Jack McDonald dot Org

Day three of Carnival, or day four, I don’t know, there have been blocos for a couple of days running into the weekend and they haven’t stopped. I spend the day chilling on Ipanema beach while a smallish float and Samba band crawls along the road. The sound is jacked up way too loud on the float and the speakers keep feeding back. This creates two bubbles of empty space in the party as no-one other than the deaf can stand to be right next the side speakers. Read more

I took it easy on the Sunday, partly because I was shattered from wandering around so much the night before, but also because the real parties here kick off around eight or nine in the evening. Still, I left the house in between rain showers to grab some late lunch. The streets of Rio were eerily quiet save for diehard tourists who are wandering around in party gear at four in the afternoon trying to find some sort of party to attend. Read more

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. Read more