wow. i really didn't have any expectations for how serious carnaval is in brazil. carnaval is 5 days long starting 40 days before easter, but is celebrated for the entire month it resides. estimations say that around 500,000 tourists (gringos) visit rio for carnaval each year earning 80 percent of the entire countries tourism for the year. there are thousands of blocos throughout all of rio de janeiro, and the block below our apartment had 5 that we saw.
it's been a mad house since arriving.
i've never been too big about parades or floats for big celebrations, but the carnaval celebration in rio's sambadromo was one of the most unreal festivities i've ever seen. tickets cost around $250 each, non-assigned, bench seating, while ground level tickets start at $10,000. thinking it was going to be some typical parade i really had no clue what i was getting into.
some details about carnaval in sambadromo:
THE COMPETING SCHOOLS
-thousands of people are involved in each school float performance
-to be a part of a school's float, the school charges people a costume fee of around $250
-schools practice for months, building floats, designing costumes, and rehearsing dancing
SAMBADROMO
-sambadromo is a half mile long (5k, 50ft wide) stadium with a capacity of 70,000
-the festival is a competition amongst professional schools coming from all over brazil
-each school has one hour to perform, then a 15 minute break and the next school performs
-three days of competition: the first two days have 6 schools performances each, and the third day consists of the 6 best schools of the total 12 from the first two days
-for each of the three days, competition starts at 9pm and ends at 6am the next morning
a giant spaceship
all of the floats had themes and this one was "childhood". below are dozens of "buzz lightyears"
the detail was unreal
a giant treasure chest that opens up
these rubix cubes were a part of the "childhood" float
pick-up stix!!
legos
pieces from the boardgame "sorry"
green army men
futbol theme for this school. my favorite. as you can seee it is a giant foosball table! so frickin cool
i had so many pictures from this particular school, "childhood", because it well, reminded me of childhood. this specific part of the school's float is "pacman". it was beautiful; pacman would run around chasing white dots while the ghosts chased him!
within the float was a giant monitor displaying all sorts of images relevant to its theme
quite possible iben and my favorite detail; people harnessed vertically on a giant futball float. they would move around "kicking" a futball that was connected to a large pole that was moved around by a guy on the ground. the creativity on this was just wow at how cool it looked in-motion
quite possibly the spookiest of all floats. this giant statue thing was colored like the brazillian flag complete with the stars and "ordem e progresso". he would start looking like a lump rock then open up as the float wheeled down the stadium. spooky because it was like this huge, anthropomorphised titan, rock/world looking thing trying to take over the world. not a conspiricist but i totally got this feeling :)
along with my conspiricy of my previous picture, this float followed behind big, brazillian rock guy. and at the very tail end was a giant blue archer aiming his bow and arrow like he was protecting the end of the float. "order and progress" my friends, order and progress...
so ridiculous at the magnitude of these floats, this school's theme was "racing" and dedicated to the greatest brazillian (and quite possibly the world's) formula 1 racecar driver, ayrton senna. a full go-cart with a man drove around this float the entire time. there were so many laps to be done for the hour and a half float, drivers would switch in and out of the cart every 10 minutes or so
that's all for now. i'll post again soon!
-paul
it's been a mad house since arriving.
i've never been too big about parades or floats for big celebrations, but the carnaval celebration in rio's sambadromo was one of the most unreal festivities i've ever seen. tickets cost around $250 each, non-assigned, bench seating, while ground level tickets start at $10,000. thinking it was going to be some typical parade i really had no clue what i was getting into.
some details about carnaval in sambadromo:
THE COMPETING SCHOOLS
-thousands of people are involved in each school float performance
-to be a part of a school's float, the school charges people a costume fee of around $250
-schools practice for months, building floats, designing costumes, and rehearsing dancing
SAMBADROMO
-sambadromo is a half mile long (5k, 50ft wide) stadium with a capacity of 70,000
-the festival is a competition amongst professional schools coming from all over brazil
-each school has one hour to perform, then a 15 minute break and the next school performs
-three days of competition: the first two days have 6 schools performances each, and the third day consists of the 6 best schools of the total 12 from the first two days
-for each of the three days, competition starts at 9pm and ends at 6am the next morning
all of the floats had themes and this one was "childhood". below are dozens of "buzz lightyears"
the detail was unreal
a giant treasure chest that opens up
these rubix cubes were a part of the "childhood" float
pick-up stix!!
legos
pieces from the boardgame "sorry"
green army men
futbol theme for this school. my favorite. as you can seee it is a giant foosball table! so frickin cool
i had so many pictures from this particular school, "childhood", because it well, reminded me of childhood. this specific part of the school's float is "pacman". it was beautiful; pacman would run around chasing white dots while the ghosts chased him!
within the float was a giant monitor displaying all sorts of images relevant to its theme
quite possible iben and my favorite detail; people harnessed vertically on a giant futball float. they would move around "kicking" a futball that was connected to a large pole that was moved around by a guy on the ground. the creativity on this was just wow at how cool it looked in-motion
quite possibly the spookiest of all floats. this giant statue thing was colored like the brazillian flag complete with the stars and "ordem e progresso". he would start looking like a lump rock then open up as the float wheeled down the stadium. spooky because it was like this huge, anthropomorphised titan, rock/world looking thing trying to take over the world. not a conspiricist but i totally got this feeling :)
along with my conspiricy of my previous picture, this float followed behind big, brazillian rock guy. and at the very tail end was a giant blue archer aiming his bow and arrow like he was protecting the end of the float. "order and progress" my friends, order and progress...
so ridiculous at the magnitude of these floats, this school's theme was "racing" and dedicated to the greatest brazillian (and quite possibly the world's) formula 1 racecar driver, ayrton senna. a full go-cart with a man drove around this float the entire time. there were so many laps to be done for the hour and a half float, drivers would switch in and out of the cart every 10 minutes or so
that's all for now. i'll post again soon!
-paul
