Jack McDonald dot Org

For anyone visiting Rio, Carnival is apparently a military operation masquerading as a party. Times, places, seat numbers, meeting points, rally points and so on and so forth. So with that in mind I woke up on day one of Carnival without the faintest hint of a plan. Apparently there is a pretty good samba parade in Ipanema, which is the hip beach area in the south zone of Rio. It also happens to be quite near to where I’m staying which is handy. The sun is shining, the day is glorious, and the streets are packed.

At it’s heart, a street samba parade (or ‘Bloco’ as it is known out here) is like a medieval army on the march, minus the swords. It crawls through the streets creating an incredible din and once it gets going only an act of god or sheer exhaustion of the participants will stop it. The party is scheduled to start at about 4, but this figure fails to include the “Rio Curve” for time keeping which adds another hour or so to the preparations. Part of the delay is because the organisers need to shift a flatbed truck stacked with pallets of beer crates to the head of the parade; ample proof of the intention of the organisers. The Bloco starts on a small street feeding directly onto the main road that runs parallel to Ipanema beach. Unlike events in England where traffic flow is carefully controlled and managed, here roads close and open due to the presence of crowds, with little official presence or red tape.

The build-up is interesting to watch. Die hard party goers crowd around the band dancing every time they strike up a beat in practise. Organisers struggle to arrange the parade in it’s correct order, including the placement of the best costumed participants in the parade. The parade itself features a number of transvestites wandering around. However, at carnival, such things are no indication as to someone’s sexual inclination. The sheer number of guys wandering around in women’s clothes hitting on every woman in sight attests to this fact. There’s also a rather brave soul in a full panda costume, how he (or she, I have no idea) made it through in the heat I have no idea.

The party kicks off properly sometime around five, and within about ten minutes the main band makes it to the main beach. Having been cooped up on a side street for ten minutes, the full scale of the thing now becomes apparent. Where there once was four lanes of traffic, there is now a massive crowd of bodies all trying to stay as close to the band as possible. The process is one of constant revolution, as people depart from the main crowd for the slightly less dense one nearer the beach in order to forge ahead of the band once more. The two crowds are separated by the tree lined embankment that separates the two opposing traffic flows. This embankment now serves as a vantage point for the lucky to watch the party below. Viewed from the embankment the crowd swirls giddily around the band until it breaks into a choral section at which point every Brazilian breaks out in song and arm waving, whilst the tourists stand around looking dumbfounded. I suppose it is a bit like a complete stranger to rock music accidentally walking in on Metallica playing the chorus to Master Of Puppets. The band itself is slightly different to a standard samba band as they have a number of portly gents hauling tubas along for a brass section. It adds a quite good melodic edge to the bass section in otherwise rhythmic music.

In the middle of this chaos the ubiquotous street sellers are having a field day. Whereas gringos like yours truly are picking their way through this event with care, these folks are navigating the crowds with their makeshift carts and polystyrene boxes full of beer with consumate ease. The owners of bigger carts pick a spot along the route just ahead of the main body of people then get swept along in a frenzy of drink requests and so on until they are left with the stragglers. Those that wish to take a break do so, whereas many of their compatriots hightail it over the embankment, through the sparser crowd and ahead of the party to repeat the process. However as the day wears on the ’sparser crowd’ becomes decidely thicker making the whole process a lot more difficult.

And so it goes, until the parade veers right into the heart of Ipanema. What did previously just about fit on a street, six lanes of road, an embankment and beachfront boulevarde is now wedged into a standard one way street. Somehow. The actual parade stretches out into the distance like an accordion to accomodate the rush of people, but even so the crowd behind the band is rammed solid. Caught up in it, I am unable to control any aspect of my path other than the direction I am facing. Then a chorus kicks in and everyone starts jumping up and down, whooping, shouting various portuguese lyrics and swearwords. Coming from a culture without a single defining musical sound, it is quite odd that literally everyone knows the music. I mean, there are popular bands in England, but because our inter-generational music tastes evolve and differ so rapidly, it would be hard to layout a musical event that would satisfy every member of society. Is Brazil a country of musical nationalism, or do they just know how to party? I think it’s rather more a case of the latter. Either way it makes for quite the experience.

After half an hour more of this, I duck out to head home and rest up before the evening’s festivities. The streets of Ipanema are the odd confusion of a ghost town littered with strings of people criss-crossing the area on their way to some party or other. There are various sound systems set up around one park area, including one trance one strategically located near the tourist pubs. If there is a form of music more banal and ubiquotous than trance, I hope never to hear it. It is the musical equivalent of McDonalds and attracts clumps of dreadlocked hippies from here to Goa.

In the evening I decided to head to Cinelandia, which lies somewhere in central Rio. Again continuing with the theme of zero planning, I have never been here and I have no idea how to get home except that the metro runs 24 hours a day during Carnival. The train is about half full, but made livelier by the presence of dancers from various samba schools heading to the Sambodromo in full costume. Exiting the metro I realise that this party either happened alot earlier, or won’t be happening for a while, as there are a couple of hundred people milling about in front of a large open air stage. The setting is quite fantastic, as there are lots of old stone civic buildings lining the square. The square itself has been turned into a makeshift food hall by scores of people who have set up various food stalls that have coalesced ito something of a steady entity. Nonetheless, I don’t fancy hanging around for half an hour in between changeovers, despite the exuberent MC whipping up the crowd by playing on area pride in a playful fashion.

I follow the crowd up a rather large closed street which turns out to be a small school samba parade. The Sambodromo, while impressive, only represents 16 or so schools out of all those who take part in carnival. The B-Teams (so to speak) end up at events like these. It is now raining slightly, there are rather few people here (as it is only 10pm and therefore the evening revelries are not in full swing) and the entire thing is quite disorganised. It makes for quite a depressing sight as hundreds of dancers wait in the persistent rain to dance for a couple of judges, a few hundred spectators and assorted street vendors.

I pass by a few of the lined up schools and realise that I am within a long walk’s distance of the Sambodromo itself, which is where most people seem to be headed. So I head left up Avenida Presidente Vargas to the makeshift city that surrounds the Sambodromo. Here is where Carnival is in full swing. Not only do the street vendors have massive food cities and bars, but the more enterprising ones lug along sound systems in order to net more customers. Thus the streets surrounding the Sambodromo are a hive of food, beer and baile funk. I end up sacking off the idea of the Sambodromo as it’s quite expensive and instead head to a terrace which has been set up by some beer company or other outside the place.

Getting a ticket to the terrace involves queueing for a box office that is a line of holes in a wooden hoarding with numbers above them. Was the fact that it resembles a line glory-holes lost on the designers? Who knows, but it was amusing nonetheless. I assume this is something to do with Rio’s pre-occupation for security, in that if you can’t see your attendant, let alone make out what the hell they’re saying through plywood, you can hardly mug them. Just push 5 reais through the slot, get a magnetic card in return and move on. In the perpetual quest for the perfect scheme, some Cariocas queue for the five reais tickets then sell them onto people who cannot be bothered to queue for ten minutes at a 2 reais markup. Getting into the terrace involves being split into queues according to gender, followed by a turnstile and then a full patdown from some rather worried looking security guards. The interior holds tens of thousands of revellers, and I don’t think they’re allowed firearms so I understand their predicament.

I settle in and sit down for my first meal in eight hours of wandering about with a cold beer. Not eating meat limits your takeout options to chips, fried cheese pastels, and that’s yer lot. The band playing appear to be quite popular, even if their entrance is delayed by someone four or five blocks over letting off ten minutes worth of fireworks. This includes five minutes of the clusterbomb variety which blend into superloud white noise if you close your eyes. The band are pretty good and go down well with the crowd, but I’m too knackered from all the trekking to wait around for another one.

Getting home, well, that’s the part I hadn’t really figured on. I exited the terrace and began walking back the way I came in order to find a bus or something. Along the way I noticed some enterprising lads had figured out a way of delivering cans of Skol to the waiting area for the Samba school performers (they have to wait for hours until they get to march down the Sambodromo). By cutting out a can sized square hole in an empty 2 litre coke bottle and attaching a broom handle to the end, they were able to take money and deliver beer over a double divider fence designed to keep everyone away from the floats. Again, the rampant spirit of capitalism delivers for another section of Rio’s society. Hitting the main road I plumped on a mini van bus. These things are awesome, the general populace’s response to an inefficient transit system. You are generally unaware of their presence until the empty road next to your ear is replaced by a hyperactive chap leaning out of a moving minivan reeling off a list of possible destinations at maximum volume. They make their money by undercutting the bus network to the tune of 10 centivos per ride, and suprisingly enough, this has prooved to be a durable business model. When I first arrived in Rio they appeared completely anarchic, but in fact they are carefully arranged and organised into bus routes that piggyback the main bus network, and take a few shortcuts here and there. While they are most apparent on the main drags between Leblon and Copacabana, they serve the hinterlands and favelas as well. In order to ride these things without freaking out you have to drop any reservations you might have about personal space. Also, if you’re a health and safety inspector, don’t bother with them unless you fancy adding a white hair or two to your brow. But if, like me, you have no problem about careening through Rio’s sidestreets in a minivan stacked with 16-18 people, then these things are the bomb. Luckily I was one of the first on the bus, so I was able to snag a window seat as it made it’s way through central Rio to Copacabana. This had the plus side of allowing me to avoid the bus stop shuffle when everyone has to play musical chairs because the guy at the back wants to get out.

As we pass through one particularly riotous party, I see my first drunk of the day, who is staggering in the streets in between cars. As he almost collapses in front of a police van, the cop pulls up beside him, looks him up and down (probably to check he’s not bleeding), says a Brazilian version of “Meh” and then puts the pedal down and scoots off. It struck me then that despite being in a heavy drinking party environment for more than ten hours, he was the first person who I could really say was incapable of handling himself. Funny that, if it was England at this stage there would likely be a carpet of bodies requiring medical attention through intoxication and violent disorder by this stage in the night. After this little glimpse of the vast gulf between the two societies the van quickly sped me to Copacabana beach and then I jumped off and headed home.