Salvador, Brazil

Salvador is the 3rd biggest city in Brazil and the destination for our celebration of Carnival along with 3 million more people heading to the city for the week. It's manic!! The group have been split up into 3 apartments in the Barra region of the city planting us just 10 minutes away from the carnival route which has been great as you can see as much or as little of the carnival celebrations as you want. It's obvious that carnival is huge here. Supermarkets and any available space on the street is filled ceiling high of crates of beer, the queues are an hour long and the shopping centre has shut down for the week. Everyone is in partying and not a huge amount gets done

In the Rio carnival, which is the carnival that you see on the TV it's all glitter, feathers and fancy costumes, centered around the samba school parade. Salvador is a completely different experience as the main focus is on the music and instead of watching the parade the thing to do is to take part in it which is what most of us decided to do by joining a “bloco”. The “bloco” is a huge amount of people which follow a specific float along the parade route dancing away to the music. When you join your “bloco” you get a t-shirt to identify you to that group and you are confined to the safety of a roped area whilst everyone else is on the street pavements as “popcorn”. It was a fantastic experience. The first “bloco” was an evening one following the Bob Sinclar float so the road turned into a moving nightclub. With a day off to recover and then we joined the Olodum “bloco” which was a different experience as it was middle of the day- 35 degree heat and it was a lot less crazy as we had a bit more space and due to the nature of the artist it was a bit of an older crowd.

It's not just been about Carnival as there is the old town to explore with the colourful buildings lining narrow cobbled streets. We went to have a look in some of the churches (apparently very impressive inside) but they were closed for carnival so we settled for t-shirt and sarong shopping and a few hours watching drumming parades coming through the square which was great

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A big thanks to Karen for her bloco photos as I didn't want to risk taking my camera out with me.