I’ve never been happier to have someone spill beer on me. The only thing between myself and the thousand other gyrating bodies is a sticky layer of humidity under the equatorial Amazonian summer sun.

Fortunately, I can wear open-toed shoes here, unlike in Bolivia. For some reason, party-goers there are trusted with drinks in glass containers that inevitably end up on smashed on the floor, requiring fancy footwork to avoid. Here in the midst of Carnival, small boys slither skillfully between bare legs swooping up used aluminum cans, presumably to make a buck.

An official civic-hosted live street concert has just ended. An entourage forms around somebody’s well-endowed car stereo which pulses with forro. Forro is a type of Brazilian folk accordion party music…I never thought I’d see people dirty dancing to accordion music, but now I have. It is hard to tell where one street party ends and the other begins…