Carnival!!! (Part I)

With all due respect to the Love Parade, Oktoberfest, La Tomatina (tomato throwing in Spain), Burning Man, Glastonbury, Ibiza, Mikonos, etc, I've always heard since my college days, that the only bigger party in the world than Mardi Gras is Carnival in Brazil.  Although there are many different versions and intensities throughout the massive country, the brightest and most well known is in Rio.  Even though I'm 5-10 years past my drinking prime, better late than never I figure, and off I went.

I arrived in the dead of morning on Friday the 1st day and my friend Bruno whom I stayed with the entire time, was nice enough to wake up and let me in.  That first night we met up with some of Bruno's friends including a pair of nutty Dutchmen.  They were plenty nice, but made us watch a music video on youtube of a popular song in Amsterdam that would be banned on MTV.  I wish I had those 5 minutes of my life back, but after a few drinks, we eventually went out to dinner. After wading through the drunken revelers on the street we found a nice corner table and I got some much awaited strogonoff (my favorite brazilian dish)!
  

The conversation turned to politics and healthcare.  As I was the only American at the table, I remember thinking it's always interesting to get other international viewpoints on those topics, esp ones where the US is clearly lagging the rest of the world.   Anyway, enough philosophizing, let's get to the drunken fiestas:

 This is a bad picture of what we walked through after dinner.  Reminded me an awful lot of Bourbon street without that familiar smell thankfully.

The next day Bruno and I motivated + played some tennis at his club.  I again had strogonoff for lunch (one of my annoying habits is that I'm a creature of habit when I find something I like)
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Afterwards we went to a daytime parade near Bruno's apt.  I was in a picture taking mood so I took lots.  Here are the better ones:

As you can see most people had a costume of some sort or at least made an attempt to put on a wig or devil horns or a silly hat.  Bruno and I, of course had nothing, but that didn't stop me from getting into the Carnival spirit!

American dork, front and center feeling the flow.  In the distance we could hear drums and people singing on a Megaphone.  Over the next hour those sounds got louder as the float and party approached.  That is one difference between the street parties in Nawlins and in Rio.  The parades for Mardi Gras normally consisted of many ornate floats whereas most of the street parties in Rio only had one with lots of people in front and behind it (also there are no beads, sorry fellas there's more skin in Rio, but none of "that"). There are also a lot of extremely ornate "professional" parades from different neighborhoods that compete for an award at the end of Carnival.  You might have seen pictures with fancy headresses and elaborate costumes. They are very impressive, take place at night,  and in some cases difficult to get tickets to see.  I did not go to any.  I regret that, but it gives me something to shoot for if I ever make it back to Rio.

Back to the daytime street fun:

 

Instead this idea of ornate is two Batmen and other good stuff.  

There's some of the skin I was talking about.  On this day it was close to 90 degrees + a few days later it would go over 100.

Ohh, look!  Here come the drummers.  That means the float is not far behind....

You have to love that the band are on top of a huge beer can with speakers built into the sides of it.  At least I did, but by that point I had had a few beers similar to that one and by the way, it was devil hot out....

The float moves about a cm every 10 minutes, but that's fine with everyone since it gives them time to dance and the vendors time to move their beverages along with the float.  About 4 hours later (+/- 2 hours):

 

The float went about another 1/4 mile beyond this and then it was all over.  Time to find another parade.  I saw this girl in the street + thought she had the best costume so had to get a picture with her:

Sorry for the boxers shot, but I didn't even realize at that point.  As you can see there's a tennis player behind me so maybe I WAS in a costume all along.

I hadn't planned to make this a II part blog, but I think that's a good first taste of the locura that is Rio and Carnival.  I will follow up with rest of the dias de fiesta shortly.