25a. Carnival Pictures

25a. Carnival Pictures

1. Kings and Queens and Dancers of the Schools

2. Groups and Floats

Dragons

Dragon Float

Another Dragon Float

Part of the Dragon Float

Books

Telephones

Large Keyboard

He Makes the Keys Open Up

Dancers Inside the Keys

UFOs

Alien

Space Ship and Astronauts

Very Colorful

More Color

3. Spectators

 

 

25. Sambadrome

Carnival in the Sambadrome, Rio       

                   

35C (95F), sunny and humid.

Warehouses For Assembling Floats

We slept until 9AM, yesterday’s all day tour must have done that to us. But sleeping that long was good. We did not have to be anyplace special today; our tour today only started at 8PM…yes, late at night.

It’s an old tradition here in Rio that the real party starts at night. It’s cooler then.

During the day Carol and I, since we were docked, tried to find good WiFi at the dock terminal. We took a walk over, even though it was very hot. There were warehouses along the pier and some of those warehouses held the regalia and contraptions for the parades which happen all throughout Rio over the next few days. Shirtless men, who seemed to be mostly gay since a few of them were hugging and kissing each other, were working on the parade floats, which were stored in those warehouses.

Floats Preparing For the Evening Performance

Carnival in Rio is not just one parade in one location. Compare it with a great restaurant, where everybody eats at tables, each table having delicious food. Rio is like that, like a restaurant, each neighborhood; each favela has their own parade, their own grounds where they celebrate. 

Rio was a beehive of activity. Traffic was overwhelming the streets.

We reached the Terminal but the WiFi was not active. Carnival made people forget what they were supposed to do, someone must have turned it off and since everybody was celebrating, they forgot to turn it back on?  Or, it never really worked at the Terminal, but then who cares? It’s Carnival!

Ready to Celebrate

Some vendors were open in the Terminal Hall selling souvenirs. Carol bought a T-shirt and we bought 4 lei’s, garlanded necklaces. It was my feeble attempt to dress up for Carnival; this would be our costume for the day. I wanted to share my garlands with our friends and hang them on the doorknob to their room as a surprise. Well, the surprise was on me, they must have somehow heard something and just as I was reaching out to hook the garlands on the knob, the door opened; to each party’s surprise.

Carnival in Rio: it brings out the silly, the good, and the weird in people. Most people anyway.

We spent the rest of the day mostly resting because we wanted to be awake when we were at the Sambadrome for the parade at night. 

But then 7.30 PM arrived and we needed to assemble inside the ship’s theater to prepare for boarding the buses. We had a lot of people going to see the Sambadrome Parade. The seats allotted to Princess Cruises were entirely sold out.

We left the ship at 8.10PM sharp and it was only 5 miles from the ship to the Sambadrome, but we did not arrive until 9.30PM. Crowds and crowds of people wanted to see the parade. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambadrome_Marquês_de_Sapucaí

Welcome to Sambadrome

 

Rio has 4 days (nights) of parades at this Sambadrome. Each night has 7 samba schools performing, each school displaying elaborate floats, dancers and costumes focused on a particular theme. The Sambadrome is the main center for Rio’s Carnival, where a competition of the most important samba schools, each representing a particular neighborhood in Rio, takes place.  

The schools are judged on the interpretation of their theme, originality, samba expertise, costumes and elaborateness of their floats. The samba school that wins the competition is the star for the year, similar to winning the Super Bowl. It is a big thing to win this competition. The first place prize is a U.S. one-million-dollar check.

No chump change for sure. 

Arch on the Left Is the End of the Parade

The Sambadrome is a long (700 meters long), purpose-built street in Rio, with long spectator bleachers (11 sections) lining the sides of the street. 

The entry to each section of the spectator venue was fenced and you had to have a ticket to get in. Well, you needed to buy this ticket almost a year in advance; there were hardly any ‘seats’ for sale in the good, or even any section. Carol and I knew about this and we booked this tour with Princess Cruise Line several months before the cruise. The prices were steep for a one-day entrance fee…$285 dollars per person, just to get a ‘seat’, plus the bus to the Sambadrome and the profit for the organizers… it was expensive, yet it was a once in a life-time experience for me.

We each paid U.S $549.95 to Princess Cruises for this experience. 

Sitting on Towels in Lieu of Cushions

Notice I wrote quotation marks around the word ‘seat’… you get a space on a concrete bench-like setup without support for your back. It was difficult sitting like that for hours. Some people received skimpy foam pads to sit on, we did not have these until much later. Those ‘seats’ were not meant to be comfy, because as we found out, most people stood up, some danced for hours. People in Rio do not conform to rules by autocrats. It’s party time, who needs a seat?

Some Floats Were As High As the Top Tier of Seats

We were ‘promised’ help to reach our ‘seats’. Right! Good luck finding those helpers. We were given almost the highest seats in the top section, which meant there were lots of stairs to climb, lots of people standing up in front of you who would block the view unless you also stood. 

Yet the section we were in was great. Our ‘seats’ were immediately opposite the 9 judges who decided who would be the ‘winner’ of these samba schools.

Eight of the Nine Judges

Every time a school strode/danced past the judges (we were on the opposite side of their luxury box seats), the performers, the groups, the music bands, the dancers, the King and Queen of each school, did their finest performance. The Judges saw it from their venue; we saw the best from just across the street. It was a good section we were in (Section 9), but we were a bit too high up to really feel like in the middle of it. 

A Chinese Float

The best part of each school, the performance that they were ‘judged’ by, happened right in front of our seats. I am sure there were more details the judges had to watch, to grade, to consider, but the gist is as I said before, the performance of the whole school counted, the execution and detail, the dazzle of the show, the responses of the audience, the message of the theme and maybe even the response from the politicos who were among the judges. 

The parades in Rio are not just mindless parades; behind it all is a reflection of the mood of the people. The view or the mirrored picture of what society thinks matters, is what is portrayed. 

Another Part of the Chinese Exhibition

The music was loud and never really stopped for the whole night. Luckily Carol brought ear plugs. Some people danced in the isles, they started when we first got there and never sat down. They were still dancing when we left hours later.

Amazing the energy those people had, the stamina to be so absorbed by the music, by all the festivities, by all the hoopla. If ever I felt my age, it was right then and there.

What does it cost for each school to participate?  The average cost per school, per parade is 3 million dollars. I was shocked when I heard this. 3 million dollars to enter? What costs so much?

Mangueira School

Well, imagine this: The Mangueira School alone had something like 4500 participants in the parade. Just for one parade, for the duration of about 90 to 120 minutes when all those 4500 people dance down the street: Samba, Samba, Samba. Divide 3 million by 4500 participants and you get something close to 650 dollars per person.  For all the costumes, practices, meetings, floats, etc.?  It adds up. Yes, I can see the cost easily being 3 million. 

Top of the Mangueira Float

The Mangueira Samba School was about the middle of the parade:

The music of their bands blared from loudspeakers, all the dancers had very elaborate costumes, each float, and there are many of those, was created, decked out, driven, pulled, or pushed. It was a very large School and the actions were choreographed down to the 

Another Mangueira Float

smallest detail. Each section of the School, full of individual dancers, knew exactly what to do, how to dance and when to bow, to swirl, to hold the flags and/or their toys. The paraphernalia was glitzy, the décor elaborate, the perceived wealth flaunted. It was ‘make-believe’, it was not being ‘normal’ but being in a fantasy world. And yet, behind it all, behind the show, there was a theme, there was a message to the onlookers, to the crowd. It was a message to the world, to the politicians. And it was exactly that message that made one aware in a ‘festive’ way, that the judges concentrated on in judging the theme. 

Germany also has a ‘Carnival’ or as some call it there ‘Fasching’. I learned as a child while still living in Germany, that it was not just a parade. It was a political ribbing, an outcry from the common man to their leaders. Cologne and Frankfurt are the main centers in Germany for this kind of message.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_in_Germany,_Switzerland_and_Austria

 The Redeemer With Telephoto Lens From Our Seats

Nowhere is the celebration as elaborate as in Rio; Rio has the ultimate glitz when it comes to throwing a parade.

And yes, the cost for just one samba school is high.

It’s a neighborhood thing. Its pride, its: look at us, we have it together. There are many schools in Rio. Remember, Rio is huge and spread out, and each large hill is another neighborhood. Each shanty town (favela) has their Samba school. The best schools perform at the Sambadrome. The participants make, most make, their own costumes to save money. The floats are put together as a team effort. Samba schools spend time all year working on a parade. The get together at each school includes the theme of the next parade to be discussed, the layout sketched, the music picked and then practiced. The parade is just an accumulation of what last year was like for the people at each Samba School. And the message or theme for the parade is a look forward to better one self, and hopefully get the message across to others to better themselves, too. 

Buddha

We watched one school after another… the duration for each school was about, more or less, 90 to 120 minutes of dancing down the 700-meter-long street. 

I don’t know how each school, with so many people participating, reassembled at the end of the parade or even how each following school assembled and got ready to move through the Sambadrome. It must have been chaos being in the midst of it all. 

Buddha's Helpers

I am just an observer, not a participant……but it was some show we saw. 

After each school passed, cleaning crews swept the street, preparing it for the next school. The intermezzo between schools was filled with samba music from loudspeakers. God forbid there should be a quiet time, no, no; music, music, music and the dancers in the stands kept dancing. Samba!

We watched a total of 6 out of the scheduled 7 schools for this night. While many people left after just 2 or 3 schools, I felt it was too rare an occasion, we needed to stay. Carol wholeheartedly agreed.

Sun Is Rising

But after 6 schools we had had it. It was 6:00AM when we left the Sambadrome and 6.15AM when we arrived back at the Port Terminal. Sunrise had started already. We just ate breakfast and by 7.30AM we were in dreamland. 

We spent close to 9 hours, watching Rio’s Carnival Parade, but we need sleep now. 

See you tomorrow.  Ahem… later……it is tomorrow.