WOW. The Boi Bumba festival is one of our five top three things we've done this trip. Incredible.
The festival is held over three nights on the last weekend of June in Parintins, a town of 100,000 on the Amazon river. Two teams, Caprichoso (blue) and Garantido (red) compete to deliver the best Carnival-style presentation in the custom-built Bumbodromo. The stories revolve around a bull, a farmer, and his wife, and something about indigenous tribes; honestly we didn't really understand what was going on but it's not essential to enjoying the spectacle. Each team has 2.5 hours to present each of the three nights, with songs, huge custom floats, lighting, fireworks, a few hundred drummers, cranes, etc. It seems like half the town is involved in the production, and the other half comes to watch.
The fans are intense. The front section is for paid seats and VIP boxes, but each side section is fans-only free, open seating. When your side is presenting, you are expected to stand and follow the cheer-leaders: jumping, chanting, cheering, singing, thundersticking, making giant Brazilian flags, etc. When the enemy presents, you sit impassionately and make no noise. You don't wear your enemy's color at all. Famously, this means that on the Caprichoso side, festival sponsors CocaCola have their logo in blue! Not the cans though.
The sets were elaborate, with dozens of stagehands moving them and dozens of costumed actors climbing over and around them. Giant demons and towering monsters, native scenes, river boats, birds, bugs, religious scenes, and actors descending and ascending by crane in bulls, stars, moons, treemen, birds, etc. It was so overwhelming at times that I forgot to cheer and stood slack-jawed and staring.
We were Caprichoso, and we ended up winning! The first day during our set we had torrential rain, so the first day didn't count towards the results. I can't help but think it did though, since Caprichoso still presented the full 2+ hours and all the fans stayed in the stands, drenched but happy.
Here are two videos I took, I'll try to see if I can embed them:
We traveled to the festival by a typical Amazon river boat (20 hours downstream, 24 on the return upstream- can I make a joke about next-day delivery?), but extra packed with partygoers probably above the 400 passenger occupancy. 3 open-air decks crammed with hammocks and full of local color. Loud music, loud engines, dirty, smelly, but so much fun! Here's a good resource on boat travel: http://www.joaoleitao.com/boat/70-tips-travel-amazon-river-boat/
We slung our hammocks and made friends with our neighbors despite our four words of Portuguese (abrigado, ciao, Caprichoso, Garantido). This worked so well that some of our neighbors invited us to stay with them at their family's house during the festival! We slung our hammocks on hooks in their living room wall and spent three days laughing with them while trying to understand each other (thanks Google translate!). We've been extremely impressed with Brazilian friendliness, generosity, and hospitality.
Also, today marks three months on the road!
-Peter
You two are amazing. I have no idea how to start to plan for something like this but you have given me hope to do the same. Yall are my heroes!
ReplyDeleteThank you! With a positive attitude, patience and a willingness to be flexible, the details seem to work themselves out :)
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