Carnival!

After almost 6 months of travelling we reached one of the most highly anticipated pin points of our entire journey. This one landmark has had quite a build up to it not only full of giddy excitement but also a great deal of stress and worry particularly on my parents behalf who have had their stomach`s tied in knots with fear that we will be raped, shot at or kidnapped for a large ransom of money. With that placed in my mind along with a couple of stories from other travellers I was certainly feeling mixed with emotions as we stepped out onto the trashed grafiitied streets of Santa Teresa.

Things certainly got off to a fantastic start in Rio though as we checked into our hotel where we would spend the next 5 days. We had expected our pre booked packaged accomodation to be basic at best but we ended up in a luxurious twin room with en-suite, cable TV, fridge, air-con and free breakfast and Internet. The latter being our next brilliant news of the day as Miss Brainiac received an email confirming her place of the Masters course! After a week of nail biting we really wanted to celebrate but our 22 hour ride here had left us wanting to snuggle in bed and save the drinking for the next 3 nights.

Well that had been the plan anyway as halfway through the evening there was a knock at the door. I was greeted by a lively New Zealand lass with her face painted like a cat telling me to join her for some punch and party games. She was called Vicky and her enthusiastic nature led me to say yes before I had time to think about it or ask Laura who had just finished in the shower and was nowhere near ready to go out. Vicky thern pounced off and knocked on everyone elses door on our floor. Trying to decide if I wanted to drink some free alcohol or finish watching the end of ´Marley and Me´ was an easy decision so leaving Laura to make herself look even more pretty than she already is I wondered down the corridor to see if the people at this party had any potential for a cracking night.

There was only 3 others in Vicky´s room, one being her twin brother Tom and 2 other New Zealand girls. Literally a minute later and I had a cup of vodka fuelled punch in one hand, a mini acoustic guitar in the other, a checkered trilby hat on my head and I was complete with drunkeredly drawn whiskers. One drink in and Tom and I were nominated to recruite more cats for the evening from the rest of the unknocked doors. You can imagine the quick responce we got from the other guests in the hotel. Most peolple looked utterly terrified while others thought by asking them to a party meant we wanted to sleep with them with one woman pointing to the room next to hers saying that it was full of young girls that would be up for it. Although we thought we had miserably failed our challenge, over the next hour flocks of curious people started to flood into the room with each person getting suitably painted up as soon as they sat down.

Laura was with me now and the hardcore drinking games began, none of which we had heard of before like the ridiculous ´vegetable, vegetable´ game which I did hilariously bad at leading to me downing a considerable amount more than the other players. A few dribbling hours later we hit the town feeling more than safe in our extensive crowd and the locals seemed to welcome our over jolly carnival spirit. We ended up in a street party at a place called the Arches where a mass amount of people were dancing Samba moves and celebrating in a simular fashion. It didn´t take long to notice how confident and self assured the Brazilian men are here as whether the woman in question did or didn´t have a partner they were going to try it on whatever! This normally involved introducing themselves with a grope, whistle or strange animal call. That didn´t go down so well with most people in our group but we all knew how offended the men can get if a woman rejects them, especially in public so the only option was to ignore them. Within a minute most got the message although it took a hard punch in the arm from one girl to get a sleazy man away who had decided to touch her rear cheeks. At 3am our energy had been drowned in vodka and after a disapointing mission trying to find a kebab and ending up with a healthy corn-on-the-cob instead, we retired to bed. It had been a brilliantly spontaneous and overly enjoyable first day in Rio.

The morning after wasn´t quite as enjoyable and our beastly heads wouldn´t move an inch not even for the free buffet breakfast downstairs. It appeared our time here would be spent hibernating during the day and going obsurdly wild at night. The only thing we manageduntil about 5pm was one Audrey Hepburn film and a poor 5 minute attempt outside to get some food before returning to bed again.

However, the evening was far more successful as despite a slightly intimidating bus ride with some drunk locals singing and shouting questions at us we were driven to the stunning Ipanema beach. We arrived just as the sun was setting beautifully across the surf perfect waves and shortbread like sand. There was a huge crowd streched along the coastline all going nuts around open top buses full of people dancing to PA`s pumping Samba beats as loud as possible.

We still felt somewhat delicate so we went for some food to revive our senses. Every restaurant was packed out with tables tightly squeezed together for the massive amount of people dining inside and the night club like queues of eager mouths waiting outside. The meal was well worth it but didn´t give us enough power to stop falling asleep the moment we got back to our hotel.

With hangovers now slept off we woke up on Valentines Day early enought to catch breakfast and felt motivated to have a romantic stroll around the spectacular sites in Rio. We took a minibus up to the summit of Corcovado to see the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer and it`s incredible outlook over the city. Rio really does look magnificent from a distance with it`s postcard blue skies, lush green mountains and white sandy beaches. It has so much potential to be completely amazing but at street level it´s hanging on the edge of poverty. The homeless are dotted around each and every street corner lying across pavements and sleeping in awful conditions amongst the piles of garbage scattered infront of the once beautiful coloniual buildings that now have been plastered in ugly graffiti and stained black from traffic pollution. If the people here put as much effort into cleaning up and recreating Rio as they do for the carnival each year then this place would truly shine.

We spent the afternoon hunting through the local stalls in Santa Teresa for a vaguely impressive fancy dress costume ready for tomorrow night´s main event in the Sambadrome. We had more luck picking up the different parts of last night´s parade left in the trash along the road. Back at the hotel we assembled the pieces together hoping that a bit of cellotape here and there would make the ideal attire. But having a golden elephant headpiece, a shiny mermaid like dress and a white sheet nabbed off of the hotel bed wrapped around me like a roman´s robe didn´t quite have the overall look we were hoping for. We went out for dinner to think about it some more. One extra large pizza and a street party later and we had found some cheap but effective face masks along with a black curly superwoman esk wig for Laura and a vibrant mohawk for myself.

All dressed up we were oversome with the need to hook up with our hotel floor mates and rag the night away. Soon enough we were back in Tom and Vicky`s room with a whole host of new characters and ludicrous new drinking games. After we had all finished the last drop of alcohol from the ever present big green bucket in the middle of the room we decided to stumble up to the exit of the Sambadrome where we´d heard that the performers involved were simply dropping entire costumes as soon as they had finished their part in the parade.

The next 5 hours were some of the most enjoyable moments of not only this trip but the last 30 years of my life. There were gloriously decorated outfits absolutely everywhere ranging from silver tenticled space suits, 10 feet wide angel wings to human sized spider legs. I found an Egyptian Warrior looking attire complete with twisting green snakes and golden spikes that extended from my shoulders like another set of arms. Soon all of us had something mindblowingly flash on but it was Laura who completely stole the show. She had found a stunning white wedding dress that was as wide as she is tall. We all looked so good that the security thought we were part of the actual parade despite our white gringo faces and we were let into the main walkway of the Sambadrome infront of an audience of around 30,000 people. Then suddenly we were face to face with a camera crew who were filming us on live TV and on the big arena screens. The energy here was electrifying and we were all feeding off of it. The rest of the night was quite a haze of total brilliance and around 4.30am we were back in the hotel lobby being greeted by a room full of staff and guests looking somewhat amused and bewildered.

The following day was going to be all about the evening again which was lucky considering the jittery state I was cocoon`d in. The time to celebrate came around quickly but by then we were raring to go out if tonight was going to be even half as corking as the previous night. Laura and I headed out by ourselves as everyone else was taking ages getting ready and we didn´t want to miss a second of this.

When we got to the main entrance we were clapped upon and everyone standing there jumped next to us for a photo, it looked as if no one else had made much of an effort. Our costumes were so large that we had to temporarily take them off to actually fit through the gates and when we reached our sector that we would view the parade from it became clear why other members of the crowd hadn´t dressed up. The stands were so rammed that trying to slip past anyone with more than a bottle of beer was going to be a problem and Laura`s dress took up the size of about 6 people. Just as we were about to ditch our outfits not only did we find a prime view point but we were rampaged again by a endless supply of the audience wanting their picture taken with us. I mean literally hundreds upon hundreds excitedly hugged up to us like we were their favourite celebrity. Laura obviously got crowd fulls more attention especially from the men who chatted her up with some horrific one liners and it was all too much listening to the tourists who attempted to try it on speaking Spanish not having a clue that she was a fellow brit to which she totally played along with to get rid of them.

The carnival parade was the biggest, most over-the-top and colourful sight we`ve ever witnessed. The floats were unbelievable in size and creative design, each full of hundreds of dancers twirling and performing wild acrobatics. Behind each one was a thunderous percussion of drummers making the arena shake and bounce to the rhythms. Tonight there were around 6 schools each performing for an hour trying to whirl the crowd with amazement and all very easily doing so. I think we watched about 4 proccessions before leaving at 4.30am rather shattered. We walked back to our hotel, the air still buzzing, and after taking our costumes off snuggled down in bed to watch the last parade live on TV. what a night!

Aftre so much excitement we couldn´t bring overselves to check out after two hours sleep so we extended our stay by one more night. After a day of taking it easy we headed to the final part of Rio we planned to explore and headed for Copacabana. Once again Latin America demonstrated its immense stamina for parties as the bus we took was full of revellers. In particular there was a group of girls dressed as brides and "wedding" couples on board. This started with many locals- most of whom seemed to be strangers to one another before the girls placed the plastic rngs on there fingers- and then turned to my actual future wife and me. So we had our first wedding ceremony conducted in Portugese on a bus!

When we got off it was to enjoy a relaxing meal on the shores of the beach listening to the waves gently hit the shore. We had thoroughly enjoyed our time in Rio and were so pleased to have such a wonderful tale to tell of this city that came with so many forewarnings. If it wasn´t so expensive maybe we would have stayed longer!