After the serious search by the PMs, Joe and I went back to Samba Villa to sign the rental contracts with the landlord Elvis and third partner Zack from Australia.
Zack and I had arranged to go to São Paulo for a rave called Skol Beats. I had heard about the event months ago and checked the line up online. It was sick. I had to be there.
http://bizz.abril.com.br/barulhoonline/37824_comentarios.shtml
As you can see the second day included a tent solely dedicated to 15 hours of DnB!
Zack and I were to join Shelley, a 22 from Ireland staying in my hostel; and Fernanda, a 23 Brazilian from Brazilia, staying at Samba Villa. After finalising contracts with Joe and Elvis we left for our adventure. Eventually, we flagged a taxi down at the ripe time of 18:00 (4 hours over schedule) and arrived at the bus station after 30 minutes of rush hour traffic to buy our bus tickets. The bus was comfortable and had seats that leaned back almost horizontally, allowing us to sleep for most of the journey. We then took a sherbet dab to the event picking up tickets from touts on the way.
Security was tight and I was afraid that the tickets wouldn't get us in, but they did. First off, we went to the bar to get some beer down us. The only drink on the menu was Skol beer. After necking a few we followed the music to our first tent. Q-Bert was in the urban tent. He is one of the world most famous turntablists. Turntablism means to use the turntables like a musical intrument; creating music by juggling two records, mixing and scratching in time. He was fucking awesome.
After we went to watch DJ Housey. AKA David Guetta from France. To my surprise I really got into it. He play a set that was even comparible to Bob & Pat's 'Gash Sessions Vol 3'. There was somehting missing though.. Jubes. We went in search. None. Eventually we bumped into a Spanish girl who we new from Rio and she said she could get some for R$40 each. I bought two, and double dropped because they tasted like paracetamol. I think they were pro-plus or something similar. Very disappointing; they tool about an hour to do something very subtle, not dissimilar to drinking a cup of coffee. Someone should really sort out the jube problem in Brazil.
For the rest of the night we hopped from tent to tent consuming massive amounts of Skol enjoying a mixture of house, electro, breaks and hip hop. The night passed fairly quickly and we were soon drunkedly dancing to the rythyms of Mstrkrftin in the blazing São Paulo sun. At about 9am security guards dressed in black, efficiently ushered everyone out of the vicinity. Surprisingly, the four of us had successfully managed to remain together for pretty much the whole night; probably due to lack of chemical intoxications.
We waited in vain for a taxi outside of the rave and soon got chatting to a particularly drunk Brazilian, who offered us a place to crash in exchange for buying him breakfast. He informed us that he lived only 15 minutes away, so we all jumped in a sherbet and took off. I was soon asleep.
I awoke to be faced with a R$70 meter bill; Shelley tells me that our newly aquainted and soon-to-be host had first said his house was fifteen minutes away; fifteen minutes later, he updated us that it was half an hour; half an hour passed and that turned into 40 mintutes, at which point she woke me up. At this point, my mediteranian temper fueled by copius amounts of alcohol flaired up. I started cursing in my newly learnt Portuguese 'Po ha! Carâlio!' which literally means 'spunk dick' although weirdly 'po ha' in this context means 'fuck' and 'carâlio' means is commonly used as an insult! This woke Zack up and he joined in the profanities. Just then, the cabby, seeming to get very nervous, flashed a police car in front to pull over. Great. These fuckers jump out of their truck and bound over with there guns flailing. At this point, I sobered up instantly and tried to calm the situation. The police then attempted to lure us all over the road to their station but after watching us all shouting at each other, they seemed to get bored, chuckled to each other and jumped back in their truck before speeding off. We managed to get some money from the drunk and paid the innocent and furious cabbie before staggering away. After this episode, I asked a local garage for directions to a hotel and he pointed us to a merky looking establishment across the road. We entered the 'motel' and were greeted by a fat skanky bird with convenient, prostitute-like attire. She told us that we had to pay by the hour (gives you an idea of this place's purpose) and had a choice of rooms: standard beds; round beds; octogon beds and even rooms with no bed at all, just some weirdly shaped chair with about 10 arms! We opted for 2 standard rooms and were over the moon to find they boasted plastic-coated pillows and sheets. Mmmm. At this point the time was about 10am and we had paid till 5pm.
I woke up at 4pm and could not bare to be in these completely depressing surroundings any longer so rallied everyone else out of bed and eventually - 40 minutes later - we went in search of civilization. It was not easy to come by, we been ferried miles away from anywhere and were now stranded somewhere in the outskirts of the vast São Paulo state, which is home to 20,000,000 Paulistas. I asked directions in a local garage, a short mole-faced man pointed in the direction of the nearest bus stop, just 200 yards away. We all stopped off for Acaî and each chowed down on a greasy fried steak sandwhich; I dowsed pimenta all over the meat, mmm, hot chilli, mmm. Once we'd finished, we went and found the bus stop. It was located in an area which reminded me exactly of being inside Rosinha; full of hustle and bustle and local small businesses. Zack and I stopped to admire a view of favela like houses that stretched as far as the eye could see. 'This country is absolutely fucking huge, innit?' I mumoured. 'Yeah, it's fucking sick, dude' Zack replied, and we continued across the road to wait for the bus. Fernanda asked a girl also waiting for directions to the 'grande citade' where we would find skol beats and normality. 2 hours away by bus, was the girl's amused reply. When the bus arrived, it was full and we all spent the majority of the journey standing propped up against metal bars attempting (unsuccessfully) to relax. It was however interesting to see the slow build-up of civilization as we drew closer to São Paulo's main city centre.
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