Salvador Carnival Brazil Vacations

The best time to take Brazil vacations is Carnival! And the best place to enjoy Carnival is Salvador da Bahia, where anything goes. Carnival in Bahai is not a matter of nubile, scantily-clad women wearing feathers on top of floats like in Rio's Carnival. It's a matter of you doing your thing in the streets til you drop of exhaustion. Rio's Carnival is less than a kilometer of grandstand-lined street Rua Marques de Sapucai but Bahia's Carnival is kilometers and kilometers of streets packed with people, not to mention blocks and blocks of stands.

Bahia's Carnival has two parts: there is a parade consisting of trio electricos, which are semitrailors loaded with sound equipment with bands playing on top and also the barracas. The trios electricos parade moves slowly along two circuits, one near the city center from Campo Grande (Salvador's central park) to the Praca Castro Alves; and the other circuit running from along the Ocean from Barra to Ondina.

They are called trios because the first trio in 1950 was a 1929 Ford with two musicians and a driver. The trios are the base of the blocos, which are groups of paraders arrayed in similar getups usually consisting of shorts and a t-shirt. You must join a cheap all inclusive bloco to parade inside the rope lining the streets; the non-bloco members must remain outside the roped off areas surrounding the trios. The other part of Bahia's Carnival consists of the barracas, which have their own sound systems and are scattered all over Salvador, turning the entire city into a huge block party. The barracas are accompanied by vendors of beer and batidas (killer-strength cachaca fruit mixtures).

In 2010 Carnival begins on February 11th; in 2011 on March 3rd; in 2012 on February 16th; and in 2013 on February 7th. The first evening of Carnival the mayor of Salvador gives the key to the city to the Rei Momo (festival king) at Campo Grande. The second night, Friday, is usually more intense than the first as everybody gets into the swing of things and by Saturday night all hell breaks loose. Be careful of the huge crushes of humanity in the closed-in areas as the trios pass by. Some people rent vacation package deals camarotes (boxes located along the route of the parade) to watch from, allowing them to descend into the madness as the mood hits them. The Carnival has a large police presence, with police patrols which cut through the crowds like Moses cutting through the Red Sea, which maintain a semblance of civilization in the chaos. This is necessary to lessen the level of violence in what is essentially a drunken melee. The downside is that if you're not alert a patrol might come upon you from behind and shove you aside (the presence of female police officers in the patrols helps to inhibit violence). Also, in the crush there are many pickpockets plying their trade, so it is a good idea to keep your money and keys in an inside pocket or change purse fastened inside your clothes with a strong safety pin. But hey - Carnival in Bahia is something not to be missed!

Brazil vacations (WWW.BREEZES.COM/DESTINATIONS/BRAZIL) including Bahia's Carnival are a lot more exciting than the tame pleasures of cheap all inclusive resorts.

Check out some of the great vacation package deals that put you at the scene of the action.

By Alice Lane