Go to the Rio Carnival

“I’m at the Sambadrome – Rio’s 90,000-capacity stadium, purpose-built for Carnival’s world-famous samba parades – watching as four of the city’s most elite Special Group samba schools compete for a place in the final the following weekend. Each night across the main Carnival days, more than 15,000 samba dancers grace the floor of this open-air arena, twirling with rapid dexterity along the 700-metre runway. It’s spectacular, the joy so contagious a smile is involuntarily etched on my face from beginning to end, and the atmosphere in the crowd doesn’t wane – even when it ends at 6am.”

“At the Bloco do Sargento Pimenta, we bopped along to samba versions of The Beatles songs as the sun streamed down on an estimated crowd of 100,000. We followed as stilt-walking, ribbon-strewn performers paraded along the street, while an 11-piece brass band, Orquestra Voadora, blasted out classic samba songs and pop hits like “Billie Jean”.”

“I enjoyed it. I ended up doing 2 days at the parades. They run for like 8 hours but my mate and I were so pissed drunk we left after the first parade to go party bc we didn’t know. There’s a lot of beauty in them but mostly starts to get dull after a few hours bc it’s 30 mins parade, 30 mins wait, 30 min parade and so on. Central can be dangerous but also where the party is. Ubers are good but a lot of times there would be 4-5 cancellations before one actually came to pick us up.”