Sunday morning at about 10 AM, our ship docked in Rio; one
of eight ships tied to the dock. Carnaval
(yes, that’s the correct spelling), the pre-Lenten celebration, draws hundreds
of thousands of tourists to the city, including the probably twenty-five
thousand cruise ship passengers.
Carnaval is celebrated in many countries; in the US it’s called Mardi
Gras, but nowhere is the celebration more colorful than in Rio.
Rio de Janeiro, or River of January, refers to time of year
that the area was first explored by a Portuguese expedition around 1502. In 1555 the French occupied some of the area
around Rio, until expelled by the Portuguese ten years later. The local economy grew slowly until the end
of the 17th century when cane sugar became the most important export
of Rio. The production of sugar is still
today an important economic activity. In
1808, fleeing from the Napoleonic Wars, the King of Portugal moved the entire
government to Rio where it remained until 1822 when Brazil became independent
of Portugal and Rio became the capital of the Empire, later the Republic. In 1960 a new capital city, Brasilia, was carved
out of the jungle and Rio was no longer designated as the capital. It is currently the second largest city in
Brazil, serving as an industrial and financial center and a producer of many
goods.
We departed on a city tour which included a visit to
Sugarloaf, the conical-shaped rock which is one of the city’s internationally
recognized symbols. Unfortunately due to
Carnaval, the city tour consisted of a bus ride through crowded streets and
traffic directly to the base of Sugarloaf where we were to take two cable cars
from street level to the top of the rock, some 900 meters high. There we encountered a serpentine waiting
line, or queue as the British say, with an hour and half wait before finally
reaching the cable car for the first stage of the trip. The wait at the mid-point wasn’t bad, so we
got to the top with its spectacular views of the city in short order. The magnificent beaches of Copacabana and
Ipanema stretched on either side of Sugarloaf.
There was another wait of almost an hour to get from the top back to the
midpoint; from there it was a quick ride to the bottom and our waiting
bus. We headed straight back to the
ship, seeing nothing else of the city, because we were already two hours late
getting back.
Once on the ship we took a quick shower to cool down, and
then rested for about an hour before departing on another bus to the Sambódromo,
the center of Carnaval, to our reserved seating area. Sambódromo consists of about a mile of brightly
lit street, flanked on both sides by immense grandstands holding at least 150,000
people. The Carnaval celebration begins
at 9 PM on Friday night with huge parades of floats (which are pushed manually),
dancers and percussionists from various Samba Schools, competing for prize
money. Each parade consists of up to
5,000 participants that pass down the mile-long corridor. It is loud and colorful, and the spectators enthusiastically
encourage their favorites. Each parade
must finish in 1 hour and 20 minutes or less, or the school has points deducted
from their score as a penalty. Six Samba
Schools are scheduled to perform on each of the five nights of Carnaval, with
the final winners announced on Tuesday night.
With an hour and twenty minutes of competition for each school, plus a
little “clean-up” time between parades, you can see that even if everything is
on schedule, the celebration continues until at least 4 AM the next day. Our
favorite parade was that of the third Samba School, Unidos da Tijuca, which was
elaborate and very beautiful. This Samba
School won the championship in 2010 and 2012.
We were fortunate to sit directly across from one of the judging stands;
we saw the performers at their best!
Samba started in the poor sections of Rio as a way of
celebrating before Lent. The Sambódromo
is located in the area where Samba began, the neighborhood of Estacio. Some of the Samba Schools are over 60 years
old. Children begin attending these
schools at an early age and practice every Friday and Saturday leading up to
Carnaval. A recent phenomenon is the
rebirth of the street carnival. The city
dwellers and tourists don their costumes and off they go into the streets,
reveling until the wee hours.
We tried hard, but we could only hold out for 3+ parades
before catching a shuttle bus back to the ship.
We arrived at around 3:30 AM and fell into bed. With the help of our good friend, Ambien, we
were able to sleep until 2:30 PM. It
made for a much shorter day on Monday.
John & Judy were up at 6:30 AM to catch a tour to see the Christ the
Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain overlooking the city. Their tour was very much like our tour to
Sugarloaf, crowds and long lines. It
also took six hours instead of the scheduled four hours.
Sail-Away was at 5 PM, on our way to our final port of
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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