Festival de Verao and One Month Down

It's February already, this is crazy...I just woke up to one of these amazing summer rains they have here, so light you can barely hear it. It's usually the cars racing by and splashing puddles that signals its arrival. I had my usual breakfast of plantains, scrambled eggs, a ham and cheese sandwich, and fresh squeezed orange juice. I'm thinking about how much has happened in this past month - I've met new friends, I can hold a conversation in Portuguese, I've heard so much music, I've learned a ton about Salvador, I know my way on the bus, and the list goes on. I'm reflecting and am just so thankful to be here at this point in my life. And I'm happy I made the decision to be somewhere stable for awhile during this year rather going from place to place without setting any roots. This experience will make the traveling I still intend to do much easier I think. And finally people have started asking me for directions and stuff in Portuguese, which means I'm blending in a bit (or that they were in fact tourists as well, haha). Tomorrow there's a big Candomble related festival going on in Rio Vermelho. Apparently it's an all day affair where everyone dresses in white and parties all day long - should be a blast.

Anyway, on Wednesday night I went to the annual Festival de Verao - it's like our Summer Fest in New York.  It was about an hour drive away. I forgot where I was for a second after we arrived because I had the most delicious chicken ever from this guy on the side of the road. And when I say delicious, I mean this was a life-changing piece of chicken.  Speaking of meat, we hit up the churrascaria the other day for my boy Dave's birthday. This was my first time at one of these - they have a ton of them here. I have never seen so much meat in my life. They keep bringing all different kinds of steak, some pork, some chicken, just everything to the table. This type of place would give a vegetarian/veegan a heart attack. When we were done with the meal, I kind of felt bad about how many animals suffered for that dinner. Anyway, I digress...We bought some scalped tickets and made our way into the summer festival. This place was impressive. It was this huge park with different stages - about 8 or so - set up. Some were huge and had a stadium like feel while others were small and intimate. They were selling popcorn, drinks, candy, food, basically everything. We made our way to the main stage where this group called Biquini Cavadao was playing. We were right next to the speaker and I could literally feel my heart jumping out of my chest. Now this group was interesting, they have been running strong for about twenty years and they play mostly Brazilian rock (which is slightly more tolerable to me than rock in the US). They mix some alternative and electronic as well so it wasn't bad. The lead singer definitely looked high on something and it didn't look to be life, haha. After them we walked around for a bit and checked out some other stages. They had some forro playing, which is similar to I guess country music in the US, but definitely a different sound. It would be similar in the sense that singers wear cowboy hats and give directions to guys and girls to dance, and half dressed women dance on-stage - similar to country right? We also went into this smaller tent where they were playing some samba. It was fun to dance to this for a little bit. Then we moved back to the main stage for Chiclete com Banana. I liked them a lot. They had a really different sound. The lead singer looked like he was just lifted out of Woodstock - bandana and sweaty hair and everything. Their music was very electric guitar heavy, with fast tempos for most of their songs - definitely tiring. Then this lady performed, still need to find out her name, and she covered a lot of Timbalada and Olodum songs - basically the most popular Bahian bands.  Her set was actually my favorite because I was finally able to here some of the African inspired rhythms that I've enjoyed here so much on the mainstage. I'll find out more details about her an update the entry. My second favorite was the last band, or maybe the second to last of the night, O Rappa. These guys were awesome. To be honest, I was constantly distracted though because of the 10 fights that broke out in the crowd. I don't know what caused so many fights to happen, but it literally just happened over and over. Police would rush in, sometimes arrest some one and sometimes not. But mostly the skirmish would start, everyone would push and form a circle for the two guys to go at it, and then it would stop after like a minute. The only consistent thing about all the fights was this one guy, cross-eyed and hunchbacked, looking so angry, was in the middle of each altercation. I was about to arrest him myself, haha. Anyway, I guess that happens around 2am when loads of people are drunk and listening to the type of music O Rappa was playing - the kind that can get people riled up. It was a really fun, but tiring night. And I knew I could only go to 1/4 nights they had planned. Those who have stamina to go to all 4 nights - you are superhuman!