Rio Carnaval- Sambadromo.

The Carnival Parade is held in a place called the Sambadrome which is basically a road. Each school takes an hour and a half to get from 1 end to another to the same song, same dancing and same drumming but you only see it for about 20 mins due to how it is set up. There are stands either side and VIP expensive seating. We were in stand 13 with the plebs and loving the atmosphere! They go nuts for it. As we were at the end of the road it meant we saw the people go mad after finishing their parade. Especially the people drumming in the bateria would give us a special extra show for free!

They spend 8 months prepping each year. You can see below the scale of the floats and the show they put on. There is so much commitment.

The costumes are also amazing and this lovely lady posed for me especially


I made my own costume for the evet with a northern Brazilian Bahian theme. No not really it was the birds standing next to me. Who BTW was a total mentalist.


Ed did make his however, well we all kind of tore apart a costume someone chucked into the crowd at the end of their parade

This school above, Rio Grande was our favourite but yet again the same school won. Down to bribing the judges each year apparently. But the above were the winners with the crowd who of course went mad!!

This guy had shaved a bra into his chest hair for the occasion?!

These are our friends who so kindly took us there, Ricky and his family. Ricky is a total legend, we met him in Argentina. Their family were so nice to us, refusing ticket touts who wanted us gringos to pay more than the locals. Christina, Ricky´s mum is safely one of the nicest ladies we have ever met in our lives. She was our Brazilian mum.