After 12 beautiful hours of sleep from our exhausting day yesterday, we woke up to a great breakfast of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and fruits. I wish the hostels int he rest of South America had toasties, everyone would be so much happier. Since it's a rare day for us to be awake at a normal hour, we decided to use our time wisely and go to the beach. It's less that a minute's walk from the hostel and everyone goes to the beach in their swimsuits and no towel or slippers or anything, just their surfboards. Macumba beach is beautiful and most importantly not very crowded as it's quite a drive from central Rio, so it's mostly the locals hanging out here. It's sort of like a 'secret beach'. I think that Brazillians are at the beach whenever they have a free moment, I would love to live this life!
As we hit the sand, we realised that the waves here were huge. I mean so big that I was actually afraid to go into the water other than to dip my feet. This is very bad behaviour for a Goan, and that to me of all the people to be scared of the sea! Unthinkable! Bernie went in a bit more but the current was so strong that even when standing at knee level, a wave would completely overthrow you and the sand was very sinky. He came out pretty fast! We just sat around watching people and the many fishermen who were fishing from the beach with fishing rods.
We got back home and decided to chill out a little before our hectic night at the Sambodromo which started at 9 pm. Once again we had to take a bus into town, and once again had to wait an entire hour at the bus stop. We finally reached Ipanema at around 8 pm, at this point the roads were so crowded that the bus had pretty much stopped moving and Ipanema is where the metro starts. We thought we'd have a quick bite and take the metro to reach the Sambadrome for 9 pm. We had tickets to sector 7 which is the best stand as it's opposite the judges, but there's no numbered seating so people go early to get the good seats. We knew that the show goes on from 9 pm to 6 am so we weren't too worried.
After a quick meal and getting completely lost finding the metro, we finally made it to the station to see a massive crowd and long queues to buy metro tickets. We had no choice but to stand in the queue where we spoke to a São Paolo native who was really annoyed with the queue and 'inefficiency' and wondered what Brazil would be like for the World Cup. It's a fair thought, though Brazil definitely has the vibe and enthusiasm for the World Cup, I do actually wonder if they are prepared in terms of crowd management, traffic, crime, public transport etc.
Anyway after queuing and being held back in batches for each train, we were finally in and got off at Central station where we asked a nice volunteer for directions and he took us half way. Then again we got lost (no signage anywhere!) until we finally made it to the entrance of sector 7.
The Sambadrome is really interesting, it's actually a road with 6 bleacher stands on either side. This was built specifically for Carnival so I don't really know what else this structure could be used for. This is used for 4 days of Cranival. The first two days are cheaper and the parade consists of the samba schools that didn't qualify for the main two days. The next two days have the Top League or Special Group which consists of the best Samba schools and we went on this day. Each competing school is judged on costumes, theme, floats, lyrics, dancing, music etc. what I didn't know is that every school's entry consists of 6-8 floats and upto 4,000 people! That's bigger than the entire Goa carnival!
It was absolutely packed with people waving flags and wearing hats and costumes and dancing in their seats. There were no seats left so we had to stand on the stairs. Suddenly there were a lot of fire works and the drums began and the floats started. Oh my gosh, the colours and the costumes and the actual floats! I've never seen anything like it. Majority of the people don't do the samba, they have huge coatumes so you can't really tell even if they are, but in front of each group they have the samba dancing girls in their magnificent costumes. It is a sight to see! Each school starts with a group of 5-8 dancers that set the mood and tone of the floats to come and since we were sitting right opposite the judges, they would stop and dance right there and these are the best dancers of each school. This is followed by the queen flag bearer in an amazing outfit along with a jester trying to make sure that all the attention is on the school flag. Then comes the first float followed by hundreds in costumes and so on. Each float took about 45 minutes from start to finish and then we had a break before the next school.
Some of the floats and costumes we out of this world. There was a pirate themed float that actually had a cannon shoot a pirate out and he fell into a net. It was beyond amazing! They also had a lot of people selling drinks and food so it was very nice and easy. We stayed on till about 4 am watching, the only disappointing part being that it's more like a show that you watch as you can't partake more than dancing in your seat. Unfortunately we'd only taken my mobile for pictures and they aren't great so mental pictures will have to do.
We finally got back in the metro where a drunk young guy and his girlfriend insisted on buying Bernie's hat and haggled over the price for ten minutes! And ended up returning it and asking for a refund 10 mins later. After the metro we decided to take a cab home the rest of the way, only reaching home once it was light. What an amazing once in a lifetime experience ticked off my bucket list!
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