Days 299-301:A Guide to Rio Carnival BrazilianBums - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
I may as well start with a bit of self reflection since the end of this blog finishes that way. After 5 months in western continents we got rather comfortable with how easy it is to travel, eat, speak, and buy things. I am embarrassed to say that when we arrived into Rio, it was kind of like day one on this whole trip. It took a whole day to adjust to being in Rio. How silly, because it really is a developed and rather western city. By day two, we were fine. We were back to using sign language to communicate with the locals who spoke no English what so ever, eating by pointing to random pictures or guessing what the Portuguese words were. Although they are lovely and friendly, we were surprised with the lack of English considering how touristy this city is. 1.5 million visitor come to Rio each year for Carnival. I guess the reason why I am even bringing up this trivial point is the fact that day one, was Carnival. Not a day you want to waste 'getting your head around things or easing into it'. We arrived into Rio after an 8 hour overnight flight from Miami. Normally we would have been fine but we were so out of it, everything seemed more difficult. The mission for night one was to navigate our way to Carnival on public transport with no map in an event with 100,000 people, in the dark. If Carnival had been on Day 2, we would have enjoyed it a thousand times more. This is what we have learned about Carnival and Rio de Janeiro:
Carnival from what an outsider thinks of is the parade. It's far more than that, but its a good place to start.
The short version:
Carnival is the celebration of Mardi Gras, 6 weeks before Easter, and is a age old Brazilian tradition - the whole city goes wild for a full 7 days in a whirlwind of music and colour. Each year, The Carnival Parades (yes, there's more than one) head down the “run way” of the Sambadrome - a road with tiers of 100,000 spectators. Samba schools compete with dance displays and costumes putting on marathon performances.
And, the long version:
Probably the biggest misconception about Carnival is you can get right up close, be in the parade and have a wiggle with the topless ladies wrapped in feathers. This is not at all the case. As it's a highly organised Samba school contest, crowds are limited to the stands.
We bought the cheapest tickets, but still expensive for the last night. I should mention that there are no 'schools' in the sense that people attend classes. They're more associations or social clubs, representing a particular neighbourhood of Rio. In a way they're similar to huge footy clubs. They have a flag, a colour-scheme and devoted supporters.
Every school's parade, lasting about an hour in length, is highly organised and designed and has a different theme. As it is a contest, the hand-picked set of judges decide the winner based on components such as percussion, the theme song, harmony between percussion, song and dance, choreography, costume, storyline, floats and decorations. The champion becomes the pride of both Rio and Brazil. It's no wonder the city goes into party mode for three days. Good luck finding any business, not tourism related, open. They have a week long holiday for goodness sake!
Anyway, back to the long winded explanation. The school/parade participants line up in a unique way to present their pageant. The school/parade is divided into a number of sections and each section has a number of wings of about 100 people wearing the same costume. Sometimes even 2 wings (approx. 200 people) have the same costume. Each school/parade has about 10 floats with dances on it. The floats are extremely lavish and some of them are technically quite amazing. Floats were as long as 8.5metres and as tall as 9.8metres.To really understand the scale of each parade, just think, there are 3,000 - 5,000 people dressed up in the best costumes you have ever seen, dancing the Samba. Then times that number by 6 parades a night over two nights! And of course, the Samba isn't just any dance. It is a glitzy, lavish, vegas-style affair with beautiful, topless ladies with bouncy boobs and who made samba look easy in their feathered head-dresses, long flowing capes sparkling with sequins and rhinestone studded G-strings with matching bouncy bums. The parade starts at 9pm and finishes at 5am. We stayed out until about2:30 - a poor but acceptable effort.
Two (minor) complaints, or observations to sound a little more positive:
Number 1: One, only one song (their theme song) would play through the whole parade. On repeat. Slightly painful if you weren't: drunk, tired or Portuguese. Majority of people understood Portuguese therefore it becomes a party in the stands. The crowd singing, dancing and applauding their favourite schools for a solid hour at a time. This samba is the loudest music you are ever likely to hear in your life. Yes, I sound like an old woman.
Number 2: We should have paid a bit more for more expensive tickets closer to the stage. We really couldn't see much. Pick pocketing is HUGE during Carnival so we didn't want to bring our good camera. Hence, the reason for the shocking photos with no zoom. I admit to borrowing the odd photo from Google Images to support this blog. My advise to others going would also be, wing it and buy tickets at the door. A 10th of the price for better seating. As I'm a 'glass half full type of gal' the positive was drinks weren't jacked up. It was about $3 a beer compared to $2.5 on the street. Plus outside drinks could be brought inside. Australia, you could learn a thing or two from these Brazilians.
Yes it's true, tourists come here to enjoy Carnival but the locals live and breathe it too. Rio isn't the wealthiest of cities, more on that later. The Bloco (street parties) are a popular free alternative, not to mention Blocos are considered "the heart and soul of Rio Carnival". It is a great option for all local and tourists to enjoy the Carnival atmosphere without having to attend the expensive Sambadrome parades. Blocos are groups of individuals who plan street parties during the Carnival. Their parties are much more casual than the parades in the Sambadrome. Bloco's are also not so much of a party in the sense it's just one big pissup. It's also a family affair with kids spraying foam and water pistols while enjoying dancing and singing as a family. Each Bloco writes a theme song and has a band to play the Samba music. Over the week, 465 official Bloco parties are held all over the city. All hours of the day and night people are everywhere. Most people are in costume or in the Bloco's official tee shirt. From guys in speedos with tails, male fairies to dress ups. I'd say it's not a gay thing either as many had beautiful girls on their arms. The streets and trains look like costume parties. The level of dancing and constumes is nowhere near up to the standard of the official Carnival parade but I was still extremely impressed. The atmosphere is intoxicating. When I mean people are dancing and partying everywhere I mean millions. We went to two smaller Bloco's. We wish we had of gone to the large Bloco's, but not the 80,000 people one however. The live music and atmosphere was still unreal.
Fortunatly we were in Rio for four days. Two of those were not Carnival days. After Carnival finished and the city went back to an every day life it was a very different city. It's alright. Nice beaches, lovely people great scenery but it was just a city - to us anyway. We passed the slums (Favelas as they are known here) on the way back from the airport but apart from that we weren't exposed to any of the poverty. I honestly thought Rio was all like that but I'd say there are two sides to the city. We have already done slum tours in other countries so didn't in Rio. The favelas are a huge part of this city. Of the 6.3million people who live in Rio, 1.6million live in Favelas. Most are so dangerous police and the army try not to enter. There is no escaping the fact that a lot of the locals are really living it tough. I have heard stories about the government only putting money into the community IF it is for tourism. So, if sewage from the favelas was polluting the streets, areas where it leaked into the tourists eye would be fixed. For the tourists not the locals approach. It probably is an opportune time to mention how much the locals do not want the Football World Cup, in July 2014. Protesting is very much expected. An extortionate amount of money is being spent to get Rio's infrastructure /World Cup facilities up to date. This could have been spent on those millions in need of houses. One thing is for certain, what tourists will notice is the rubbish. You have no idea of the rubbish problem during festivals or events like Carnival. The rubbish / cleaners were on strike during the festival period. Rubbish was knee deep and was just left there. It was so bad, us and other foreigners had locals coming up to us and apologising for the state the city was in. Rotting rubbish, urine; the smell was horrific. Hundreds of locals were so disgusted with the state of their city, they spent days volunteering to clean it up. Or at least put it into bags and piles. No rubbish trucks operating! Apart from the rubbish problem there was no begging and in the touristy areas not as many homeless as I'd expected, but this was probably because of the free favelas. This was a huge surprise. Like many cities, everything from food, drinks, bikinis and hammocks are sold on the beach but unlike many cities, the salespeople weren't pushy. Brazilians are lovely people, on the inside and obviously the out!
No trip to Brazil would be complete without a visit to the beach... To see the sights. Copacabana is just a huge white sandy beach with a few thousand umbrellas and deck chairs all for hire. We spent the day at Leme Beach which is to the southern end of Copacabana drinking $5 cabrahina toxic cocktails. They aren't the sights I was referring to however. If there was just one brazilian bikini on the streets and beaches of Australia we would turn our heads. In Brazil, its as common as Brazilians actually having brazilians. The fact is 90% of all Brazilian females, of all ages and sizes, wear a string to join a small triangle over the front and back. Brazilian girls and their voluptuous bottoms pull off wearing dental floss well. Sadly my camera died when we arrived at Copacabana beach. I became an iPad photographer at the beach attempting to get bottom shots without looking too dodgy. Although all sizes wear the dental floss attire, the Brazilians are (fortunately) a beautiful race. Most are tall and slender with an olive complexion. The boys, often with very built bodies wear only skin tight boy shorts as togs. Similar to the females, it leaves nothing to the imagination. Thankfully for them, Brazil is a very warm country!
The metro system in Rio is very good. It goes to all suburbs however a walk of 20-30 minutes was required to actually see anything. Fortunately our hostel shared accommodation (Carnival prices of $120per night) was perfectly located about 10 minutes to the Inpanema beach and the metro. We had a whole list of to dos while in Rio but it's not as cheap as we had hoped. It's about $10 per meal. Yes, this is cheap for western countries. No this is not for South America. Alcohol was cheap so beer and Smirnoff's became a meal replacement followed but a nap because that is free entertainment. Rio is made up of towering rock mountain ranges. Forests line the edges and go all the way to the sea. We did take a cable car over the Sugar Loaf mountain which proved to be a beautiful way to see the city from above. Sadly, we didn't visit the Christ Redeemer (Jesus statue that over looks the city) up close but we figured he can be seen from a distance, so close enough. $60 saved thank you very much!
On the last night before we joined the tour, we went out for drinks and dinner with two room mates, an English couple, we have been sharing a hostel dorm room with for the last three days. We knew we were going to click with them when they said their favourite country was India. There aren't many people we have met that, firstly liked India as much as us and have been to the exact same places and can share stories and experiences from random little towns and villages. We were kept amused for hours. The live street jazz we were listening to on the side of the road while drinking street cocktails, also made for a perfect night. Those are the little experiences we are going to miss, sharing stories of adventures and of course being homeless unemployed bums, otherwise known as travellers. Thinking of home is something that has been playing on my mind more and more of late. It's exciting but in many ways it's sad it's so close. We have got so used to this way of life. Living in this bubble could never last forever. On that note, our last independent day of travel ends here. The tour across South America begins. The final tour. The final adventure.