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Published: February 26th 2007
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Action in the Sambadrome The next day we packed up and headed to the Ipanema, this is where we would be staying for carnival and probably the rest of our trip. Ipanema turned out to be a great choice. The beaches here are fabulous and as it is quite an up-market part of Rio there were loads of good bars and restaurants. Plus the area is always busy which made us feel pretty safe while we were walking about.
During Carnival hostel/hotel prices rocket so we knew we'd have to pay more but still, it was a bit painful to hand over around 200 quid for 6 nights, considering what we'd previously been paying in South America. Anyway, the hostel seemed nice and there were only 4 in a room which was pretty good. Our location was good too, just 5 minutes from the beach and very close to the street parties.
We dumped our stuff in the hostel and headed to the beach.... we’d been waiting for this for a while! The beach culture in Rio really deserves a blog entry by itself but I'll try and do justice to it with limited time. Firstly the beach itself is really beautiful. The
One of the floats
Action in the Sambadrome sand is fine and very bright and there is a huge area of beach between the road and the sea. The beautiful Sugar Loaf mountain overlooks the sea on the right and on the left it just stretches for miles and miles. Looking from the sea the city of Rio rises up to the hills and at night the thousands of homes in the many favellas (slums) are little dots all over the mountains leading right up to the magnificent Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks the city.
But it's really the people that make the place. There is every shape and size of people on the beaches of Rio but bikinis and swimming trunks only come in one size - small. Girls wear dental floss bikinis regardless of how much skin it covers and most of the men are quite happy to strut around in tighter than tight shorts, in fact, Speedos is a more accurate description. There's no denying that there are a lot of beautiful people in Rio and they know it as they strut about with not a pick of self consciousness, have to say its a great attitude. During Carnival the beaches were packed.
The chicas give it loads
Action in the Sambadrome Sometimes it was actually a struggle to find a spot for your towel but the people just kept coming. A day at the beach is just a way of life here when the locals are off work there’s no better way to spend a day. It occurred to us during our time here that you could actually live on the beach and not want for anything. Vendors bring all sorts of food, drink and even clothes and jewelry around all day long so you don’t even have to get off your towel. Also, during Carnival, many of the street parties took place beside the beach and continued on the beach until sunrise so you can have a great night out there as well! It wasn’t uncommon to see hundreds of people still on the beach sunbathing until 6/7pm - it’s just too good to leave! Karen and I were lucky enough to go to some of the night beach parties and see some great sunrises. For me they were undoubtedly the best of our trip.
But onto the details of carnival itself! We’d seen images of carnival before throughout the years and had imagined loads of street parades and
fancy costumes and a general sense of chaos. Although we did see this quite a bit it was a lot more organized than we expected. The carnival takes place over 4 days and nights and every evening an area hosts what's known as a ‘bloco’. This is generally just a big parade down the street in any direction really with a lot of street vendors selling food, alcohol and jewelry (jewelry is everywhere!). At these types of parties there aren’t any of the huge floats or extravagant costumes, mostly there is music, some carnival accessories and people having a good time. We went to a couple of blocos and found it was a great way to get talking to locals - despite the language barrier. We found that in Brazil though, this isn’t too much of a problem. No matter how many times you tell someone you don’t speak Portuguese they’ll always continue chatting to you - just willing you to understand. It really is hilarious though. We’ve spent a few happy hours with locals just guessing what they are saying and talking back in English or maybe a little Spanish and just hoping they have a half idea what
Fit bods galore
Sambadome parade you are talking about. It really is a very funny situation though and we’ve experienced it so much - on the beach, in bars, in shops - anywhere and everywhere. It all adds to the fun!
So apart from the blocos the big thing during carnival is the action in the Sambadrome. Every year the various Samba Schools around the city compete to determine who has the best parade. Up until the mid 1980’s this event took place in various locations throughout the city but as it just kept getting bigger and bigger it was eventually decided that they needed a purpose built arena - the Sambadrome. The two-day extravaganza is considered by many to be the greatest show on earth. Lasting a total of 20 hours, with about seventy thousand participants, twice as many people in the audience, plus millions of spectators glued to their TV sets in Brazil and around the world, it may well be.
Seven samba schools march on Carnival Sunday, and seven more on Carnival Monday. Each samba school picks a particular theme. They display it to the audience in the format of a tropical mini-opera. A school has from 60-75 minutes to perform,
She had one too many..
One of the floats after the show with three to five thousand participants. They are distributed in alas or wings, with 6 to 8 floats for each school. Karen and I went along on the Monday night, did some hard bargaining outside and secured a couple of good tickets. It really was a spectacular sight. The sheer volume of people in the parade along with the magnificent array of colours is truly overwhelming. Every school also devises their own song which is printed and distributed to the audience. We were on our feet with the rest of the crowd singing away in our best Portuguese! Must admit that after 3 or 4 schools we were pretty much done, they do go on for a while but it really was a sight to behold.
So that was basically carnival. After the 4 days we were wrecked but it was worth it as I think it will be a once of occasion, in Rio anyway… there’s always Salvador next year! We were also lucky to have met some great people to share the experience with. We hit it off with our Dutch room mate Diane and we had a lot of good times together. She in turn introduced us to a few crazy Irish guys and there were many others along the way that made the carnival and Rio in general what it was.
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