Salvador Carnaval Machete Attack - Brazil Travel Story

Title: Salvador Carnaval Machete Attack
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WHERE: Carnaval, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. WHEN: February 2008. WHO: 4 Australian males in mid 20's.
It's as simple as this: if my younger brother's reflexes had been a split second blunter, he would be dead. He would have been murdered 5 hours after arriving in Salvador, with no witnesses and no way of his travel partners knowing where he was.
Interestingly, days earlier on the island of Morro de Sao Paulo, a short catamaran ride from Salvador, a now eerie warning had been received by a complete stranger. Antony, a local boxer and capoiera enthusiast, showed us his three horrifying scars from a machete attack in Salvador. He proudly revealed massive, thick, and puffy scars on one of his hands, the side of his stomach, and, scarily, the top of his head. He told us that Salvador, the Bahian capital sitting a short catamaran ride from this idlyllic island, could be peligroso - dangerous. The story captured our attention, but like all stories that will never happen to you, failed to chip away at our keenness.
It was around midnight on our first night in Salvador that Pulse, just turned 23, and having been displaced from his friends, decided to walk from the main square of old town Pelourinho to the seaside barrio of Barra for a look, drunk and alone. He heard from someone that Barra was where the action was and knew what direction to go. But he had no idea it was 5 km away. He could speak no Brazilian Portuguese whatsoever. 
At the best of times, Pulse is a casual man. He had been given the nickname Pulse by teammates at Collingwood, a Melbourne club in the Australian Football League, because it was unclear if his heart rate could ever skyrocket. Even in the intense atmosphere of professional football, Pulse was apparently always calm, never flustered. It was this laid back nature, combined with a number of cans of Skol, that would lead him down an unlit alleyway to urinate on his walk. 
Standing 6 foot 2 inches tall, and a fit 85kg, he wouldn't make the ideal target for a young Brazilian thief. But in this alley, with his shorts down, drunk, and with two fleet footed, and probably experienced assailants, Pulse was edging perilously close to the definition of a sitting duck.
The attack went like this. Whilst actually urinating against a wall, Pulse, in the corner of his eye, noticed a blade coming for his head. Instinctively, the right hand that had been holding his penis, thrust out and up to protect himself. This right palm clutched to the assailiants wrist. It stopped the 30 cm machete blade a foot from the side of his head. He states simply that if he had been any later, or missed the kids hand, the machete would have sliced his head open, and he would be dead.
But he was not out of danger yet. The assailant repeatedly attempted to thrust the machete towards his head, half a dozen times getting quite close to striking. Pulse kept his grip on his wrist, luckily stronger than the kid, said to be slim, black, ragged, and maybe aged 18. 
Suddenly, and horrifyingly, Pulse felt the presence of another kid behind him. If this 2nd thug had a machete also, he was surely finished. But he didn't. Instead, he rifled his hands through the back pocket of Pulse's boardshorts, looking obviously for money. Amazingly, only 5 minutes earlier Pulse had moved his money, 150 R (about $50), from that pocket into his shoe. He had remembered my earlier tip from someone against pickpockets. All the thief got this time was what was left in his pocket. Two condoms.
After about 10 seconds of struggling against the machete kids, Pulse managed to break free, and sprinted to the end of the alley, where the lights of the crowded street shone. The kids fled the other away.
But Pulse had not seen the last of his troubles for this night. One hour later, we were all together again, having bumped into each other. We were drinking in a semi-crowded dirt street a couple of blocks north of the main Pelourinho square. A young black fellow was chatting with us. He seemed cool, and seemed to be the only foreigners around, but I suddenly noticed in the eyes of a nearby local girl that something was wrong. She warned me to get away from this guy, and realising she was right, I told him to go away. He didn't. And Pulse, completely unaware and ignoring our requests to come with us, was suddenly separated from the group, and was surrounded by characters who had coe form nowhere. Before we realised what was happening, the creep snatched at Pulse's pocket, ripping it almost off his shorts, and ran. 
This time the theif missed out on condoms. But he did get Pulse 150 R, which Pulse had for some reason since the machete getaway, moved from his shoe back to his ripped pocket.
A classic first night, it wasn't the last of the muggings for our group that week. I had to fend off two teenage kids who tried to rip my pocket off on a dark Barra main beach, having followed me from the toilets up on the road, and sprung form nowhere. I managed to get my hand over the pocket, before both kids tried to retch my fingers away. I was staggered when one of them, desperate for me to release my grip, knealt down and clamped his teeth hard into my wrist. The the only time I've been phyically mugged, I was surprisingly calm, though there was clearly no other white people in the vicinity. The local girl I was with on the beach had reeled back in horror, screaming. Then suddenly, not strong enough to overpower me, the kids fled. Maybe it was lucky they didn't have machetes. We later heard a foreigner had been murdered on one of the beaches during the week.
Another night, Partyboy was swimming in the ocean on the main beach with a local girl. They were in underwear only, their clothes in a neat pile on the sand. Suddenly he noticed some kids heading towards the pile. He thought about running into shore to stope them, but his calculations that he was too far out from the beach, were correct. The kids grabbed everything, and bolted. Stranded in jocks, they had to work out how to get back to Pelourinho, 5 km away. A nice man lent a Medellin soccer top to his lady friend, keeping her modesty. But Partyboy, wearing only a set of litte-boy jockets with blue and white vertical stripes, was exposed. They got the local bus back to the pousada.
Also, on the street during the week, I was punched in the head twice and we all continually felt pickpocketers hands thrust into our pockets. But despite all of that, I can say that the Salvador Carnaval is the best travel event I have been to - and I have been to 50 countries.