More fun in Rio
Trip Start
Dec 06, 2005
1
29
80
Trip End
Jun 17, 2006
Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Monday, March 6, 2006
We went up to the famous Christ the Redeemer statue which overlooks the whole city. Itīs something every tourist does, but that was ok with me as the view was totally awesome, even with a bit of smog. After this we headed off to a beautiful beach at the foot of Sugar Loaf Mountain called Praia Vermelha, where I sampled some local iced coconut. Felt very tropical :) That night we headed out with a large crew from our hostel to a street party in the suburb of Lapa.
01 Great view of Rio from the Christ
The next few days were pretty relaxing except for the Rio Carnaval Winners Parade. This is basically where the top 6 samba schools from the Carnaval (the previous weekend) parade for 75 minutes each through the "Sambadrome" to thousands of adoring fans. The schools have 3,200 people each, on and around MASSIVE floats that have taken months of painstaking work to create. All the school members are dressed pretty outrageously too, and they dump their costumes at the end, leaving the public open to take photos with them. See attached photo! Each school has their own song, and a band plays this song for the whole 1 hour and 15 minutes. Bloody hell. Everyone knows how the song goes by the end, but the same song, for 75 minutes? I dunno if Brazilians know what the word diversity is. So this "carnaval" was very different to the massive street parties of Salvador, and Iīm really glad I got to see both. Definitely preferred the interactive party atmosphere of Salvador, but the 11 months of work that goes into the samba school dance routines, costumes, and floats is quite special as well.
Hung out at Ipanema beach for the last time (for a while) after seeing a hippie market, where we saw some incredible "futvolei" - volleyball but with no hands - some truly amazing athletes just playing socially on the beach... No wonder soccer players like Pele, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho hail from this country. I have a brilliant video on my camera but I think the file is too big to put on this site. I will try though.
My last night in South America consisted of meeting up with a French friend from Florianopolis and some of her mates, having some caipirinhas on the beach, and going to a tacky Irish pub called Shenanigans! Sad to leave Brazil as I have really enjoyed it, but also very very excited about Mexico and Cuba.
