Carnival...... feathers, colour, feathers, music, feathers, costumes ..... DRUMS..

Sooo many feathers...  Large costumes, even larger floats, colour, pulsating, loud music, thousands of people.  That was the Samba Parade at Carnival!!!!  We were there Sunday night ... all night!!!

We walked to the Sambadrome along with other people from our hotel, many of them in costume also. Party atmosphere prevailed right from the start - refreshments available from street vendors along the way.

Another first for me....  I have started to drink beer - it's just easier!!

The queue for sector 13 was massive, but moved along steadily.  Sector 13 is set back a little further from the parade area, and is at the end of the strip.  Once dancers got to the end of the strip they were in really high spirits and often performed for the crowd.  Spectacular!!!  Especially when the final section of each samba group arrived - the percussion section kept pumping out the music to the delight of the crowd in Sector 13.  It was the BEST!!!

Really hard to describe such a huge event

• we saw 7 samba groups
• each group has a theme and a song which belted out during their entire performance (most people in the crowd were singing along as well - they know all the words!)
• seemed to be LOTS of HUGE floats in each samba school group - possible 6-8
• between each of the floats were lots of dancers in different costumes - usually between 6 to 10 different costumed sections with 100-300 people in each section.  Sooo many people.  Read one samba school had 3600 performers.  Reckon some had more than that.  Percussion sections alone had at least 300 members - LOVED the percussion!!!
• each samba school took around 90 minutes for the entire group to progress from one end of the sambadrome to the other - music booming out the entire time and all the people around us standing, dancing singing, shouting and waving.  Great atmosphere.
• as soon as one samba school finished the next one started immediately - the first group started at 9pm and the final group started around 6am - sunrise.  What a night!!!  The crowd of 90000 had thinned considerably by that time - but Section 13 was still buzzing.  The last group was our favourite - an African theme - the story of an Angolan kingdom and its contribution to Brazil. Stunning costumes and floats!!!
• as each group finished they were ushered out of the area.  Even that was a spectacle - how to get around 4000 performers, many in large elaborate costumes away from the area, and to get performers off the HUGE floats - 4 large cranes were set up for this purpose, and 2 smaller fork lifts were also used.  Then to get them all away from the area (performers and floats - some of which only made it to the end of the parade by man-power), and have cleaning teams come in an clean the whole area ready for the next troop.
• we had a 45 minute wait between the end of one group until the next group arrive in front of us - but the music was ever present, and there were 2 large screens showing various sections of the parade - and there was plenty to look at as the last performers of the previous group left the area and cleaners came in.
• many large costumes were discarded - dumped in huge piles and picked up by waiting garbage trucks. A number of more attractive and easily carried pieces such as head-dresses were pilfered by eager members of the crowd.  A benefit of being in Sector 13 .... end of the parade.  Early in the morning Zac managed to get a couple of pieces .... 

We had a fabulous night .  Walked home during daylight.