RIO DE JANEIRO

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When ´planning´my trip last year I did the bare minimum, leaving all to STA and the travel nurses (neither of whom were much help), but the one thing that I did know I wanted to do was Carnaval in Rio, and it was around this crux that all the other destinations eventually fell into place. As such, it was with the highest of expectations that I arrived in our 12 bed dorm room in Tupiniquim hostel. Having spent the night on TAM planes and Lima airport seats, Fin and I weren´t ecstatic to enter a tiny hot dorm rammed with bunkbeds and new room mates who clearly resented the intrusion on their sleep, but as with all of our previous hostel experiences, things did get better.

Our hostel was in Botofogo, an area of Rio that is safer, if a little less central than the much-vaunted beach areas of Copacobana and Ipanema, but with the metro station a mere five minutes away, getting around was no trouble at all. Luckily for us newbies, there was Raissa, a Dutch woman with the voice and persona of a stereotypical American black mama. Raissa quickly befriended us and let us know that she was quite an authority on the city of Rio, having visited the previous year. Thanks to Raissa we were able to hang onto all of our belongings (typical conversation: Raissa: ýou like that watch?´me: ýeah´; Raissa 'well you better take it off or you gonna lose it!´) and our decency (dialogue with Jess: ´How would your mama feel about you wearing that see-through dress?´).

So it was on our first night, that a group of us ventured out, Raissa up front, and ended up in an empty nightclub that was reminiscent of a slow student night. PermaJess had just arrived from England and we weren´t about to let a crappy venue ruin our night, but the next morning we realised what it was to pay for the night before in forty-two degree heat. Fin, who vomited after tasting guava juice, was just about ready to drown herself in a bathtub of ice, whilst I found myself splayed out on the beanbags in the reception area - the only relief that could be found from the heat once the air conditioning had been so cruelly turned off at 10am.

We were keen to visit the main tourist attractions before Carnaval started in earnest, and with few city attractions in the world so iconic as the great statue of Christ the Redeemer, it was no surprise that this was our first and foremost destination. Jesus overlooks all of Rio from Corcovado Mountain and unlike so many disappointing famous statues, he really does live up to expectations. If you can disregard the many foreigners apeing his arms-wide position, Jesus and his surroundings are truly breathtaking. A Brazilian tour guide told me that any Rio resident coming back home knows they´re really home when they see the Christ, and it certainly feels like JC is overlooking all of his city´s subjects. From Corcovado Mountain you can see the beaches, favelas and green mountains that come together to make Rio, and it really is unlike any other city in the world.

Every year, the keys of the city of Rio are handed over to Rei Momo, the Lord of Misrule, on the Friday that Carnaval begins, and to mark this occasion, our hostel threw a BBQ party that saw the many mixed guests coming together to celebrate with a local band who were squeezed into the corner of the small courtyard playing typical Brazilian music. The young woman who owns the hostel and professed to loving making capirinihas, made sure that everyone was dolled up in Carnaval garb, and noone was enjoying themselves more than two unfriendly Polish women in their sixties winding and grinding in white miniskirts and revealing tops. When one band member initiated a ´dance around the bottle´game, one of the Poles went a little too far, and actually took the bottle so that she could have exclusive dancing rights around it, and the young Brazilian who had started the game!

Later that evening, we headed out to Lapa, an area that is notorious for street parties even outside of Carnaval week. This was when Raissa´s advice first came into practice, and when you entered the heaving thrall of sweating bodies and small darting children with very light fingers, it became more than apparent why a lot of gringoes head out without a bag. That first evening in Lapa, Carnaval did not live up to my expectations: yes there were the groping men and devious street children, but the music was more Western than Brazilian and the crowd wasn´t that unlike one you might encounter in an English nightclub.

The daytime blocos (street parties) were a bit more of what I had expected, and just walking around in the daytime, it was clear that the handing over of the keys to the Lord of Misrule, was more than symbolic. Catching the tube to the beach, or even the bus to the station, you constantly felt like you were in one big fancy-dress party. There were drag queens over there, giant babies on the bus, and the cutest children in all variety of outfirts being escorted around by proud parents. At any time you were liable to get hosed or squirted with foam, and all inihibitions flew out of the window. But for the most exciting, and really authentic Carnaval experience, nothing could beat Sunday night in the Sambadrome. In Rio, the Carnaval revolves largely around the competition of the best samba schools in all-night-long parades on the Sunday and the Monday. The crowd is a great mix, and whilst people do begin to noticeably drop off after around 4am, it´s invigorating to see that a lot of those with the most staying power are the older people, often wearing the colours of their favourite school, and dancing all through the early hours with little show of tiredness.

Whilst the parades do showcase plenty of the iconic samba queens in glitter, feathers and little else, there is so much more than these scantily-clad women to commend the performances. This year saw skiing batmans, Michael Jackson impersonators, and unbelievably complex floats that themselves were performers. Although many people will readily tell you that Carnaval in Rio has become over-commercialised and that the true spirit of Carnaval is found in the streets, for me nothing else in that week even came close to the Sambadrome performances. It was also an exception to most of the Carnaval events, in that it was not a cattle-market for Gringoes and locals, the each looking for a ´fun time´with the other.

Carnaval was fantastic, but not what we expected, and certainly not for the faint-hearted. The day that we left, something like a monsoon began, and this was no surprise considering that the heat of the previous two weeks had been too much even for the locals. I look forward to returning to Rio in ´normal´time, just to see the residents without their partyheads on, but somehow I doubt that Rio is a city about which you may say: "it´s quite like ___"

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