Carnaval in Rio

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Time for the tour with Bukima to end and to party up large to finish the tour. We arrived on Friday afternoon for our 5 days of fun. On the first two nights, in between seeing the sights like the beaches and Christ statue, we went to a couple of street parties. The first night was just groups going through the streets with massive drums and people doing samba in the streets around them.



On Saturday we went to Maracana Stadium (one of the largest football stadiums in the world) to watch a local derby between Fluminense and Vasco da Gama. The stadium only had 13,000 in attendance but there was still a lot of atmosphere, especially from the Vasco supporters who were the home team. It was a good game that ended in a 4-4 tie when Vasco tied it up with 10 minutes left.



That night we went to a parade with the smaller samba schools going passed with their floats. We could go right up to the parade as it went down the street with people of all ages dressed up and dancing and street vendors yelling out “Agua, Coca, Schkol”.

Sunday night was the big night that we went to the Sambadrome to watch the professional samba schools do their big party with their massive floats and extravagant costumes over a 1.6km stretch surrounded by grandstands. We were in the last grandstand so didn’t get the best view but we were with all the locals partying it up. The show started at 9:00pm and went to 5:30am but still only half the schools went through. The rest went on Monday night. Because we were at the end we managed to score some items of costume from the people off the floats and we had fun dancing in the stands withy locals in sweat drenched hats and jackets covered in feathers and plastic jewels. The party was absolutely awesome.