them setting up the day before. They were playing Parintins songs,
which I got to know real well, because there are about 8 of them.
Some background on the theoretical framework of the history and
practices of the festival is in order. If anything seems unclear,
don't ask me because I have no idea. Just relax your need for
explanation as much as possible and use your imagination to fill in
gaps.
So there are two bulls. Bulls correspond to colors (red and blue),
to vaguely stated personality traits ("garantido" and "caprichoso")
and to two tribes of people who affiliate as one or the other and
where the corresponding color t-shirt, armband, etc. The words
"garantido" and "caprichoso" translate directly to "guaranteed" and
"capricious" so if you thought a dictionary was going to help you
understand this better, you're out of luck. Some of this had been
explained to me the night before while I was drinking, other stuff I
was just intuiting or (maybe) hallucinating.
Each side has it's own songs, like "I'm blue, I'm blue, I'm blue, I'm
'caprichoso'" or "Garantido... garaaantido". And there are four of
them. Did I say eight? No, I think there were four.
For lunch the crazy guys from the boat were having a barbacue. Huge
chunks of salted meat and sausage, and some of these really mean
looking river fish with tough black scales that you have to rip apart
like a lobster. Later that night I realized how cheap beer was and
got really drunk and ran around dancing at the techno party. At some
point I ran into a swede from the hostel scene in Manaus; they'd come
down on a smaller boat that day, but all she knew was it was near the
fire station. So the next morning when I woke up (pretty early
considering) I checked my email and went to find this boat.
