Carnival: Among other things, All About Being in Rio

Rio: Carnival, a good time to visit but not to see the sites

Carnival Rio Style

Carnival lives up to its reputation. Block parties or blocos are schedule dand start from a certain location, then for the next 6+ hours the whole crowd parades a pre set route through the neighborhoods. They are fun. You find at least one during the period of Carnival. You move to percussion beats and follow the crowd as more people join until you decide to move onto another. Everyone rich to poor joins in, there is no discrimination, everyone joins in and gives it their fullest. These are free events.

The official samba parades take place in the Sambadromo which is 1 KM long and is north of the city. Each year the Special or “A” group parades the night preceding the 2 main championship nights where the 12 champion samba schools show and strut their ingenious floats and costumes. Then, the following Saturday, the new top 6 champions parade. The most expensive nights are the 2 Championship nights. The following year 1 school from the “A” group will move up into the Champion category and 1 will drop to the “A” group. It is a fierce competition and every Carioca (person from Rio) has their favorite samba school. The reigning school for the last 6 years has been one known as Beija Flor. This year Salgueiro recaptured First Place and Beija Flor was runner up. Each samba school is generally named after an area in Rio. My favorite samba school song is the Mocidade for its so catchy tune. Each school has a song and it is sung over and over again as the procession down the 1 km walkway takes at least 60 minutes. The designs are more elaborate on Champion nights than on the “A” night. I paraded with an “A” group last Saturday dressed in a costume (“fantasy”) of Pierrot the clown. Some schools let tourists participate, some don’t. Especially on Champion nights, I believe they scrutinize who they let in (tourist) on the float as these positions are clearly visible up top on the float vs being on the ground. Persons are supposedly scrutinized for physical features. If you think about the leggy performers on the floats, you get the idea. Tourist buy the costume, it’s yours to keep. Most take them home with them. I donated mine to a dance school in the Rocinha favela.

Marching in the Sambadromo is an experience you want to have once in your life. The sheer energy you put out (remember 60 minutes down 1 km! and constantly prancing and jumping and singing the school song) is quite a workout. But the real deal is the participation down that walkway with high energy audience participation with the school song, passionate cheering crowd and moving to the school percussion beats and singing. I had opted for the “A” night as the costs of parading on Champion night was about usd300 more. That’s a big difference. As it is “A” night went for usd400. On top of flight, lodging, tours, dining, the costs DO add up. I have heard this from quite a few travelers. Carnival is Rio is not a cheap experience, that’s for sure. I paraded with the Imperio de Tijuca samba school. Each school has 5 floats. Mine was the last.

What the Brazilians are passionate about

Carnival
I attended Championship night 1. I had an open “box” seat. I opted for this because this particular area was next to the Drummers Section where the school’s percussion section move into during the parade down the 1km walkway and continuously drum it out while the colorful procession continues. Towards the end, they rejoin the main procession while the music vehicle with the singers follow behind. The seat which I had paid usd400 for in November was worth usd600 on Carnival day! I had inquired at a local travel agency and that was the going rate. The others who shared the “box” with me was a Canadian couple living in Rio, their visiting friend from Canada, and British couple traveling for a year. As the evening went on, we all got friendly and I learnt that the Fiji-Canadian couple had met and fallen in love at first “type”. This is a new one! I never heard it before. The Canadian fellow had met the Fijian wife online via a travel website where he had contacted her before he headed out to Fiji for a diving trip. Through electronic exchange preceding a few months before he actually made the trip, as they put it, upon meeting up in Fiji where she helped certifiy him in advanced scuba, love was sealed from the first meeting. He works in the oil industry and many of the expats who live in Rio are in this industry.

The Experience: One word: electrifying. If you can imagine passionate crowd participation in unison with sung words and percussion accompanied to ingenious floats and the widest spectrum of colors moved by synchronized dance moves, this is it. I don’t think there is anything like this in the world! I was mesmerized from the first moment it started to the time I left at 6am! I was dumb founded. Words can’t really describe the feeling. I hope as readers you can feel what I am describing here. You forget how much you spent! and you tell yourself that you just experience one if life’s most fortunate events. Simply unbelievable.

Techno Music
I attended a night of the Rio Music Conference which is a 6 day conference of electronic music. The first 2 days are workshops in the subject at a local university and the following 4 are 9 hour night performances by 3 international celebrity DJs. A fan of electronic music I one of these nights. This evening featured 3 DJs Roger Lyra, Glenn Morrison and Armin Van Buuren. Not having attended a major electronic event before, I was unprepared for the good time I was going to have this long night. I think electronic music has a much larger following outside the U.S. and this event was a fairly major one. 5000 tickets had been sold for this night. The venue in Rio was held at the Marina da Gloria, an open air pavilion with a canvas roof. Make shift toilets, and cash bars where you buy coupons to use to get your drinks and food. Security was like “Men in Black” all staff were sharply decked out in black. The deco was contemporary. I got there on the dot (9pm), after having paid usd52 for my ticket, I was going to indulge my ears to some hardcore electronic sounds. This was reduced pricing for women. Guys paid more for the ticket. I entered via the “female” designated entry, got frisked by security and went in. Earlier waiting outside I had befriended this Brazilian DJ lady, we chatted and hung out the whole evening. Turns out she lives one block from my apartment. All these DJs are big news in Ibiza, the party vacation place in Spain where the foam parties got made its first appearance. Of course now foam parties are the rage at periods like Spring Break. We hung out at the front barricade set up about 3 meters from the stage. I was there prancing and moving with the crowd for 6 solid hours (after the Glen Morrison came on , 2nd DJ). I got there at 9pm. I left just after 6am. My hearing took about a day to get back to normal. I think most if at all of the Brazilians who showed up this evening were most like middle to upper class. USD52 is a lot of money to a Brazilian.

The Experience: the Brazilians love their electronic music. Screaming women and men. Getting almost pushed over with the barricade I was rammed up against. Constantly being jabbed by this DJ lady letting me know that Armin had just winked her. Honestly, he probably didn’t even notice her. We were up front smeared against the front barricade smack middle. Mass participation just as at the Sambadromo. My kind of crowd as far as electronic music go. It was one hell of a performance. My gawd. Out of this world. If you can move and jump for 6+ continuous hours without moving from your spot and not notice the people around you pushing you left and right, I’d say that sound I hear is GOOD. This doesn’t even compare to the equivalent venues I went to in Buenos Aires. Most clubs I have been to in Rio play electronic music. The Brazilians definitely love electronic. Armin van Buuren hadn’t even started, walked onto the stage while Glenn Morrison was still performing and the crowd went crazy. Oh yeah. I had a blast. I do it again in a heartbeat. It ‘s too bad that the big electronic venues are only held in cities like Miami and New York in the US. Catch a hold of this. When I got there there were barely 50 people. When I turned out to leave next morning, the crowd had grown from 50 to the at least a 1000. Stumbling out the next morning looking for a cab was no fun.

Football (Soccer)
Maracana Stadium. Semi Final between Botafogo and Fluminense. I attended the game with an orgaznied group as I was told it wasn’t safe to go on my own. The whole affair was marked up, of course, as tourists are especially targeted during Carnaval. The ticket was BR10 and the tour was BR75, including transport and host. Anyhow, enough bickering about money (Rio is turning out to be expensive), the energy of the crowd and chanting, cheering, booing (quite a bit of that at the visiting team, Fluminense) and whistling. The booing was pretty loud. The magnitude of participation was more than what I experience in El Monumento in Buenos Aires. But that was the 1st game of the season. I can imagine Argentina’s crowd participation is on par with the Brazilian football fans, given the appropriate game. This particular night, there was smoke, flags, long streamers, and the noise was unbelievable. Botafogo won 1-0. Even after the game and waiting outside of the stadium, the chanting, drumming and cheering was still going on after 20 minues. Simply unbelievable. The Americans in my group expressed that this was nothing they seen before. And take my word for it, these words coming from hard core sport fans (remember the Yankee fans from New York? In B.A.), these were another bunch of New Yorkers. Even 2 Dutch fellows sitting behind us were mesmerized by the magnitude of noise. The whole match was a constant adrenaline rush with the crowds getting lounder, expressing their annoyance or being pleased by booing, chanting, singing, and display of flags or smoke. You didn’t have to understand football/soccer to feel the adrenaline rush. You felt it. Maracana Stadium has a capacity for 110K people. Frank Sinatra and Paul McCartney have performed here, this event holding the largest number of attendees at a public event recorded in the Guiness Book of Records.

Rio and her Sites
The 2 sites which come to mind for every tourist besides the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches are the statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado and Sugarload with its cable car. Stupid me decided to go to Corcovado on Day 2 of Carnival big holiday. For starters, I should have just left as soon as I got there when I was told the next cog train up was at 5:20pm and I was there at 2:20pm. An alternative to the train was the vans which shuttle people to the top. Priced the same (this particular week has reduced pricing at BR36 on the cog train, regularly at BR45 approx usd22.) I decided to take the van, thinking I could at least catch the views up top. Not the case. I was cheek to cheek and pushed around. I had no where to stand and was pushed over at least twice. [Feb 26] Tomorrow I will go again. I plan on being at the train ticket counter when it opens or shortly after. [Feb 27] This time I took the train. This time at the top, I had space to scratch my butt.
Both Corcovado train and Sugarloaf cable car are priced at BR45 approx USD22. Not cheap, considering the ferry across to Niteroi only cost BR2.60 and the 1910 tram up to Santa Tereza in Centro Rio cost only BR0.60. You get the idea how much jacked up prices are. At these prices, they appear comparable to the US rides. But for Brazilians, it is very expensive. I am not referring to the upper middle class Brazilians. To get an idea, some people have to save a whole year to be able to afford to go to the Sambadromo! And we foreigners have flights and hotel to pay. Think about the disparity here. Groceries are pricey in Copa. I have to remind myself I have a full year to go still.

On the Bright Side
[Feb 26] I was trying to get on a boat up the Amazon river from Belem to Manaus in 2 weeks. Last November after getting in contact with a travel agent in Belem I was quoted a price of USD900 for a cabin with lodging, day tour in Santarem. This was too high. It was either that or buy a hammock and spend the whole week sleeping in it with everyone else around me on deck. Not a safe solution as I have my computer and still carrying chunks of cash on me. Upon getting to Rio, I contacted a national tour operator/travel agent and inquired. This time is was USD1000. OK this was not going well. Again I got in contact with the agent in Belem. This time I communicated in Portuguese via email and also called the fellow in Belem and informed them that I was already in Brazil. In my email I asked for the local tourist price and insisted that the price they quoted originally was the gringo price. The next day I got an email back quoting me USD290 for the week. Goes to show how knowing a little Portuguese goes a long way. The boat I am going on isn’t a cruise ship. It is a transport boat for locals which also have cabins for those who are willing to pay for privacy. There are a few boats which depart from Belem. Typically people arrive in Belem and walk down to the dock and shop around for a boat. I am pressed for time and had to find something quick.

The 2 Classes of Society of Rio
There is the upscale. Then there is the favelas. The houses crammed against the hillsides of Rio. If you have seen the movie “City of God” you get an idea. Druglords, gangs and poverty. Then there is the upscale part of Rio, one such area like Leblon Alto. I met up with a family whom I met in Patagonia, and we spent the day. They live in one of these condominiums. Dois Irmaos, or the Two Brothers, the 2 big hill tops which are found at the other end of Ipanema in the area of Leblon have 2 sides to it. On one side the backdrop of the 2 Brothers lie behind developed condominiums. The other, crammed against the hillside, are 2 favelas, Vidigal and Rocinha. Cariocas (people from Rio) and Brazilians tell you not to wander in there alone. It is dangerous. Truthfully, most Brazilians who don’t belong to the favela, do not wander into the favelas. I have been told that even the police have no business there. Then there are the foreigners who tell you that a tourist is safer in a favela than in Copacabana. Today (March 4) I took a communal bus into Rochina to meet my Portuguese instructor and meet the kids of the volunteer dance class she teaches twice a week for the next 3 months. She is an American, who speaks fluent Portuguese and is here for 3 months. After meeting the kids, who were shy, her Brazilian boyfriend took me around to have a look at Rochina, while the class continued. Truthfully, I felt safer in the favela. People were very nice. I was warned that I would see guns. I saw none. The myth that tourists are told about favelas is wrong. When I took the communal van into Rochina from Ipanema, I got off the wrong stop. But people were nice to me anyway. I called my Portuguese instructor to work out the logistics in how to meet me. She was a little panicked since we were in a favela when she couldn’t find me after half an hour or so. The tour agencies offer tours into favelas for usd40-50. You can get yourself to a favela for usd2.00 with the communal van. Granted, it is better to know some Portuguese if you are to get off the right stop.

Americans Just love Rio
I have met a lot of Americans in Rio. More than any other place I have been to since I left for South America. There are direct flights from JFK to Sao Paolo and these days there are killer deals, which everyone I have spoken to seem to have taken advantage of. People typically come down for 10 days. Do the Carnival thing, cram in the sites, soak up some sun and head back to chilly winter. There is also a good community of expats here mostly in the oil industry. Brazilian oil must be busy with all these expats. Not a bad life. That one couple I met on Carnival night in my box, husband spends 28 days on a rig at a time then gets 28 days off. They live in Ipanema. Like I said, a working holiday. Not bad at all. Everyone goes and gets that Brazilian visa. Pay the USD150 and get it in a day. Of course I am referring to those who live in San Francisco or New York. Everyone else sends theirs in and pays a priority processing fee. Ouch, all included, one person said it cost usd300. I have met folks primarily from the big US cities. Just like me, every tourist I meet is also complaining that Rio is expensive and that they have to go back to work to pay off this trip. Except I am not working  IT IS INDEED EXPENSIVE HERE. But I am enjoying it. I spend my evenings sitting on that beach chair I bought in front of the waves at either Ipanema or Copacabana beach. Sip a usd1.00 caipirinha and take in the people walking by. I have found my local hangout in Copa Beach where the alcohol in my caipirinha gets stronger each time I get one. The fellow greets me like an old friend. It will be sad to leave. I will miss the daily chat with the apartment building front deskman who tells me my Portuguese is getting better. I don’t think so. I speak too slow and only in the present tense. On the bad side, I am forgetting Spanish.

Meeting Travelers Alike
Meeting interesting people, mostly other travelers like myself. [Feb 28] Today I met an American who just left Australia after having worked there for 4 years, also in Information Technology. She has permanent residency. Traveling for 4.5 months across South America then, catch a hold of this, spending a month in Arizona with . Looks like we will be there the same time. So hopefully catching up there. A small world, indeed. Travelers cross paths all the time. Yesterday I hung out with a Canadian Trinidadian. Also travels much, we hung out at Corcovado then at the beach. She had just returned from working in New Zealand for a year. A generous person. While walking the street, she bought a pie for a beggar child on the street. She said she wanted to help a person each day she was in Brazil. Today [March 1st] I spent the day with a Norwegian family I met while in Patagonia. Last night I hung out with a English girl I met last week. We got a little tipsy over caipirinhas and I forgot to take a dress I bought earlier at the night market from where we had our drinks. When I returned 20 minutes later the stall guy said there was no bag. It appears someone nicked it. A little annoyed. I really liked that dress  The stupid mistakes you make while traveling. Goes to show drinking and shopping don’t go together! I have met a lot of younger travelers. Young like 18-22 age group. These girls, mostly European, are doing their gap year and traveling South America for a year or so. One even told me, to find a place she can go live after college. She was around 19-20. Been traveling for 2 years after high school, and yes, solo. Wished I was that resourceful at that age!

The Difference between Copacabana and Ipanema Beach
(March 4) I get the impression that Copacabana is for the old fogeys and Ipanema is gay but a younger crowd. Also the water is cleaner and I spend my days here now instead of Copacabana. The umbrella rental is BR1.00 more. After that episode of my dress being stolen on Copacabana I am boycotting Copacabana and spending the remaining days in Ipanema where I am meeting other interesting travelers. Quite a few Americans. Americans just love Rio!

How I found the Cariocas (people from Rio)
Nice people. Very polite. Very helpful. Nice looking bunch ;) but then, who didn’t know this?! Frankly I saw more thong bikinis then anywhere else I have been. Women in all sizes flaunt it. Men with pot bellies also walk around in the “speedos”. The in shape ones are more than half the time, gay. Nobody cares how fat you are. The majority on the beach have tight bellies and butts. I probably fell somewhere in the middle. My poncho has gone down a little since I started my travels. TG. Unlike some other beaches I felt very comfy in my bikinis. It has become a daily ritual. Will be sad to leave. You can’t really buy a regular bikini here, unless you go with the thong. I am nice and brown now. I just love this place!