We arrived on Friday 28 March, a few days into South America’s most widely celebrated festival; Carnival. To actually be in Rio felt surreal. We were staying in Copacabana (so that song was in my head) and for months my password at work had been ‘when my baby’ (goes to Rio…). We were in Rio baby!
Our first stop was the beach at the end of our street. Copacabana beach! It was a gorgeous sunny day and we ate huge fried sardines and walked with our beers into the water. They put long hoses leaking water from the street to the beach so you can walk on wet sand, avoiding burns to the soles of your feet. Genius. Australia needs this!
After a swim in the hotel’s lovely roof top pool and a nap, we walked straight into a street party; perfect timing! Known as ‘blocos’, a float meanders through the streets carrying samba singers, a dancer or two and sometimes a whole band. We joined the crowds and grabbed beers and street meat from vendors along the way. For me, ‘street meat’ is any meat on a stick you can conveniently get from local vendors; this time it was beef dipped in dried manioc. Yum!
We followed the bloco through to the beach. It was beautiful at night and people watching was fun; mainly young Brazilians on holiday dressed up as cartoon characters or just wearing crazy hats and wigs. I’d forgotten about loud American tourists until we were on the plane, but saw none until we went to the Sambadrome, and they weren’t really loud at all (but maybe I couldn’t hear them over the music!).
The Sambadrome is where the main part of Carnival takes place; the samba school competition. Dozens of schools have an hour to strut their stuff down the roughly 1km, purpose built stadium / road (which I was told is going to host the 2015 Olympic Opening Ceremony). Walking up into the stands for the first time was truly amazing; I was immediately consoled that it was worth the $450 tickets. We arrived just after the first of six schools started, so were greeted with overwhelming lights, colours, movement and sound, including fireworks. I was glad I didn’t dress up like I’d intended as no-one really did, and we spent most of the night standing up.
More than a dance competition, each school’s entry is an epic production with huge floats and outlandish costumes that make little sense without having read the theme and are too numerous to count. My favourite themes were a universally appealing toy box theme and one focusing on Brazilian’s rainbow culture; from the boats carrying slaves, to Indigenous cultures and contemporary life. Another focused purely on soccer; a fairly single-minded theme to devote an hour production to and a tricky one to keep interesting. I was bored; there’s only so many ways to make a costume resembling soccer, and most aren’t pretty).
Locals support the schools like they’re football clubs; wearing their colours and learning their anthem which is sung repeatedly for the hour. I think it’s nice for people to support dance clubs instead of sports clubs. It’s certainly unique. Many schools are in the favelas; poor slum areas on Rio’s mountain sides. It’s one of the few cities in the world where the poor have the best views, and the rich live at the bottom of the hills. So the people participating in one of the world’s most watched festivals are among their cities poorest. We were going to do a tour with a community organisation, but stupid banking and bus ticket logistics made us miss it.
Each school has around 1800 participants, some of whom are foreigners who pay up to $800 for their costume; their ticket to temporarily joining a samba school. We went on the last night when the top schools from the previous year perform. I’m not sure if the piles of costumes at the end of the Sambadrome were from the whole competition, or just one night, but some piles had to be over 10 metres tall. The next day people were selling them on the streets. So much effort must have gone into making the costumes; I hope someone’s still enjoying them.
There was a cleaner’s strike that weekend; the world was watching and it had the desired impact. It was great to see locals supporting the workers, despite the mountains rubbish piling up in the central region. We got caught in the middle of one of their marches; workers ran down a boulevard towards a bus carrying more workers. The bus was forced to stop, everyone got out (including the driver), riot police rocked up in their dozens and the march continued pretty peacefully. At the Sambadrome, cleaners did sweep after each school. One did his own samba with his broom to great cheers – he heard he was the main dancer at the Beijing Olympics when Rio was annonced. This was the first of many protests we’ve seen so far; it good to see people caring about their community.
Back at the Sambadrome, we were sat where the schools paused for the judges and it was impressive watching the participants keep at least what appeared to be genuine smiles on their faces. Everyone looked like they were having a great time. While it was hard to spot the actual samba dancers, I loved seeing them in the traditional Carnival get up. The women must be super fit to wear those heavy headdresses, feathers, sequins and heels that strap all the way up to their knees for an entire hour, in spot lights, while being judged on their dance technique. The winner was announced a couple of days later; one of the two we decided to skip in favour of bed. It was 3am after all and the last school started at 6am!
Los viajes de Bianca. 