CARNAVAL!

AWESOME AMAZING FUN CRAZY DIVERSE MARATHON OF INCREDIBLENESS!

That's carnaval in a nutshell :)

cross country drive to Rio from SP

We stayed in a great apartment, Sofia, her friend Julianna, 3 other American girls and myself.


The first day we were up bright and early to start the first bloquinho of the week. Bloquinhos are block parties where live bands are playing in trucks, people are dressed up in costumes, and everyone is squashed together in one hot, sweaty parade that goes for a mile or two. Guys are carrying coolers of beer on their backs, selling squirt guns, and everyone is dancing and singing in the sun....for about 4 hours.

The awesome apartment, the bloqos passed right in front of those windows!

Grandma, mom, child, and grandchild are all there to celebrate the biggest holiday in Brazil and THEY DO NOT STOP.


When you see grandma dancing in the street after 3 hours and you feel beat you realize that this is a life skill, surviving carnaval...and that is just the first part of day one!

The view from our apartment window

Even though I didn't know the words to the songs, or have conquered the art of samba dancing, I had a blast dancing and humming along with everyone, trying hard NOT to look like a gringa.

Delicious margarita pizza for lunch. This is the only time I've had pizza for lunch here in Brazil, its just a dinner thing....and as you can see, you eat it with a fork and knife, none of that actual touching of the food...which was probably much better since we hadn't washed our hands, we were lucky to get a pizza and a table!

Escolas de Samba do Rio 2013 

Carnaval Parade

So the parade is what I thought of before going to carnaval. Lots of beautiful men and women dressed in amazing costumes, dancing samba, and these crazy floats and heaps of people watching it all happen. Well, essentially that's how it works. What I did not know beforehand was that the parade begins at 9pm and ends around 6am....and then the bloquinhos begin again at 10am....so essentially you have time to shower and nap before starting the day haha. Unfortunately after 3 days of this craziness was the parade and I was exhausted. We walked around all day chasing bloqunhos (half-heartedly, by this time even the Brazilians were looking a little tired) and then headed to the parade. We were in cement bleachers along this huge avenue built and used only for carnaval where you pretty much pay for a place to stand and pray you don't have to use the bathroom or that the water guy walks by, as it is still extremely warm and humid at midnight.

Yep, I was tired....this is around 11pm

So each group of floats is a school. Each school is ranked by order of quality of performance (dancing, floats, costumes, music, originality, etc.) 

The craftsmanship of these floats is incredible, the amount of detail and anamatronics used by each school was breathtaking.

 So as you can see, each float had several components to it: dancers, moving parts, lights, the float itself moving, and everything had to be insync to get the highest score.

This float, at least the jellyfish, reminded me of the bit on 'Octupus's Garden' of the Beatles Love show
by Cirque du Soleil

very powerful imagery here...the school's theme was human influence on natural resources, I love the contrast of the lush ocean with the oily dead ape and fish, they even used a chemical smell after a perfume smell to stimulate all the senses!

I limped home after 5 days of a great time (I skinned my knee on the first day), I highly recommend going to Rio for Carnaval and staying in either Ipanema or Leblon, they are both great neighborhoods!