Carnaval - The Samba Schools Parade

Last night H and I went to the Sambodromo in Rio to watch the second night of the Samba School parades. The hostel was selling cheap tickets so we decided it was too good an opportunity to miss. And it was absolutely stunning. The samba schools have 80 minutes to parade down a purpose built stadium which holds 90k spectators. And each school has about 4k performers.

The schools start their preparations in March so the parade is the highlight of their year. The schools that parade in the Sambodromo are the best in Rio and the parades are split over two nights, Sunday and Monday. The Champions parade is next weekend. The schools that score the least number of points get relegated and are replaced by other schools who only get to perform on normal streets. Well, I think that's what happens anyway.

One of the schools who performed last night was Mangueira, the most popular in Rio (and their fans were also fans of the Flamengo football team). Sylvia was really keen for us to see them, and they didn't disappoint. As soon as they started on the course everyone went crazy. From our (cheap) vantage point we didn't see the first performers until there were 25-30 minutes into the performance, but we did get to see them all cross the finish line. It was really amusing - if the last performer hasn't crossed the finish line after 80 minutes then the school loses points. Now Mangueira timed their performance perfectly. But the first school we saw had a bit of a shocker - with a minute to go they still had hundreds of people dancing, as well as two huge floats. After months of preparation perfecting their performance, it came down to a sprint (or very fast dance) to the end. You should have seen these guys pushing the floats. But I think they made it, which meant wild celebrations all over the place.

I have never seen so much colour in any one place at any time. It was superb and although the Carnaval celebrations are more than just the parades, we are both really glad to have done it. It is definitely one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and is something we will never forget. Mind you, we wont forget anything we have done in Rio. We have managed to get everything done we wanted to except handgliding. And it doesn't look like we will get to do it here was we are due to leave tomorrow and we are having a leaving party tonight with some other people who are also leaving Rio. I'm not that bothered about doing it, even though it was supposed to be a birthday present to me from H. She bought me tickets to the Maracana and the Sambodromo instead which isn't bad at all.

And we are moving to Australia anyway, which means we can go to New Zealand and do it there.

We are heading off to Ilha Grande tomorrow and rumours are that there is very little internet access there, and the electricty gets turned off in the evenings, so we may not be online for a while.

Here are a couple of pictures from the parades last night. I also took a lot of movies but I'll bore you with them when we get settled in Australia and I can email them, or MSN them, to you.