It is Sunday and I am tired and cranky, and my eyes are at half mast and very puffy. Last evening my husband and I ventured into Sao Paulo with our driver/guide for carnaval, and what a hoot! Now I have always been under the impression that carnaval in Sao Paulo was a street affair; it is not. (But many small towns hold their carnavals in their ruas (streets) and they are quite lively from what I have seen on TV.) SP's carnaval is held in The Sambadromo (sp). It is built like a race track, with sitting areas on both sides. Osvaldo is our favorite driver and he drove us and stayed with us the entire evening. What a sport! He has lived in Sao Paulo all of his life and he likes to be the one to introduce us to new places. Even though he doesn't speak English and our Portuguese is very elementary at best, somehow we are able to communicate and understand each other. We got to the Sambadromo very early thinking that traffic would be horrible (because it always is) and to find a good parking place (since all the parking in the Sambadromo is taken by the floats). So a potential 2 hour drive turned out to be 35 minutes because most of the locals were already at their preferred destination, the beach. I need to explain: during Carnaval, all of Brasil enjoys a three day holiday making it a five day weekend. Sao Paulo celebrates carnaval Friday and Saturday and Rio celebrates it Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Brasilians love their beaches, and that is where they go on long weekends and holidays. So our drive was very short, and because we were very early we found parking although we had to pay to park in a car dealers customer parking lot for easy in, easy out because we knew that we weren't going to stay for the entire carnaval. Did I mention it ends around 5-6:00 am? We had about a 30 minute walk to the Sambadromo and we felt very safe because of the heavy police presence. We were encouraged to not go because it is perceived to be unsafe but even at 2:00 am when we walked back to our car, the police were out in full force, and it was fun to see Carnaval participants walking toward the Sambadromo in their full regalia...remember that at that hour, there was still 4 hours left before Carnaval ended, so carnaval dancers were still arriving as was the public.
I have never seen such elaborate costumes and floats. And the colors! It is very difficult to describe the beauty and the originality of each costume and float, and I kept wondering how did they conceive the idea? How did they do that? Those who know me know that I am all about sequins, beads, and anything zingy. The costumes and the floats were all that and more. I've never seen so many plumes of feathers in unimaginable colors. The participants/samba dancers come from the many samba schools in and around SP. One must register at a samba school to dance at Carnaval. During the parade the schools are judged and that is very important for the samba schools. Each school has about five floats that are huge, and the floats move by man power; literally, a line of men push the floats. Some floats were so big that the men were double deep pushing the floats, but when the floats paused, the men pushing the floats would dance and encourage us to clap, dance, sing, etc. Each school had a theme and the theme was evident in the costumes and floats. Before and after each float there were 5 or more groups consisting of 50+ samba dancers in extravagant costumes. The second ranked school, Mocidade Alegre, averaged 6 groups before and after their 5 floats. And each group was large in number and I found that both their costumes and floats were over the top which wins with the judges. I can only imagine what the number one school, Vai-Val, was like, but they had "performed" at Friday's carnaval. The schools are divided up between Friday and Saturday. We stayed to see just 3 schools and it was 2 am and there were 4 schools to follow! We just can't stay awake no matter what! Drinks, food, and snacks were very reasonably priced; not like in the US where food and drinks are priced very high for profit. The people were well dressed and most dressed in the spirit of carnaval. Because we were encouraged to not call attention to ourselves I didn't wear my cotton skirt that is decorated in sequins. I wanted to wear it in keeping with the spirit and many women wore sequined tops, shorts, and I even saw a pair of sequined pants. Men wore sequined vests and some were in costume. I saw elaborate masks, hats/head gear, so I was in sequin heaven. But most important, there was no rain! It drizzled when we were leaving for carnaval, but not one drop fell on us during carnaval. Here it rains pretty much every day. The sun is always out, but then suddenly, the wind picks up and thunder is heard in the distance and the rain follows. Sometimes it can be a drizzle or it can rain for two straight days. We were very fortunate with last night's weather.
We arrived home this morning at 2:50 and after a light snack went to bed. We both woke up at 9:00 we are not fully functional, but very happy to have experienced our first carnaval.
Jacob took pictures with his cell phone and he needs to email them to me. When he does I will post them.
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