On behalf of OS Kuduristas, we got this amazing opportunity to travel to Angola and experience the everyday life and culture of the locals. One word that sums up the culture of Luanda is Kuduro. Kuduro is to Angola what HipHop is to NYC or what dancehall is to Jamaica. It is a form of music, style and dance that speaks to everything around it. While being there everything, even the mundane, seemed to spew a sense of Kuduro.

What I took back  from this trip was how similar we all are across the globe. Though things may have at times looked foreign, the energy emitted was not at all unfamiliar. The story of taking struggle and hardship and using it as inspiration to create is something that holds a common thread all over the world.

This time around, we were lucky enough to shoot a ton of footage that enabled us to bring you guys the series of short videos above that shows what an amazing trip we had.

Market Life- Believe it or not this footage was shot on our first day in Luanda. To start the trip on this note set the momentum for the rest of the trip. This market was not quite like everywhere else in Luanda. Being on the more rural side of things, it felt like a detached city buzzing with pride, culture and passion. At its core it was simply just a market where locals buy and sell everyday goods but it gave a feeling of so much more.

Barbershop- Josh decided early on that inorder to really experience all that Luanda had to offer, he had to get a his haircut by a real, Angolan barber. It is easy say why barbers make up a big part of the culture they operate in. There is something about getting your hair cut in a foreign place that tells a story about so much more than the haircut. While only using a comb and a double sided razor, this barber was able to do a taper and shapeup with pristine precision.

School Day- The day we visited the school was exuberating to say the least. As stated in the video, the kids were a pleasure to be around. One obvious thing that stands out is where the school was located. The school was centered in the middle of a beautiful color-coded condimium complex. Being at the school was a definite highlight of the trip, we enjoyed beating the kids at basketball and losing to them at soccer. Looking back, talking to the kids was some of the most fun we had. The kids were nothing short of fascinated to hear our story as a muse to practice their English on, in turn we got to practice our portuguese.

Nightlife: I always say that you can never fully experience a city until you experience what it’s like when the sun goes down and the lights go out. Man, Angolans can party! In the video above, we started the night at Kasta Lounge which is a pretty westernized nightclub, great music, superb dancing, beautiful women, all the proper essentials. We ended the night at a Quintal which is pretty much a nighttime BBQ on steroids. Food, music and the night sky above. Parties don’t stop here, needless to say, these people know how to enjoy life. In order to keep this post PG, I will refrain from commenting on women of Angola but you catch my drift.

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Joshua Kissi : Our Travel Etiquette series was started on the notion of “How do you live in your clothing/style?” rather than the clothing itself.  I’m quite ecstatic that our Travel Etiquette series ended up taking place on the continent of Africa, with so much to dispel and add on, it was a great opportunity to touch down in Angola. Being from Ghana, West Africa it was a very similar cultural experience but obviously a different language barrier. We saw, heard, smelled and felt familiar things in a distant place and that’s a big part of Travel Etiquette. We hope this is just the very beginning of an continuous awesome project series where we will travel the seven seas via the interwebs to bring you guys great culturally diverse content and hopefully you will have the opportunity can do the same.

Thank you guys for supporting us once again and our Travel Etiquette series which we are very passionate about because it’s more about the notion of collecting moments in life, rather than physical possessions.  Get those worn in chucks out, a small duffle bag, (oh yeah) your passport, go see the world, and here’s a bit why Luanda, Angola should be a first stop.

The video above is a teaser/preview of our time in Luanda, you can expect a number of video episodes from our experience in Angola accompanied with beautiful imagery VERY soon to be launched on our website.

Check out more at Os Kuduristas

And Imagery on our Inspiration page

Sampa aka Sao Paulo was very similar to our home New York City  in terms of landscape, transportation and how crowded the streets can become. In this case we were the usual curious tourist on Broadway taking up space to take a gander up at the towering buildings surrounding us. Sao Paulo’s people were as colorful and vibrant as the amazing street art found around the city. It’s great to see a form of art that was humbly birthed in the Bronx during the 1970s become globally interpreted in various ways.

The beneficial element about the Internet is the ability to connect with people all around the world by way of your computer. We had the great opportunity of meeting up with Jun Alcantara, a Brazilian musician/journalist and one of our readers who we contacted prior to our arrival in Sao Paulo. It was a pleasure to receive a more everyday life view of someone living in Sao Paulo, eating at a boteco, pick up football games, in the day relaxing at the park and at night partying like it’s your last day alive.  You can read/view Jun’s entry on his blog Ubora of our stay there. It’s great to know you can travel all over the world and still connect with people who the similar views as yourself.

In comparison to the city of Itajai the two locations were polar opposites with Itajai full of many beaches  accompanied by a much more relaxed pace of living. Itajai was one of the main reasons we had the great opportunity to fly down to Brazil with PUMA, and 4 other photographers/bloggers which included Justin Chung, James Nord, John Jannuzzi, and Ashley Simko.

To conclude everything it was an amazing trip, I learned a great deal of Portuguese, my first experience on a boat, fell in love with a drink called Guarana which has me experiencing withdrawal symptoms back in NYC, but also fell in love with the Brazilian people and culture.

Obrigado por ter nos recebido no Brasil. Nos divertimos muito e estamos ansiosos para voltar!

Viva Brasil!

Travis Gumbs: It has always been our aspiration to travel to different places and become one with the culture. Our week stay in Brazil was truly one of the best experiences of my life. From the food, to the people to the art, it is a place that really requires a second lengthy visit. We got the opportunity to go to both places as apart of PUMA’s State of Play Campaign. The idea was to have us experience the cuture, nightlife, music and people of both places (Sao Paulo and Itajai) as well as be apart of the Volvo Ocean race that PUMA is competing in.There is so much that transpired during our 7 day, 6 night stay that it would be impossible for me to recall it all. Here are some of the highlights of the trip

- The traffic in Sao Paulo is like non other, picture New York but with twice the amount of cars. A lot of the guys are bike messengers and they run errands all day on motorcycles. These guys are crazy! Apparently they call themselves “vida loca”  which translates to “crazy life” in English. Locals kept telling us that at least one of them die in an accident each day, a sad yet interesting fact.

– On our first day in Sao Paulo we took a trip to Beco de Batman which is pretty much a long ally with some of the most amazing street art I have ever seen. The art in the pictures above came from this place.

– We got a chance to check out the Afro-Brazil Museum. It showcased art that highlighted the culture of black Brazilians and  indigenous Indians  from the past and present. The exhibits were mind blowing – Brazil is a culture that is rich with history.

–The food in Sao Paulo was amazing! I long to relieve those days of rice and beans, steaks, cassava and all the other foods (that ignorantly I failed to take the name of) and of course wash it all down with a glass of guarana.

- Itajai is like what Los Angeles is to New York. It felt a lot more laid back and nonchalant. Every three years the Volvo Ocean Race takes place. It is a very interesting boat race that circles around the world. Just so happens that PUMA has a boat in the race and Itajai, Brazil was one of the race’s checkpoints. We had a chance to check out the state of the art sail boat and had our own mini race. It’s pretty miraculous that these guys are literally sailing around the entire world on such a small, streamlined boat. We were on it for about an hour and the thought of being on such a boat, doing the work that they do for 9 months straight seemed impossible.

– The people of Itajai sure love to party. I”m talking all night, nonstop dancing and enjoyment. I’ll say our most interesting night out was when we went to Warung Beach Club. Picture 3,000 people, pouring rain, and nonstop music until the sun came out.

- There is so much more I can talk about, like my embarrassing attempt at paddle boarding ( I eventually mastered the art) or the night Josh’s camera went missing accompanied by our experience being held at gun point at 3am, we literally went through every possible hurdle to get back to the beach where we hoped the camera would be. To our surprise it was sitting right on the beach, untouched. What a night!

All in all our trip to Brazil was an awesome one, I fully intend to make a return.