Carnival!!

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Today is officially as far as I know based on all the religious stuff, the last day of Carnival, and also the last stat holiday here so Mukuda will finally stop complaining about his laundry woes.

First off I want to apologize for the lack of Carnival pictures, Blair was our photographer because his camera is much smaller than mine and we actually have several CD's full of the various Carnival activities we have engaged in over the last several days. I have a few pics I will post but the good ones will have to wait until later.

We did much partying on the streets of Lapa, beaches and streets of Ipanema, and of course in downtown where the spectacular Samba parade took place. Now the samba parade is really quite something, they erected this huge gauntlet somewhere near downtown that is basically like a stadium but without a field, and just a street down the middle. I have no idea how many people were in the combined bleacher system but it would have been a ridiculous number. You cram into the stands, literally, unable to breath, I'm sure there were countless injuries, it took us almost half an hour just to get from the entrance to the bleachers up to about halfway to the top where you could actually stand without being trampled to death. At that point we basically stood, danced, drank and watched this parade go from when we arrived there... not sure maybe 11pm or 12am? Until when I could not stand anymore and left at about 4:45 AM, and the other guys stayed to watch the last float, which wasn't the last float at all but left after it, and then upon getting home at 8am turned on the T.V. to see the parade still wasn't over. I guess it was an all night 12 hour parade? Regardless the show was incredible, the dancing and costumes were out of this world, and the floats so enormous it looked like a crawling Disneyland except all the women were topless and in g strings jumping around the floats.

We saw the drag queen parade in Ipanema on Saturday which was really something, I never knew there were so many beautiful men out there... Anyhow the costumes were both extravagant and hilarious so the whole thing was really fun to watch. I got the heads up on a really nice all you can eat place from the other guys so I finally got my sushi feed I've been waiting for since I left home, not to mention plates and plates of rare meat! Jacky and I ate until our little hearts were content.

Parties in Lapa were quite something, T.P. had his wallet stolen one night which sucked, there is this little alley we call hippy alley where all these has beens hang out (including us) and we all cursed the street vendor that sold us vodka, condensed milk, strawberries, and about 2 cups of sugar in a glass, but managed somehow to make it through this alley alive before wandering the rest of the streets. Even the homeless cripples laying on the roads were drunk out of their minds from passers by pouring drinks in their mouths.

We had many beach days on Ipanema where the food and the drink are everywhere, as well as women in skimpy bikini's. At this point we have turned night into day and day into night, Blair set some kind of a new record last night waking up at 6:30pm, then after a couple hours of sitting on the couch debating on whether to take a siesta or not. We all came home around 2am and felt like it was lunch time, so we just made some more drinks and played cards until dawn. Tomorrow Jacky and I leave for Foz to spend a couple days at the waterfalls, so I figured I should update the blog before then, hopefully we can get our bearings back after days of staying up all night and laying on the beaches.

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Photos

Streets of Ipanema
Parties literally appear everywhere, all thats needed is a little music, drinks and a street corner. Anyone can buy, sell, drink or just give away booze anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Protectin
Just protectin' Rio.

Jesus
In all his glory!

Us
High above Rio we wait for Carnival!

Drag Queens
This wasn't an official parade, just a bunch of men dressing up as women and craving attention, hilarious costumes though!