Garota da Ipanema

I don’t know what happens to me every time I get back from Latin America, there’s something magical about that continent. I just came back from a 1 month trip in Brazil, everything was more than perfect until I arrived in Nigeria very sick with fever and sore throat. I think that’s how chicken pox and staff spreads that quickly around the world because of people like me, traveling from Brazil to Nigeria stopping over in Amsterdam with tropical diseasesJ I was actually afraid that they would take me to quarantine in Amsterdam but I hided well anyway arriving in Lagos I went directly to the hospital and after blood tests they said I have typhoid and malaria at the same time! I said, wow! Malaria parasites were probably always there from Nigeria but I must have gotten typhoid in Brazil as I’ve been drinking freshly squeezed juice with lot of ice the whole time, although I have typhoid vaccination which would protect me for 10 years…No worries, I’m all fine now, feel weaker of course but fever and tonsil problems are gone and I just think it was still worth for a trip like thatJ

I met 5 of my best friends from Istanbul in Amsterdam to take the same flight to Sao Paolo but the point is that 4 of them did not have an idea about me joining them, some of them were really getting a heart attack when I met them at Schiphol airport, that was fun! So we started 6 but every one of us had his/her travel plans, so after spending the first 3 days of the carnival in Rio and last 2 days in Salvador, we splitted up. I made a very lazy route for myself whilst others wanted to see the amazons, the waterfalls(foz da iguacu), the carnival, the north and the south and some even made it to Buenos Aires in such a short time. I spent 2 nights in Sao Paolo, lucky or unlucky I don’t know cause the night we arrived there was U2 concert part of their Vertigo Tour 2006, I wasn’t dying to go cause I don’t like Bono but I do like the music, anyway I asked every single person at our hotel with U2 t-shirt if they had extra tickets and found the source to the black market( I guess that’s about being Turkish, I could have even made money buying and selling tickets that nightJ) and the rest is bla bla bla at the end we found tickets but didn’t want them cause we were too exhausted and the show had started already. That kind of sucked for some of us because we knew we missed Rolling Stones in Rio with a couple of days until we made it to Rio and talked to local people who were all saying that except the posh front row who had to pay 200$ per ticket, rest of the audience could only see it from far far away as they blocked both sides of the stage with high walls.
Back to my laziness, I spent 2 nights in Sao Paolo, then we all arrived in Rio 2 days ahead of the carnival, spent 5 nights at the 10M2 living room of an old but crazy lady (we barely stayed home tough) and tuke a flight to Salvador de Bahia to catch the rest of the famous carnival time there, then we split up again as I wanted to stay in Salvador for the most of my time to join lessons of the living Capoeira Angola legend mestre Joao Pequeno who also is the master of my master and I did so well because I’m so gonna tell it to my children and grandchildren that I’ve taken his classes and they’d go wooooow! Salvador after Rio was full of shit, there’s a huge difference between Cariocas (people from Rio) and Bahianos (people from Bahia), in Rio when you stop on the street to have a look at your map or lonely planet at least one person comes to ask if you need help, they sure know what tourism is bringing to their city. Salvador was more like Nigeria, lots of Yoruba people ( a tribe from western Africa), and they’re very aggressive too, especially in Pelourinho which is the historic town and where I spent the most of my time to stay close to my Capoeira Academy, you sit down in a café and some favela(ghetto) boyz come and ask for your pack of cigarettes, or if you have them on the table they just grab it (the whole pack!) and go, you can say nothing as it’s their area and they have their brothers behind them. Another weird thing is that some of those guys beat up tourist girls if you do something wrong. When I was there, an Italian girl was beaten up badly because the night before when she was really drunk she spent the night with one of the athletic good looking mulato(half cast) guys and the next day when she didn’t want it again she was beaten up. It’s a small place too if you spend there longer than a week and you start greeting many people. So, what I did to protect myself was that I went to the Nigerian cultural centre(yes they have such a place because of the Yoruba population), made friends with the Nigerian guy working there (I was lucky that he is a big and nice guy who knew everybody in town) and just sent the signals by speaking out loud at town square that he is my friend, that I know people and I’m protected and luckily it workedJ If I wasn’t trained from Nigeria, I think I would just leave that place after a week or so, with no carnival and no Capoeira there’s nothing much to do anyway.

So after 2 carnivals and 3 weeks in Brazil, I went back to Rio for sightseeing as everything was closed during carnival time, I was hoping to meet some old friends of mine too, it didn’t work out but I met other and nicer people and had the best finale, I was taken to the hidden beaches where there were no tourists at all, to the nicest pubs and local clubs with life music, life capoeira and local food, ahh I just don’t find the words I want to go back and live there! I was told that anyone who buys the costumes can participate at the big parade of professional samba schools at sambadromo, I’ve only watched it and it was one of the most exciting things I’ve done, so next time I will be there dancing samba in the crowd of profis, watch me from the TV when realizing my next dream.