Changes, continued…
One thing we’ve learned since arriving in Brazil is that the country does not really “open for business” until after Carnival – the biggest celebration of the year. Picture Mardi Gras in New Orleans, on steroids! Carnival is a 4-day celebration during the week leading up to Ash Wednesday. The city most famous for its Carnival parades is Rio de Janeiro, though there are massive celebrations all over the country. Sao Paulo, among other cities, also celebrates with parades full of scantily clad women, others in colorful costumes, impressive floats, bands, and most importantly, dancers from various Samba schools. These parades take place in big open spaces, lined with bleachers, and require paid (also expensive) tickets to attend. As described in Wikipedia, “Carnival is the most famous holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. The country stops completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities.[2] The consumption of beer accounts for 80% of annual consumption and tourism receives 70% of annual visitors.”
One thing we’ve learned since arriving in Brazil is that the country does not really “open for business” until after Carnival – the biggest celebration of the year. Picture Mardi Gras in New Orleans, on steroids! Carnival is a 4-day celebration during the week leading up to Ash Wednesday. The city most famous for its Carnival parades is Rio de Janeiro, though there are massive celebrations all over the country. Sao Paulo, among other cities, also celebrates with parades full of scantily clad women, others in colorful costumes, impressive floats, bands, and most importantly, dancers from various Samba schools. These parades take place in big open spaces, lined with bleachers, and require paid (also expensive) tickets to attend. As described in Wikipedia, “Carnival is the most famous holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. The country stops completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities.[2] The consumption of beer accounts for 80% of annual consumption and tourism receives 70% of annual visitors.”
As quoted above, the entire country pretty much shuts down for a whole week. This means that absolutely nothing gets done during Carnival – no matter how pressing the issue. Since we finally got all of the documentation complete for our shipments to be sent from the U.S., we have received notice that our air shipment is due to arrive on March 10th. Of course, it has to clear customs before it can be delivered to us, and there is no way that this will happen next week. We also got surprising and unexpected news that our sea shipment actually left the Port of New York on February 15th, which means that it should be in the Port of Santos (near Sao Paulo) by now. Again, we’ll have to wait at least a week longer for anything to be done with that container – once in the port here it usually takes about 6 weeks to clear customs. So, the waiting game continues.
As soon as we arrived in Sao Paulo, we started hearing of people’s plans for vacations during Carnival – also the most expensive time to travel in Brazil. Most businesses close for the week, and all school children have a week-long vacation, as well. We’ve heard that Sao Paulo clears out during the week of Carnival, beginning early in the day on Friday – a mass exodus of cars and people can be witnessed jamming the streets of the city, leaving peace and calm in its wake. We had decided to save money and take advantage of the quiet and less congested streets to get to know our city a bit better – until we had a change of heart and plans. The opportunity presented itself for us to travel with our friends, the Deeps, on a bus tour to the state of Rio de Janeiro (not the city itself) to multiple touristic locations for 4 days. Seeing that the price was reasonable, considering the short notice, and there was space available, we decided to go. It will be a great opportunity to visit new places, all known to be beautiful, and enjoy some relaxing days away from Sao Paulo. We figure we’ll be here for a while – we can always get to know it later! So, tonight we’ll board a bus at 10pm (due to the extremely heavy traffic, we are giving ourselves 2 ½ hours to get to the bus station, which is only about 12 km away), with an anticipated arrival time of 2am at a hotel in the town of Resende. Over the next three days we will visit the towns of Angra dos Reis, with its beaches, islands, and a blue lagoon; Itatiaia, with a large rainforest preserve; and Visconde de Maua, with several waterfalls, including some that are like giant natural waterslides. Though we may not be celebrating Carnival in the traditional sense, at the parades in Rio or Sao Paulo, we are excited and ready for this new adventure - let the fun times begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment