Carnival long weekend

The weekend before this last one, we enjoyed a 5 day long weekend due to it being the real carnival weekend in Brazil in the lead up to the start of Lent. We had hoped to use the long weekend to travel, but going anywhere over this period was crazy expensive, even when we looked to book before Christmas. So we decided to stay in Vitoria and do some of the things around here we have been meaning to do but haven’t yet. What followed was a well-balanced weekend with relaxing, lots of World Cup Cricket, movies on the couch, photo sessions, yummy meals out, yummy meals in, home-made hot cross buns and pancakes, lots of long walks, skype chats with family, ice-cream dates, and also catching up on some admin.

View over Vitoria from Convento do Penha

View of Convento do Penha and the bridge from Ilha da Vitoria

View of Curva da Jurema from Ilha da Vitoria

View of Praia da Camburi 

One of the things we have wanted to do here is visit the Vale Museum. Vale was established in Itabira in the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais in 1942 and has since grown to be the third-largest mining company and the largest producer of iron ore in the world. Minas Gerais is still a top iron-ore (and other mineral) producing state accounting for 60% of Brazil’s output. The 905 km Vitoria-Minas Railway connects the Iron Quadrangle region in Minas with the Port of Tubarão in Vitoria. Opened in 1966, Tubarão is the port we can see across the bay from our apartment and was transformed into the Tubarão Complex with the installation of iron ore pelletizing plants from 1969. The port has been economically good for Vitoria and the state of Espírito Santo but it is not great for the environment and there is constantly a thick layer of black dust everywhere. It is only marginally better that the coating red dust in Saldanha Bay. Vale gives the impression that they are environmentally friendly and they give back to the environment and invest in communities but we feel this is mostly smoke and mirrors as it almost always is with these large corporations.

The old train station at the Vale Museum 

Inside the museum 

View down the river and Vitoria city centre from the Vale Museum 

The Vale Museum is located down the river from us across the bridge in Vila Velha. The museum is mostly focused on the railway network of Vale and transporting the iron ore around. The railway network used to be much more passenger oriented than it is now and the museum is housed in one of the old train stations. It is a bit sparse but the old building itself is beautiful. We also enjoyed the view down the river of the city centre and the other port over the river. Our favourite part of the museum was the 1:87 HO model railroad. It fills an entire room and models the Vitoria-Minas Railway complete with a model mine, bridges, tunnels, towns, refinery, people, cars, houses and ends at the port. It is very well done with acute attention to detail. The museum also has a new building where it hosts art exhibitions. We were not impressed with the random modern art on display so we went to enjoy a coffee on the waterside in an old carriage converted into a café instead.

The model railroad at the Vale Museum complete with iron ore mine and port

The other thing we have wanted to do is visit the Tamar Project close to our apartment. Projeto Tamar is a non-profit organisation established in 1980 to promote the recovery of 5 endangered sea turtle species that occur in Brazil: the green, loggerhead, leatherback, olive ridley and hawksbill turtles. They protect ~1100 km of coastline and oceanic islands throughout 9 states. There are 23 bases located in important turtle nesting, resting and feeding areas. Tamar’s efforts have a large focus on education and working with and directly involving the local communities in sea turtle conservation and that of their habitats. This has had a large impact on their success and after 30 years of operation they celebrated the release of 15 million hatchlings. This is really important since only 1 in a 1000 is expected to survive. Prior to the establishment of Tamar, nearly all the turtles that came to nest on the Brazilian coastline were killed and populations were in crisis. Today Brazil is a world leader in turtle conservation and has one of the 12 healthiest turtle populations in the world, all thanks to the Tamar.

The Tamar visitor centre near us is a relatively small one but definitely worth a visit. One of the Tamar people guided us around and we were still able to learn something despite our lack of Portuguese. The visitor centre has a small pool of hatchling loggerhead turtles, 4 juvenile green turtles and one adult hawksbill turtle. We loved watching the baby loggerhead turtles swimming around. About the size of an adult palm, they are seriously cute and already look like their species. When they rest they pull their fins close to their bodies so they look like leaves floating on the surface as a predator defense mechanism. At this stage they clearly associate humans looking into their pool with food as they all gathered round and stuck their heads out expectantly. They are about 4 months old and will be released back into the ocean in another 4 weeks or so.

It was the green turtle we saw nesting in Costa Rica but we didn’t see much in the dark other than the rear and flippers. It was lovely to see a juvenile green turtle up close, they are really beautiful, much more so than I imagined. We sometimes see green turtles in the bay here but the water quality is not great and you can’t really appreciate them in the few seconds they come up to take air. This one was in a smallish pool by itself. The last pool we visited was also the largest and home to an adult hawksbill turtle and 3 more juvenile green turtles. While the 3 juveniles have more space and were merrily swimming about, the adult hawksbill looked unhappy and mostly stayed at the bottom of the pool. We were lucky to see him come up for air as he only needs to do this once in 4 hours. We felt really sad for him as he will spend his whole life in a small pool. We can only hope that one day he will have a bigger pool.

The cutest baby loggerhead turtles 

Gorgeous juvenile green turtle 

Not so happy adult hawksbill turtle

The stones in the pools are for the turtles to scratch themselves on 

Another green turtle 

View of Convento do Penha from the Tamar Visitors Centre

View of a favella and fishing community from the Tamar Visitors Centre

The other fun part of the weekend was a return visit to Convento do Penha across the hill from us in Vila Velha. It really is a lovely old church with simply stunning views across the whole of Vila Velha and Vitoria Bay area. We decided to have lunch on the Vila Velha beachfront and revisited a popular restaurant Niels and Vivian introduced us too for creamy coconut shrimps served in a coconut! I am not a shrimp (or prawns if you are South African) fan but this meal was delicious we will definitely be back again. There was a long walk on the promenade after lunch to justify an ice-cream for desert.

Convento do Penha 

View over the Vila Velha coastline 

Coconuts! 

Fishing boats in Vila Velha 

In other news the clocks turned back on Sunday confirming that Brazilians think it is winter immediately after carnival despite the continuing 30°C plus temperatures. We are now 5 hours behind SA, 4 hours behind NL, and 3 hours behind the UK. 

Next time: a long weekend in Buzios! 

Carnival!

It’s that time of year, its Carnival time!

The biggest party on the Brazilian calendar, Carnival is held every year the weekend before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. The festival traditionally starts on the Saturday and ends at midnight on Shrove Tuesday, however, the partying is known to start on Friday and continue well into Wednesday morning. Rio de Janeiro hosts what is probably the biggest and well known of festivities but parties and parades occur in cities throughout Brazil. Carnival takes on different forms from the very organised Samba School parades to the informal ‘blocos’ or neighbourhood street parties.

We were surprised that our small town of Vitoria also hosts a Carnival parade but it can’t be that insignificant since it is mentioned on Wikipedia. The difference is that it is held the weekend before the real Carnival weekend. This is because a lot of people travel to other cities for the main weekend and also has the advantage of attracting people from neighbouring towns if it is held on a different weekend. We were sad that we missed Carnival last year due to our last-minute trip to South Africa, as awesome as it was, and were looking forward to making up for it this year! The event was held last weekend and we can confirm that Vitoria Carnival has it all: costumes, make-up, lycra, sequins, feathers, killer platforms, glitter, incredible floats and more.  

The first mascot to enter the Sambão do Povo for 2015

How do you samba wearing a dinosaur suit? #talent

A dragon float

One of the principal dance pairs with a Samba School flag

Justin's secretary was in orange in this group

These are the masters of the school that traditionally join at the back of the parade

Vitoria has a Samba School parade area, the Sambão do Povo, which is similar to Rio’s Sambodrome. The Sambão consists of a paved strip about 500 m in length lined with stands and private boxes. Each Samba School has an hour for the entire group to cross the Passarela do Samba and is judged and marked on the chosen song, the band, the costumes, the quality of samba, the floats, time keeping and much more. It is quite complicated and everyone takes it very seriously. Our conclusion of the evening was that if Brazilians took everything as seriously as they do Carnival, the country would run like clockwork.

Map of the Sambão do Povo

(I know it says 2013, but it's no different in 2015)

Bron and Vivian 

Despite being slow on the uptake, we were able to procure tickets for Sector C, the stands closest to the parade entry point. The fun already started when we got out of the taxi since the road leading up to the entry gate was filled with all the floats and people in costume getting ready and warming up. It was really cool to see some of the floats close up and to appreciate the amount of work that goes into them. We were surprised and amazed when the parade started at the advertised time of 22:00 as in our experience things in Brazil never start on time.

Each Samba School chooses a theme for the parade and the song, costumes and floats should reflect this theme. We however failed to recognize any of the themes, lol. Each school also writes a new samba song with lyrics for each year and we were surprised that this one song is played continuously for the whole hour that participants cross the parade area. We found this a bit of a pity as the music drowned out the Samba Drum Band when they came past, one of the best parts of the parade. Each parade had similar aspects such as starting small and ending big. They generally begin with a few mascots introducing the school, a banner or similar with the name of the school, some bigger groups follow with some principal dance pairs inbetween, and then the floats start with some more groups and pairs inbetween. There are also members of the school walking inbetween the participants setting the pace and helping to keep time so that everyone can cross in the allotted one hour. We didn’t realise this before but it makes sense. We were quite concerned for some people on the floats as they are really high up and the floats were bouncing quite a lot.

Even little children take part! 

Unfortunately we only saw 2 schools pass because it starting raining quite heavily before the third school entered and since we quickly got soaked, decided to leave. We can’t complain about the rain though since we are in the middle of a severe drought and desperately need it, it just came at an inopportune time. But rain at Carnival seems normal and most people came prepared. It was already 01:00 by the time we left and the last group was scheduled to start at 05:00 which we wouldn’t have waited for anyway. We, and others, found it a pity that the parade starts so late.

We really enjoyed the evening out and our first Carnival experience. Preparing for the evening we thought security would be a concern but we actually felt quite safe the whole time. We also enjoyed that the spirit of carnival is very inclusive, everybody from the community joins in and gets involved. There was a guy in a wheelchair in the parade and there were lots of children of all ages participating too. A lot of the Samba Schools are located in the favelas, but everyone is welcome, rich and poor, young and old. I don’t think there are so many wholly inclusive things like that in the world anymore.

We are currently enjoying a 5 day weekend since it is ‘real’ carnival weekend. More about our long weekend next time!