SATURDAY - Arrived in Rio this morning to a beautiful sunrise. We had a morning tour that was supposed to depart at 8. Instead it was just before 10 when we left and we returned to the ship at 3 rather than 12. Knocks the heck out of a day. It was a city tour with Sugarloaf Mountain. Our first stop was to be Copacabana Beach. We did see the beach - crowded with umbrellas, people and souvenir booths - but, due to Carnaval, the buses were not allowed to stop. Copacabana Beach is 4 kilometers long. We carried on to Sugarloaf and there were huge lineups. It took well over 90 minutes to get to the tram. The trip up the mountain is in two stages. The first tram takes you to the top of the first mountain which is 220 meters high. The next tram takes you to the very top of Sugarloaf - about 400 meters. There are spectacular views from it. It was a bit hazy so the statue of Christ the Redeemer is not very clear in our pictures. Interestingly, hawkers were selling agua (water) in the lineup up for $1 US, at the top a bottle was $5 US and when we got back down it was $1.50 each.
There are 10 million people in the metropolitan area. The port which they say was renewed for the 2016 Olympics is downtown which has certainly not been renewed. There is garbage and graffiti all over. The buildings are slum-like. It is really hot and humid.
A local folkloric group performed for us as the evenings entertainment. About 10 beautifully, but scantily clad women were backed up by a mostly drum band and a singer. I'm not sure how they get their bodies to shimmy that fast and long.
SUNDAY - We started the day with a champagne breakfast on the balcony. The main course was quiche with a side of crab legs - delicious. There was a local parade with about 40 floats which we were able to see from our balcony. Very quiet day for us as we had an excursion to Carnaval at night. It took us over an hour to get to the stadium from the ship. Along the way we'd see huge groups of people who would gather, force the streets to be closed and have their own Carnaval. These would be locals who could not afford to attend the official party. Some of the crew I talked to during the day say they ran into these groups late the previous night and they were welcome to join the party but it helped if you were willing to get naked.
Carnaval is quite an experience. Sunday night there were 7 samba schools performing. Each has a time limit of 75 minutes to complete their parade with the first group starting around 9:30. It's clear that they start this late to give the temperature a chance to cool down but it was still well over 30 C (90 F). Each school has 3000 students and they all partake. The stadium holds 90,000, is long and narrow with cement bleachers. If you opt for the box seats (twice as much as a bleachers seat) you get a plastic chair to sit on. Fireworks for about 5 minutes signal the start of a parade and it then takes at least 20 minutes for the first group to get to our section which was directly across from the judges stand. There are huge, beautiful floats separated by several brightly costumed groups. They are dancing the whole time as they pass by the stands. It is a sea of color as you look in either direction. I will send another blog with some pictures so you get an idea of the experience. After each group the floor is cleaned similar to a zamboni cleaning the ice between periods in a hockey game. We only made it through 5 schools before better judgement kicked in and we headed back to the ship where we arrived just before 5 am.
MONDAY - The last of a 3 day long holiday weekend in Rio. Due to the little sleep we had it was a quiet day but again there was a local parade passing by the port. These people know how to party. We leave here at 4:30 pm and will have 2 sedate days at sea to recuperate.
No comments:
Post a Comment