Brazil - The first leg. Rio de Janerio (Carnaval)

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Carnaval is one big, fun party, obvs. The most surprising thing was the sheer city-wide scale of it and its levelling effect: age, class, nationality didn't matter. Fancy dress and beer did. Everyone got involved and was basically really happy, from grannies to little kids, even if just in their local 'bloco'. You can see and hear Carnaval literally everywhere, from the singing groups of teens on public buses to the mask/hat/feather vendors, the never-ending crates of beer or the gridlocked traffic. Brazilians are culturally and attitudinally sound anyway, and Carnaval is also a celebration of sexuality - flesh and cross dressing is everywhere!

Carnaval seemed to consist of two main events. One was the Samba Parade at the Sambadrome (Sambódromo), a bespoke stadium designed by Oscar Niemeyer and built in 1984, with a 700m walk/dance-way in the middle and room for 90,000 spectators. The other was street parties (blocos).

We went to the Samba Parade on the Sunday night. Sunday and Monday nights are the best but most expensive, when the better samba schools parade, so the costumes and floats are more spectacular. It's easy to get in and out by metro. We bought tickets online before for Sector 4 which was a good spot near the start. You can get cheaper tickets on the ground in Rio but you need to know a local. Everyone was on good form, there were quite a few families there even though it starts at 9am and finishes at 3/4am. We were amazed again by the scale of the parades, each school has 82minutes to dance the length of the dromo, 6-8 big floats, thousands of dancers, with a different theme such as the "History of Germany" or "The two sides of fame". The schools are judged by specialists on key criteria and there is one winner announced at the end of Carnaval. Each parade was amazing, grand, intricate, well choreographed etc. Our favourite was "History of Germany" for its fun floats (waterslide float!) and witty choreography - such as dancers coming together with car parts to form VW Beetles and a Black Forest Gateaux.

Another highlight was a key lookalike spot: Brazilian Lawrence Fishburne, who was selling drinks in the crowds. We'd previously seen Brazilian Samuel L Jackson, Richard Branson and Pat Butcher but not managed to pap em.



So the other part of Carnaval is the parties - blocos. These are pre-organised across each day and you can pick up a guide in the newspapers. They range from massive ones (e.g. 1 million people) in locations like Copacabana and Centro to smaller local ones like we witnesses in Laranjeiras. Each has a band, booze, and a load of people in random fancy dress singing and chanting, chatting and drinking, perhaps following the band on a circuit.

We went to one in Leme on the beach, one in Santa Teresa (which was a mission to get to and so we missed most of it), a big one in Copacabana where we met friends Wylie, Ivo, Brett and co - aka The VIP Area - genius pulling technique. We also went to the Sargeant Pepper bloco in Botafogo, a bossa/samba tribute bustop-band, which was huge and amazing. We were well cocky cos we could sing all the words! Unlike a lot of Brazilian timetables, these street parties start bang on time. Even at 9am. Don't be fashionably late and allow lots of time to arrive, as there are simultaneous blocos happening that can upset your travel route. We learnt this the hard way!

Carnaval was really fun, and you can really pick and choose what you get involved in and how hard you party.

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