Carnival in Brazil — crossing off my absolute bucket list item
Taking part in the most famous carnival event in the world
Rio Carnival — the biggest street carnival in the world. Ever since I was a kid, I had read about this in an English-learning magazine. ‘Rio Carnival’, ‘Oktoberfest’, ‘Holi’… It had deeply planted a little dream that I wanted to experience personally one day. Disclaimer: I did not end up spending the Carnival weekend in Rio de Janeiro.
The Carnival of Brazil happens every year around February to March. This year (2024) it fell on Feb 9–14, coinciding with our Chinese New Year. There are two parts to the Carnival celebration: the street party (bloco, bloquinho), and the sambadrome parades. My online research told me that the street parties start a week before the official carnival weekend, so I landed in Rio a week prior on Feb 2, to take advantage of the pre-carnival parties and hit some touristy spots first.
Pre-carnival in Rio
The weekend before the official carnival, the parties had already started. There were street parties / blocos all over the city, usually gathering in parks or near the beach, and then proceeding to follow a predetermined path. In Rio, a lot of these parties start at 7 am, and start their day drinking and dancing super early in the day. There are also afternoon events that could begin at any time of the day. In total, there are probably 10–15 blocos per day on the weekend across the city, and as the city of Rio is quite spread out, one can choose the theme and event that they wish to join. The concept of a bloco is very simple: A few decorated trucks full of people who play music at the heart of the parade, and everybody follows around the truck to dance and drink. There are also street vendors selling water, beers, and caipirinha among the crowd. Because February is still summertime in Brazil, Rio during the day was constantly 34 degrees, so most people had their tops off or only wore something very light.
Running into a bloco in Ipanema
I was on the metro one day, and suddenly everybody was getting off at the same stop. Many of these people looked like they were dressed for an event, so I followed. By this time I didn’t know how to follow the party schedule yet, so to my pleasant surprise, I ran into a party in Ipanema.
Among the crowd, I walked towards the beach and made eye contact with a group of 20-year-olds. They very passionately and possibly drunkenly shouted at me in Portuguese, asking me to join them. I guess they could tell I was a foreigner. I went ahead and said hi to them, and each of them was so excited to talk to me because I was a foreigner. They would ask me something in Portuguese, and I wouldn’t understand anything and just look at them confused. Among them was one girl called Suzanne who spoke perfect English, and seemed very put together compared to her friends. We had a small chat, and she gave me some very useful information about the city, and that there was an app to use to follow the blocos. All this happened while her drunk friends shouting random questions at me asking her to translate, and then pestering us to make out. I left shortly after their unexpected warm welcome, as I didn’t bring my fanny pack with me and I was worried about having my phone stolen from the crowd.
Spending carnival weekend in Sao Paulo
Although I had planned to spend carnival in Rio de Janeiro, I really could not stand the heat and humidity. Every day the sun hits you like it never did in the northern hemisphere, and the temperature hits 34 degrees every single day. Even at night, it was still 28 degrees and humid from the sea being 200 meters away. The official 5-day carnival holiday saw prices in Rio skyrocket to an unbelievable level. In the popular areas of Copacabana and Ipanema, even if you booked 3 months in advance, a hostel bed would cost around 120 USD per night, and a private room in a 3-star hotel would be double that or more. As a result, I decided to relocate to Sao Paulo for the weekend as I couldn’t justify paying another 500 USD to be in this city I was not in love with. I bought a bus ticket and left for Sao Paulo last minute — and I’m so glad that I did.
Getting adopted into Lincoln’s circle
I was introduced to Lincoln by Leandro, my good friend and ex-neighbor from Madrid. They used to study together, and Leandro helped me get in touch with Lincoln. Upon arriving on Friday the 9th, Lincoln invited me to join his friend Caio and his sister at a nice cocktail bar. As soon as I put down my luggage, I took another Uber and went straight to the occasion.
Lincoln was friendly and easy to talk to beyond my expectations. As we got to know each other, we discovered that we not only both work in banking, but we are even both in the same function, which I found really funny. We had two cocktails, both of which were fantastic, and they only cost 7 dollars each. From the moment I met him, he took care of me and included me in all of my plans. I had never experienced this incredible level of hospitality, and little did I know I was only seeing the start of it.
My first bloco with the locals
10 am on the Carnival Saturday, we met at Lincoln’s apartment. None of them took their phones with them to the blocos because each year somebody lost their phone. I wanted to keep the memory of all these so I prepared my spare phone with me and a fanny pack, which I hid under my shirt. After a quick beer and putting on some glitter, we began walking toward the bloco near Republica.
We followed the music to the groups of people already forming a parade. Before noon, the truck was already blasting out loud music, people drinking and chatting, and us dancing along with thousands of people. The spirit was so high. Wow. I’m really here. I could not believe it.
We would stop by whenever anybody needed a quick refill on their drinks, and there was always an official drink-selling vendor around. As the carnival is officially sponsored by Brahma, all the drinks were from their collection. Apart from water and cola, there were beers, Beats (cocktail in a can that’s about 9% in alcohol), Xeque Mate (some new drink with tea, rum, guarana, and lemon).
So each party goes on and on for 3–4 hours, and the people just dance, party, and repeat for the whole day. We barely ate anything all day because there was no food stall in the parade itself. One thing that was a bit of a culture shock to me was how easily people make eye contact with each other. This could be one person passing by the parade to go somewhere, making eye contact with somebody in the crowd, and then going up and just saying hi. More often than not, after a little dance or a simple what’s your name, they just ask if they can kiss you. If you agree then you’d make out for a few seconds and maybe talk a little more, but people tend to go back to your group within 2 minutes as if everything is normal. For this reason, oftentimes you are walking with your friends side by side, and the next thing you know they are fully making out with somebody. It’s really all that simple and I love how no-fuzz all of it is.
It reminds me a bit of the Taipei Pride Parade in terms of the format, but it’s just so much better. Nobody is on their phone, everybody is happy and a bit tipsy, and everyone is in the party spirit. Brazilians just do it better.
One thing I like about Taipei pride is the food after the parade, and Brazil did not disappoint me. At around 4 pm after two blocos in a row, we finally went to grab a bite. We ended up at a local food joint that serves up all the regular Brazilian options, and we got Feijoada, the bean stew to eat. The stew itself was a bit salty, but it was super delicious with a bit of rice and farofa (toasted cassava) — the perfect wet and dry combo. We sat down and all just hung out for a while, recharging for the after-party that was about to start at 7:30 pm.
After resting at Lincoln’s house for a mere 2 hours, we took off for the after-party at Galpão Quina. It felt like one of those alternative parties at the warehouse, and even at 7:30 pm, we had to line up. A DJ was mixing Brazilian songs, occasional English songs, and everything in between. I don’t think I ever enjoyed smoke breaks so much even though I don’t smoke, because the smoking area is the only place outdoors with very refreshing open air. We ended up dancing and dancing until almost 11 pm before all of us decided that our legs were no longer working after 10+ hours of consecutive dancing. The carnival long weekend pretty much passed by somewhat similarly every day, except we went to a different party, a different theme, and met a lot of different people.
The themes of the blocos
The street parties consist of different themes and hence attract different crowds as a result. One of them was a tribute to Rita Lee, a legendary rock artist in Brazil. All of the songs they played were made by her, and everybody dressed up in red. I joined Leandro’s other good friend, Dani, and her family for this. Unfortunately, it was so crowded at one point we felt claustrophobic so we left for another one on Rua Augusta. There were also some more classic samba ones, one that was a tribute to local female artists, one where Pablo Vittar, a famous local drag queen and singer, showed up and attracted an insane amount of people.
The Sambadrome parade
Essentially, this is an event for the Samba Schools to show off their talents and extravagant setups once a year. They pretty much spend all year preparing for this festivity — which will make sense once you see the scale and quality at which they deliver on the walk. Apparently, the sambadrome parade isn’t something typical for locals to do. Many of my local friends had never been to this before, but as a tourist, I felt that I had to at least see this for myself, so I went by myself.
There are different days that represent “access groups” and “special groups”. The difference is that the special groups are better, whereas the access group teams fight for a spot in the special group next year. As I bought my ticket very last minute, I was only able to get one for the access group. The good thing is they were very cheap, only 50 reais (10 dollars) for the entrance, and it’s not like I could tell what’s good or bad on a professional level. Officially, the event begins at I think 7 or 9 pm, but it lasts all night until the sun rises. So I showed up at around 1 am after partying with some local friends I met.
First of all, the sambadrome is massive. They have a gigantic food truck area that serves beers, snacks, burgers, and such. There’s also a live stream screen for what’s happening inside the sambadrome. It’s just the perfect atmosphere to relax and hang out as the nighttime temperature in Sao Paulo is around 22 degrees.
And just wow. I did not begin to comprehend how massive this thing was. I could not even see the beginning or the end of the parade. People are all hanging out to watch the parade. When the song is good, people dance along as well. With the amount of artificial lights and the energy in the room, it’s hard to believe it was 2:30 am.
The parade itself is super entertaining as well. There would usually be a theme and storyline that they follow, for example, a group of 50 dancers will act as farmers, followed by 50 dancers dancing and acting as the warriors, and then followed by the massive parade set that would be something in the theme. The parade cars themselves are often 5 stories tall, and there would be a number of dancers standing on top of the moving piece performing. I think I was just slightly overwhelmed but thoroughly impressed by the amount of effort that goes into this, and it really does not feel the same as what you see on TV.
Overall, the carnival was a super interesting experience and absolutely worth it. The Sambadrome was surprisingly unimportant to the Brazilians compared to the blocos, and the whole carnival celebration was unexpectedly decentralized compared to what I had imagined prior, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I had an amazing time and I could proudly say that I’ve crossed off this big item on my bucket list!
