Carnival Arrives!

My faves.... Unidos da Tijuca

We went to the sambodrome a couple of nighst ago at Rios famous carnaval. It was AMAZING!

These guys were definitely the most impressive - last years winners. They were sooo inventive with what they did and the costumes that they wore, it was unbelievable. The theme of their procession was movies and they covered everything from Avatar to Chicken Run to Harry Potter.

This parade was like nothing I've ever seen before. The videos don't really do it justice but they go some way to letting you see what it was like. Just imagine that amazing parade in front of tens of thousands of people all waving flags and singing along to the songs. The atmosphere is electric as is the show. They spend millions on the costumes. Particularly on the Sunday show which is the climax of the competition and when all the big wigs have their moment. Every samba schools parade kicks off with a massive fireworks display as they eneter the arena and each school goes for about an hour and a half.

Its a serious event... so serious in fact that the carnival queen even has plastic surgery to suit the theme of the parade. I know they're pretty fond of going under the knife here (honestly you should see some of the women on the beach) but that does strike me as going a little bit far!


We didn't even arrive until 11-30 and we were there for the best bit... as you can imagine we didn't leave until about 4-30 and that was actually vaguely early. The whole show actually finishes at 7, but about 5 nights of getting in at 7am had started to take its toll on us just a weeny bit.


The sambadrome is just where it starts with carnival as well. The streets are taken over by hundreds of different street parties. I've been told that there were close to 500 different parades throughout the city which means there were probably at least double that many street parties.


These things start at 7am and finish 24 hours later. The Brazilians definitely know how to party... the English actually struggled to keep up, which given our reputation is surprising! Literally EVERYONE walks around in fancy dress constantly for the whole weekend - its actually weird to see people in normal clothes again after it finishes, and everything in the city grinds to a hault apart from the music, the dancing and the drinking.


Perfect.


It really is a well oiled machine. Carnival finishes on Tuesday and by Wednesday every sign of it has disappeared. The clean up operation is immense considering that every beach is FULL of people drinking, dancing and urinating everywhere for 5 days non stop. Its great to have such a massive party that is so whole heartedly supported by the government and the companies that endorse it. There are porta loos at every street corner. Beer for ridiculously cheap prices and police and stewards everywhere making sure everything runs smoothly.


I would recommend it to anyone... its the biggest party you can possibly hunt down and its not as scary as people think.Despite it being the wettest carnival in 15 years it was incredible!