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Published: February 17th 2013
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We flew into Rio on a day when we knew there was a lull in the pre-Carnaval partying. The program told us so, and the aim was to squeeze all the general tourist sights into the few days we had before the festivities resumed. We were really looking forward to seeing some serious art galleries and museums. Rehgan has been suffering something like "art withdrawals" as most of Brazil is lacking in what we would consider fine art. There's obviously plenty of culture, in the forms of music, dance, religion, etc. but what he's missing is pretty pictures on the wall of a decent gallery. Unfortunately Rio did not come through for us and it wasn't for lack of trying. The best display of paintings we saw was the Naïve Art Museum. A lovely little collection by loads of untrained, unknown artists. The museum of modern art also had one very small corner dedicated to a whacky performance and installation artist known as Marcia X. Her display consisted of dildos made up to look like child's toys, and child's toys made to look like pornography (two mechanical dolls who are designed to crawl, heads removed, wired together, on a miniature bed,
and switched on so the crawling motions make them look like they're copulating). In one video, she stands in a bowl in a gallery and pours 10-12 giant tins of sweetened condensed milk, slowly over her head, then pours 7 or so packets of 100's & 1000's into a big sieve and shakes those over her head. I have to say, I was mesmerised!
When the street parties returned, it was impossible to go anywhere in the city without running into thousands of drunk, costumed revellers, all taking to the streets, taking over public transport, everywhere. We went to one on Rehgan's birthday, where we met up with a group of Couchsurfers, and joined a hot, sweaty, drunken procession of people all following a truck on top of which played a band. The local opportunists follow along with styrofoam boxes full of beer for sale, so you're never without a drink. I read on the wiki page that 80% of the annual consumption of beer in Brazil is done during Carnaval. A few guys wander around with armfuls of long plastic tubing full of different flavoured cachaça which you put in your mouth, bite a small hole in the
end and suck it through like a constant rate infusion of booze. Mine lasted me the whole day.
Couchsurfing had its own bloco this year - Michael Jackson themed! The guys on stage were playing MJ tunes samba style while impersonators danced and moonwalked through the crowd.
The Saturday night saw us heading to a very un-Carnaval psy trance party in a kind of warehouse that had been built into the side of a mountain. We'd been craving some good live psy, knowing that it's popular in Brazil but having not been in the right place at the right time to catch a festival. This was just a small warehouse party, decorated in blacklight and fluorescent paint but it was some of the best live psy we've heard played in a long time and we shook our arses long and hard and found ourselves in a taxi back to the apartment just after sunrise! We figured it was fine, because that following night we were to spend at the samba parade which also goes until well after sunup.
Our first wedding anniversary was spent sleeping during the day, then our CS friend, Ozzy came over ad cooked
In the combi
With fellow Couchsurfers on the way to Carmelitas bloco us a special pasta, we finished off a bottle of cachaça, painted our faces, then were off to the Sambadromo! The samba parade was unlike anything I've ever seen. It's bigger, brighter, more extravagant, more over the top than anyone who hasn't seen it could possibly imagine. There are five or six samba schools that compete on each of the four nights. Each samba school prances and sings its way down the runway for a good hour. They each have 6 or 7 floats, covered in costumed people, interspersed by multitudes of more costumed people. These costumes are the most elaborate I've ever seen. The amount of time, effort and money that goes into all this must be phenomenal. There are people, in front, and behind the scenes that spend their entire lives working towards the next Carnaval. I couldn't help thinking what could be accomplished if that same time and effort were put into something constructive. Despite the awesome time we were having, I felt a little guilty about the part we played in this wastefulness as consumers. I supposed it's like any other festival in the world, but bigger.
We were pretty broken the next day but
we dragged ourselves out to do some laundry and other bits and pieces before a gruelling 22 hour bus ride into the Pantanal.
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