Carnaval, bitches!

Brazil. Home of the famous approach to topiary. Although they don’t call it that. I can’t remember what they do call it. Though I do know that the translation of “G-string” from Portuguese literally means “dental floss.”

But anyway, I digress. It’s carnaval time, baby, and what that means is spending so much money it hurts, drinking so much it hurts, and seeing so many Brazilians in various stages of undress and dancing to the incessant rhythms of the drums in a sexy way that it, uh, turns you on.

For this part of my journey I met up with two people, one a former Aussie flatmate of mine who has been back in Oz for a few years, the other his friend who I hadn’t met before. Flatmate Aussie is mixed race and therefore looks Brazilian, and is also a former Rugby League player so is built pretty big, although without any definition these days. But he still has an imposing physique. And as you would expect from someone from Australia, is a bit of a natural. He doesn’t always have the best quality – though sometimes he does – but he does have a consistent hit rate. But it’s not so much his physical attributes that serve him well, more his character, which is fun, sociable, occasionally self-depreciating, confident and sexual. I’ve basically nicked about 90% of my game from him.

The other Aussie is your typical rough-around-the-edges, tell-it-like-it-is, beer-drinking, sports-loving Aussie, randy as fuck and he has a good sense of humour. We all get along great and have a good laugh.

We started off in Salvador for carnaval. Salvador is the African heart of Brazil, and its carnaval is the most traditional. There’s different parts and we spent most of our time in the music-focussed part where you have one long route that many floats (called trios) go down. These are set up with massive sound systems, light displays, LED screens and the bands themselves, and they inch their way down the route and belting out the frenetic, intoxicating, drum-led axé music (pronounced a-SHAY). On the sides of the street there are things called camarotes (pronounced ka-ma-ROSH) that have balconies where you can look over the streets, as well as areas behind that contain bars and a nightclub.

Anyway in terms of game for the three nights I was in Salvador I was completely off. Why? Because of context-led behaviour. You see, when Aussie flatmate was actually my flatmate, he was out shagging his way through London town while I was fretting away, still insecure, trying to work out how to put this all together. And so when I was back in his presence, the old me returned and I found it hard to act in the way that I knew could. Having said that, early on the first night I we were all dancing in the nightclub bit and there were at least four hot chicks nearby that no one was doing anything about. I couldn’t let it go and had quick dance with them, though nothing came of it (not sure why).

Later on the Aussies hook up with some Aussie chicks and were very Aussie with them, and I felt myself out on a limb. I was pretty drunk by this stage – did I mention there was a free bar included in the ticket price? – and I was also distracted by how good looking the men were here. Jesus they like to work out a lot too. Plus the music is just great fun.

For the next two nights I was so wasted from the excesses of the first night, plus lack of sleep and food, plus a bit of stomach badness, that I was in no mood to do anything game-wise. I was more concerned about not getting stupidly wasted. Arriving in Rio we were all feeling the pain and for the first night we went to bed really early. The second night wasn’t much better and although we wondered around Copacabana beach for a bit we didn’t really find any happening places and quit pretty early again.

The third night we find out that Ipanema’s the place to be, but when we get there it’s full of gays – as Aussie flatmate said, he’d never seen so many black fags in one place before. It was enough to make your eyes water.

So we quickly ensconced ourselves in an Irish pub that’s showing the Champions League and watch a bit of football. At one point an obnoxious Irish guy joins our table but from him we find out about a big nightclub thing that is happening at a marina in the posh part of town. We sort our shit out and head down there.

Armin van Buuren, a top trance DJ, is playing and the music and the atmosphere is absolutely awesome. There are loads of people on it and despite a couple of attempts to source narcotics we don’t find any, so alcohol it is. Probably for the best, all things considered. For me anyway.

However the women here are HOT HOT HOT!!! This is clearly top class Brazilian society, and the girls reflect that. Like the best that Southern Europe has to offer, mostly dyed blonde. But despite chatting to a few of them, the vast majority simply don’t want to know. Most probably on my part as I was a bit of a mess, hair all over the place and drunk, but there was no shagging or snogging for any of us that night.

So that night was Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday, a.k.a. Shrove Tuesday) and it marked the end of carnaval. No one got laid. BUT, what happened on the next night was a different story.