A Night at Sambodromo for Carnival Extravaganza

Rio has great beaches and mountains. But be honest, I was not there in late February just for the beaches. I was there for the Rio Canival!

Just like New Orleans' Mardi Gras (also a Cranival itself), the Carnival preparation starts not long after the new year, and approaches its climax the weekend before the Lent starts (Wednesday). Tuesday ("Mardi" in Ferench) is the climax of all activities. For Brazilians, starting from Friday afternoon and extends all the way to Wednesday morning, the whole period is a national holiday.

There are a lot parades all over Rio de Janeiro (and other Brazilian cities) in that period. The main parade takes place in the Sambodromo on Sunday and Monday nights. Only after watching the parade at Sambodromo, you can feel what an extravaganza it is.

Fourteen "samba schools" are selected for the final parade on those two nights (7 of them each night). Each of the schools has thousands of custumed marchers, dancers and singers. And each school has 80 minutes to march through the length of Sambodromo to dazzle the audience of more than 30,000 (and TV audience of more than one hundred million).

Thinking about it, 80 minutes for each team and 7 teams per night, one night's event lasts longer than 10 hours! Since our seats were the cheapest, they are at the end of Sambodromo and next to the parade finish line. We pretty much did not see the heads of each samba school until 30 to 40 minutes after they marched into the Sambodromo. The music (each school has an original theme song, which they have to sing over and over again for 80 minutes!) is loud and infectious, the customs are colorful and lavish, and dancing numbers are dazzling and mesmerizing. But it was such a long night. After six samba school, it was almost 8 or 9 in the morning so I couldn't finish viewing the whole 7 teams of that night (Many people in my group could not even finish 4 teams).

Most of the great parts of the parades were recorded in my camcorder (I recorded more than 80 minutes' footage). Here just some still photos to share with you. They don't even do the justice for what an extravaganza that night is.

Please click the thumbnail on the pictures to see enlarged images

Queen of the Carnival with a big orange wig.

Hundreds of winged angels from one of the samba schools.

More winged angels were coming in on a float.

One of the more interesting custumes of the night: dressing as a Portuguese fleet (yes, those with red crosses are sails) that conquered Brazil.

They even had a giant tiger on a float.

Pictures of some Brazilian celebrity on a float (though I have no idae who these people are).

A float with native Amazon Indian theme.

Floats with Native and African women dressing in different custumes.

These looks eerily Chinese to me.

They also have a float with ancient Roman scene. (No nudity here like the HBO series)

This one looks a little scary, reminding me of the Hellraiser..

It was almost daytime and I felt very sleepy...

...but the parade went on and on... And intersting floats still kept coming in.

After 8 hours of watching the parade and listening to loud Samba music, I started to hallucinate...was I sailing on an ancient fleet toward Jesus Christ?