Rio Carnival 2007
19th February 2007

So what do 20million people do when the city shuts down for a week????? They PARTY!

I have never seen anything like this place. The beauty in all forms is just amazing. The layout of the city with its beautiful harbour, Crist the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf Mountain, amazing beaches and the beautiful people really does make this place a City of God! The Favelas (shanty towns) are everywhere and leave you a little unnerved about safety but somehow the city co-exists in a way that is just hard to describe.

Having been here 5 days now we are all a little more comfortable with our surrounds but when we arrived at the airport and got picked up by our van to be driven to the hotel we were a little less comfortable when we discovered we were getting driven to the hotel via the middle of a favela....with all our belongings we didn´t feel quite so comfortable at that point...

Anyway, we got in safely to our 5 star boutique hotel to be greeted by the owner of our hotel, Jean-Michel Ruis and we checked into our fabulous hotel. The mayor of Rio used to live in the place we are staying so it is fortress like and just amazing. Check out the photos for that.

It has been non stop since getting here though. Day 1 was shopping and the beach, we have done a tour of a favela with a great group called be-a-local (see www.bealocal.com) who basically pay off the drug lords to bring you right into the heart of the favela. We went to one that houses 200,000 people and it was just something else. Again, check out the photos. Our action packed day on Friday did not end there though as in Santa Teresa there was a Bloc Party on so we all decided to check that out as it was literally a two minute walk from our hotel. That is where I got pick pocketed and had my wallet stolen but thankfully it was only cash. My spirits were dampened for a while but then I got on with it and we ended up out at another bloc party in Lapa until 4am.....you just have to see it to believe it though. Basically people just party in the street, drink beer, dance and sing and be merry....it is out of control but somehow it works....

Saturday we went to Maracana to watch a football match and we were basically in the middle of the local fans who were dancing and singing for the entirety of the match. It was a 4 all draw in the end but the experience was amazing.....post football we ended up at a dance party in an old warehouse in Lapa and again, I have never seen anything like it. Around 5000 people but every single one of them was beautiful.....being foreigners we certainly stood out.....having said that I have managed to speak Italian-Portuguse (Portalian) and somehow manage to communicate and meet some of the locals..... ;-)

Yesterday we headed to Ipanema beach where it was so busy you could not even see the sand and then we found ourselves in the middle of another street party....they are just everywhere and when everything apart from hospitality services are shut you can understand how everyone just gets out to party....last night was the Rio Carnival in the Sambodromo......oh my God...it is a production. The choreography was amazing, the costumes or lack of costumes sometimes were other wordly and the floats were just mental. There was this one float that was a giant chess board with around 1000 people on it with their drums and musical instruments all dancing and singing perfectly in time....that was just one...there were so many and it just blew us away.....every other parade just fades into insignificance....

I am scared but excited about participating tonight. It has been 40 degrees or so and very humid for the past few days so I know we are going to melt in our costumes as we shimmy up the sambodromo for 90 minutes tonight but it is going to be amazing.....no doubt we will find ourselves out with the locals afterwards in our costumes but we will make the most of this experience....it will be crazy...

Anyway, as I write this in a cute little cyber cafe in Santa Teresa there is a bloc party going on right outside the door of the coffee shop so it is only appropriate that I finish up now and go and meet more of the locals.....more to come....somehow I feel the photos and verbally recounted stories are going to surpass anything I can possibly write on a blog....