Carneval in Salvador de Bahia is the largest street festival on the planet...and Semester at Sea is there to catch the last day of it. We arrived in Salvador early this morning and it was very nice to get off of the ship for the first time in 7 days! Armed wth nothing but a money belt (no Brazilian money), a small map, and a green sheet, we set out to check out the old city. We didn't really know what to expect since today is the last day of Carnaval but it was really quite mellow early on. Everyone was still sleeping from the party the night before...they go until about 6:00am! You could clearly see that festivities were in progress but it doesn't really get exciting until about 6:00pm. There were stages, signs, and floats all over the place. As the day progressed though, more and more people started coming out. In the old city, Pelhourino, Carnaval is more mellow and more traditional. There are people in costure, children running arounds, bands and people marching in parades along the streets, and tons and tons of street vendors selling everything! The old city is built up on the hill and separated from the lower city so you have to take a big elevator up and down to travel between the two areas. Pelhourino is qite beautiful...it was the first capital of Brazil and is the largest colonial city in South America. The streets are cobblestone, and steep and flip-flops are seriously dangerous! We had a nice time walking around and got some lunch. We found a restaurant and sat down to try and figure out something to order when a table of SAS students saw us and invited us to sit with them. They had ordered 3 dishes to split between 5 of them and still had a ton of food leftover so we shared with them and just split the bill amongst all of us....that worked out really well. I'm still not sure what we ate; some kind of mixed meat bbq and rice and beans. Coconuts! They sell whole coconuts everywhere where they cut off the top and poke a hole in it so you can drink the coconut water/milk right out of it. It's on my list of things to try :-)

So....I was on Duty tonight which means that I have to stay back on the ship from 8:00pm to 8:00am the next morning to for emergencies, etc... which meant that I was unable to partake in the 'real' Carnaval festivities. Pretty much everyone went out to the huge all-night street parade with the trios electricos which are the huge floats that the major performers are on with all of the people in Bloccos dancing and travelling the parade route with them. The other RD staff went to these things called Camarotes, which are raised viewing balconies to see the parade from. Ok...so I couldn't go with. No big deal... in perspective, if this is what I miss out on...so what! We can't go on a Safari, see the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China and also experience Carnaval! LOL!

My night actually turned out really really well! I figured the ship would be nice and quiet so I headed up to the lounge to upload some pictures and catch up on the blog! I was only up here a few minutes when the Captain, Roman Crstanovicz and the Staff Captain, Mats Nelson came up to the lounge. I waved quickly and went back to my laptop. They then waved me over and asked if they could get me a drink....sure, why not? It was pretty cool to be able to hang out with the ship's captains for quite awhile. We had some wine and Capt. Roman asked what I did at home which led to an interesting conversation about the NY Maritime College. Eventually, Kenn Gaither, the Exec. Dean of the voyage and Al, the Director of Student Life (my direct supervisor) came up and we all had a drink continued to hang out. So I didn't go to Carnaval but I did get to hang back on ship with the Captains! Then...to top it all off, I got to spend some time on the phone with Andrew.

Tomorrow - Itaparica Island!