Rio de Janeiro, Carnaval

Karnival, Rio de Janerio. I would love to tell you that it was an apoteosic mix of music, samba, alcohol and sex but… no. It wasnt such a big deal to be honest. And I dont mean it was bad, it was very funny, but maybe it is an event that generates too much expectation. Maybe it is because I have been in similar big parties (Oktoberfest in Munich, Feria de Sevilla or the Koln and Tenerife versions of the Karnival), the fact is that I wasnt that impressed. Maybe it is because I did not connect that much with the brazilians but I got the feeling that the party is more for people who live there and have spent the last months building up their customes and hoping to participate in the big parade at the Sambodromo. Anyway, I will tell you how it was…

The Rio Karnival basically consists on spending the day following what they call “Blocos” A bloco is a sort of big truck with a few guys on the top repeating constantly the same song. A huge load of people follow the truck, singing and drinking beer. They dont really dance too much, basically because there is no space for moving within that mess and their customes are not specially ellaborated. In many cases people are dressed normally or just with a hat. Actually we didnt use any fancy dress at all.

What it probably is the most spectacular thing about this party is that the whole city is involved on it and Rio is a huge city. There are blocos starting and dying everywhere in town. There is this calendar where you can check what is going on and where so you basically spend the day going after the blocos and joining the ones you like. I dont know if I am simplifying this too much or maybe we didnt do it very well but, honestly, this is pretty much all about it. I didnt see people getting too wasted and there wasnt definitely too much sexual excess. People would follow the truck, would sing the stuff and when the bloco would be finished they would leave. Pretty much a daily party. For the night the plan was not so clear or maybe I didn’t manage to deal with it. Maybe it is true that I am getting old cause many days I was just too tired after the whole day doing the bloco thing under an abrassive sun and unable to decently party in the night.

Let’s say that my social life in Rio was different before and after the arrival of David, one of my friends from Madrid who was going to join part of my trip. Before he arrived I hanged around with couchsurfing people, basically some other foreigns who were around. I did some sighseen with them and had some nights out but nothing really remarkable. Couchsurging is great, no doubt, but sometimes you fall into what I call recorded conversations. There is this basic sequence you can repeat a million times per night: where are you from?, how long have you been travelling?, where are you going next? After these ones there might be some variation depending whether the person you are speaking to, plans to travel to the same places as you or not. Every person you meet in these meetings means a repetition of this which ends up been pretty boring sometimes. I probably had more fun with the Spanish cop from Mallorca but didnt manage to see him too often. So, the social connection was definitely not as good as it had been in Morro de Sao Paulo and it is weird cause the CS comunity there was very active and there was always a bunch of plans going on, maybe too many of them..It was very nice, however, to meet Vicky and Aparna again, survivors from the Chapada Diamantina team. I discovered it is really nice to find again former travel companions, at least there is a common past to speak about. Unfortunately coordination between us didnt work too well and that, for example, made me miss a Manu Chau show that was very promising.

The arrival of Davis made a difference cause I finally had a solid wingman to paint the town in red. The final result was correct but not outstanding. We drunk loads of Montilla rum and had a couple of light nights and a couple of remarkable ones. In general, it wasnt too easy to socialize with the people there even though most of them were really friendly. Language was definitely a problem, portuñol is sometimes useful but most of the times does not get you anywhere. We also had the “obligation” of doing the minimal sightseen and all that, in four days, was a bit too much. That’s why some days we left the show early.

So, among all those days, I would remark the afternoon in Santa Teresa which was something totally unplanned (the bloco we were looking for there didnt exist in the end) but became a great time. There was a small street band and a reasonable ammount of people so you could at least move around . We socialized with a bunch of very friendly brasilian girls (finally) and, even witouth anything else happening cause they left early, we had a lot of fun.

There was another big day: the Sambodromo. I was not specially interested in this thing, after all it is just a parade, a bunch of people fancy dressed you see walking from your seat. Well, after seen it, I believe there is a must do at least once in a lifetime. It is very impressive cause we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of people marching for hours in different schools with the rythim of the drums. And each of them has its own elaborated scenography with amazingly decorated trucks and very colourful customes. I dont have a particularly developed artistic sense but, even for me, that combination of people, costumes and music was just spectacular. Furthermore, the Sambodromo is a bit outside of the city, surrounded everywhere by morros with favelas. It was already night so all you can see of them was a sea of small lights surrounding the place. Again, you had this feeling I was describing in the previous post: there was another world next door, watching you. It was clear that getting a bit far from the Sambodromo was not the best idea…

But if you stayed around the Sambodromo the fact is that it was a lot of fun. We really liked the surroundings of that place better than many blocos we had been. We met the most perfect body I have never seen, a black young girl amazingly hot, dancer in one of the schools. Of course he had this equally muscled guy next to her and even her mother for more security but, anyway, the three of them were really friendly. We partied with them till the new day came and that was the second (cronologically the first) great night I was saying about. It is a pity that, due to the safety concern and my past experience, I didnt have my camera with me. Well, I guess there are thousands of pictures from the Sambodromo on the Internet and I am sure you can find girls like that one in many of them

Appart from these two nights the rest of the days went by with blocos more or less funny and meetings with couchsurfing people more or less boring. I dont mean to sound negative, it is a huge party sure, but, at least for me, there was something missing. Maybe I have to try again, another reason to come back to Rio.

Paco, master of disaster

• In Rio I used to hang around just with a few notes in my pocket. No incidents!

More Info

Tags: Carnaval, Rio de Janeiro