my friend after many months.  And then the food rocked my world.

Churrascarias, or rodizios as they are also called, can best be described as an orgy of dead animal.  Unlimited amounts of meat are brought to each table on skewers by the well-trained staff, round after round.  Each visit brings more wonderful pieces of meat freshly slow-cooked in a rotisserie.  They bring each round to the table so you can watch them carve pieces right off a giant skewer, the size and part and amount of your choosing.   The orgy included various types of steaks, sausages, chicken drumsticks, or large pieces of meat wrapped around delicious cheeses.  Coarse salt is rubbed on the meat by the chefs as the skewers are pulled off the rotisserie.  Divine- even for a person with herbivore tendencies like me.  The best meat I have ever eaten in my life bar none, including delicous Indian tandoori from the streetsides of North India and meals in expensive steakhouses in NYC- and the beauty is in the simplicity- no spices or wasted effort on garnishes.  Accompanying all of it was a massive buffet with salads, sauces, sushi, breads, rice, seafood, and desserts.  The service was impeccable.  Picture cocktails like caipirinhas (sugarcane liquer, sugar, and fruits) and caipiroscas (the same with vodka instead) being made on a pushcart with fresh fruits, right at your table.  Wait staff hovering around at all times.  All of this for $15-$20 a pop.  The churrascarias rocked my world and I will never forget some of those flavors.  I am not confident that I will taste such meat again anywhere else.  I’m convinced that the animals are simply raised and fed differently down there to make them taste better.

There were other standout dishes we tried- dumplings filled with meat or cheese called cosheeyo, the source of Suncheth’s nickname.  Cubes of hard cheese grilled on a streetside barbecue- also quite tasty.  Seafood broths served on the beach in Porto De Gailinhas.  But nothing will compare to the rodizio orgies- which always left me light-headed, partly from overeating and partly because by the end of dinner we had already been drinking for 10 hours in the hot sun.  Which is a good segway into the next section.

Carnaval

Now that the meat has been discussed, let’s get to the meat-and-potatoes of the trip.  Carnaval.  I expected to find some of the following: decadence, debauchery, sloppiness, silliness, great music, fine company, and ultimately, some pain.  It was all of the above, but more intense than I could ever have imagined.  I mean, I’ve partied with some hard pipe-hitting motherf***ers in my day, both in college and in NYC.  I’ve gone clubbing till 8 in the morning several times, and clubbing 6 nights in a row as we did in Cancun for senior year spring break.  I’ve seen people do some serious drinkening in my day. Carnaval was all of that times ten.

In Olinda and Recife, we did not even go to any bars or clubs.  The streets themselves become a massive party- with beer, liquor, and other drinks flowing from stalls on every street corner for miles.  Most of the houses along the roads become part of the party- and the whole scene is a crush of people wall to wall, street to street.  Friends and family congregate on corners or in houses specially rented out for the occasion.  Although we hung out with mostly twentysomethings, everyone gets in on the action.  Old people march in parades side by side with little children.  It’s truly a mad scene unlike any other. 

The partying starts early in the morning in Olinda.  Forget happy hour- we were starting immediately after breakfast, around 10:30 or 11:00 each morning.  By then thousands of people had already been out drinking on the streets for several hours.  I mostly stuck to beer of the Brazilian variety- which was quite delicious and light, but also easier for the responsible part of my brain to regulate than cocktails over many hours under a pounding, hot sun.

During any given daytime hour on a street corner, you would see a lot of cool stuff.  Numerous marching bands and parades of dressed-up people pass by.  Costumes ran the gamut- from international heroes such as Superman, to angels, Jesus Christ, native tribal gear, and even Osama Bin Laden.  The streets were nothing short of chaotic, with people often going in opposite directions, causing all sorts of bottlenecks.  But nobody seems to care- which is a common theme.  People don’t get upset too easily down there, at least during the four days of Carnaval.  During that same hour you could see a pretty girl get drenched by a bucket of water poured all over her by a random frat-boy type, and she doesn’t mind, but actually smiles good-naturedly.  Think that would happen in New York?  Then there’s lots of dancing- couples dancing, groups dancing, various styles such as samba, bossa nova, and other regional specialties.  And forget about being squeamish about PDA; inevitably you will see people making out in the street while crushed against you- right there in daylight, in public.  It all seems very natural in this environment.   And the bullhorns. The bullhorns may have been the part I enjoyed the most, except for the skimpy clothing.  Many frat-boy dudes would take a bullhorn and say all kinds of random crap and play the loud sirens and other noises.  Often it would be cat-calling a pretty girl passing by, or making culturally insensitive jokes, such as, "Un, dois, tres, tsunami otra vesh!" which translates into "One, two three, a tsunami one more time!" - yelled out over the bullhorn just as somebody empties a bucket of water over some passing girl’s head.

At one point George and I got inspired.  When a bullhorn was shoved into our hands, with the green light to say whatever we wanted, we swore loudly in English.  Nobody understood what we were saying.  We began to rap- he did some Snoop Dogg, and I did a little bit of Rage Against the Machine.  To be honest the response from the crowd was mostly indifference, except from a group of scruffy-looking Italian tourists who were excited by our rhymes.  Too bad for us they were men.

In Olinda a few spots became favorites: there was a house full of twentysomethings, where you could drink unlimited beer and eat the food all day for something like $20. We did that for two of the days.  It was cool- there was a backyard where many people were hanging out and I made some friends.  It was like having a private party within the massive party.

One disturbing activity I noticed was the practice of inhaling "lo-lo."  I’m sure there is an English word for it, but I’m not sure what that is.  Lo-lo is a spray that comes out of an aerosol can.  I’m told that it’s sprayed onto metal by blacksmiths before it’s welded, to get the metal ready.  If I needed any proof of its power, I saw it sprayed onto a plastic cup- which instantly began to disintegrate.  A large part of the cup simply vanished.  It was sad to see the kids spray it onto a rag, and then inhale the stuff deeply.  Some did it from morning till night, every few minutes.  Girls especially dug this stuff- I couldn’t imagine what it could do to a human body, considering the damage it did to the cup. 

Usually the Olinda Carnaval would begin to wind down around dinnertime, maybe 7 or 8.  So we would go out to a Recife restaurant for dinner each night, and then it was onward to the night-time Carnaval in Recife.  By that point I was always pretty much done- full to the bursting point with food and alcohol.  I couldn’t keep up with some of the harder drinkers- but my goal of staying upright was the larger priority.

Night-time Carnaval also featured bands, parades, costumes, and lots of general craziness all in the streets. Ironically, the night Carnaval was more tame and family-oriented than the daytime one.  There was a much less PDA, less drinking, and less juvenile behavior overall.  Maybe part of the reason was that the crowd had already burned themselves out from going hard all day.  I know that was the case with me.

Of course, Carnaval was the main reason I went.  I think that all four of us got what we were looking for: a serious break from our lives in New York and L.A.  I hate to sound like a walking advertisement for the country, but I’ll say it again: if you’ve never been, go.  I’ll definitely be back; and if things go well, I plan to go back there often.