Carnaval Craziness

Trip Start Sep 05, 2007
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Trip End Feb 06, 2008


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Flag of Brazil  ,
Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Carnival was insane! It is about 5 days of samba parades through the streets, scheduled block parties ("Blocs"), and the Carnival event itself. There are also double decker buses with bands playing on top that park on the main beaches and play samba music with everyone dancing around in swimsuits.  The parades are generally smaller samba schools - the funniest one we saw was the Escola do Samba da Galinha (the Chicken Samba School). They all wore yellow and carried placards that said... "Viva la chickens!" "We love chickens!" "We love tourists!".  There's also an amazing amount of guys wearing sun dresses, and everyone wears crazy hats, wigs, boas and costumes.
We went to a neighbourhood called Lapa one night. There is an ongoing party there, with lots of artists and craftspeople displaying their wares, several huge venues (one like Olympic Plaza in Calgary) with samba music playing. We went into one and people kept coming up to us showing us how to samba. We were soaked with sweat in minutes...it was so much fun!
The actual Carnival event is held in a long concrete open air dome 700m long with bleachers on each side. The samba schools have 80 minutes to get from one end to the other with huge floats, groups of colour-coordinated dancers and drummers. 6 schools participate each of the 4 nights and apparently it's fiercely competitive with lots of $$ involved.  Carnival goes from 8pm to 6am.
There were a few times that we felt unsafe, and we didn't bring out the camera much and none of us wore jewellery or watches, so we managed okay. With the huge amount of tourists getting sloppy drunk, I can see where the thieves can take advantage.
That was our last week in South America. Too little time. Time to go back to the cold in Calgary.. :(
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