Rio Carnaval Party Time: Rio de Janeiro
Rio Carnaval Party Time: Rio de Janeiro.
March 3.
The Rio Carnaval Party is totally insane. Today I had to rally the troops of my group as they were not motivated to party. There were some that wanted to go to the beach, but I wanted to go to the Sergeant Pepper bloco party, that was a samba band that played only Beatles cover songs. I put on a bit of pressure and nine of us went to Parque do Flamengo in Embankment to a party with 100,000 people. I have never been to a party that size before. And the music was from my favourite band. And it was incredibly fun. We arrived for Rio Carnaval party time at about 3pm and partied there with the crowd all afternoon. It was just a sea of people singing Beatles songs with samba beats. It was so much fun. We got pretty drunk, dancing and singing. The men’s urinal was just a fence that said ‘Urinal’ on it that we peed on, and the urine just went into the grass. Amazingly efficient, but not a great place late in the day if you are only wearing flip-flops. I had thought to wear shoes.
I ended up spending most of the gig hanging around with Shanna who is becoming pretty awesome. A cute beer can crushing girl. As the Rio Carnaval party show progressed, I wanted to feel the crowd some, so all nine of us locked hands and we headed into the sea of bodies as a human train. That crowd was amazing. And the band sounded incredible. They were way way up high, in a kind of fully covered box and they were all wearing Sgt. Peppers clothing. When the band finished at 7pm, we had to make our way home to get ready for the parade. 100,000 people leaving a park at the same time makes for impossibility of getting any kind of transportation home, and we had a timeline to get back to the favela. So, we walked fast, and it was a criminal distance.
But we got back in time and we got changed into our clown costumes for more Rio Carnaval party time. As we were changing, Irmante and our friend Dom disappeared. It was easy to make conclusions, and we needed to get moving to get to the parade on time. Everyone was waiting for them. Eventually I got annoyed at the passing time and went with Shanna to Dom’s house. I opened the door and seen a naked Dom jumping off of Irmante to hide himself. I just remember flash-seeing that Irmante had black crotch stubble and feeling confused by that she is the lightest natural blond that I know. I looked at her and said, “You can fuck him on your own time! Everyone is waiting on you!” Csilla came and got Irmante, took her away and got her dressed into her clown costume. On the walk to catch our bus to the float Irmante fell down on the pavement and scraped the hell out of her ankle. She got up like it was nothing and pretended that it did not hurt. Blood ran down her ankle. She was all business. She knew the Rio Carnaval party time deal. We caught the hired charter bus to the area of the city where our float and parade was taking place.
Cash, Csilla, Scottie, Shanna, Irmante and I had to wait until 2:30am before our float would go. Irmante, Shanna and I stole a nap on the grass for about an hour waiting, until Krusty, the angriest clown I have ever met, woke me up. I kicked him in the thigh for waking me up when he squeezed my ankle.
We had our faces painted, I got asaí fruit and beer to give us energy. More energy needed for more Rio Carnaval party time! So, we assumed out float positions for our favela’s samba school.
The floats were gorgeous. Scottie is a big man, maybe 6’3″ and he had his body crammed into that small clown costume. Then, a couple of cross-dressers and some guy who looked like Sloth from The Goonies were teasing him. Scottie began chasing those cross dressers and Sloth down the street in both directions. He looked like an angry ape in a clown costume, running as stealthily fast chasing those three away. It was hysterical, and all of the parade in waiting was watching this develop and take place, and laughing. It was just such a crazy combination of so many amazing combinations of crazy at once. It was the highlight of the Carnival for me so far. The Rio Carnaval party never runs out of bizarre surprises…
I was physically exhausted and pretty drunk by the time we actually started moving our float at 3:30am. From fast walking across the city earlier in the evening, my ankles and feet hurt so much that dancing for 30 minutes straight down the street behind our float was work for me. The Rio Carnaval party was wearing me out. Especially because we wanted our samba school to do well so that they can move into the next tier of Carnaval parade next year. So, we added a fancy dance to our walk down the street and really bumped it up when we were in front of the judge’s booths.
When we finished, we made our way to the bus to go home from the day of Rio Carnaval party. As we were sitting on the bus in this rough area of town, right next to us two guys with two guns on a motorcycle robbed the people parked next to us in a car. Then they stopped in front of another car, pointed their guns, and one guy got off the bike and stole the car from the person who had been driving it. Then they took off. The car belonged to one of the people who was connected to our samba school. Cash seen it all happen and was at the window of the bus yelling at them. I missed it all as Shanna and I were snuggled up in a seat on the bus. We got back to our area of the city at about 6:30am. Shanna had invited me over for a sleep over, but had changed her mind on the bus ride home because she was getting motion sickness. No extended Rio Carnaval party for me! So, I came home with Irmante, Cash, and Csilla to pass out for the day. What a crazy crazy day.