Watching the other Samba Schools - Simply Amazing!

After we performed in our Samba school we sat down at our avenue-side table and saw the rest of the show in luxury. There were 6 samba schools performing after us. Getting a table is probably equivalent to getting a Superbowl ticket. Not an easy thing to come by and extremely expensive.
 
The floats come down the Sambadrome avenue until dawn! Each school takes up to an hour and 20 minutes to strut their stuff. There are over a dozen samba schools that compete for the championship over a two day period. 
 
 
The floats are immense, colorful, and swarming with beautiful, smiling and dancing people. Thousands of people and details go into making these parades - per samba school. As soon as the event is over they are working on next year's.

The competition is heavy as each school picks a theme and follows the rules for bringing that theme to life in color, dance, music, costumes, floats, and pure enthusiasm.
 
 

 Each samba school's song has been on sale and been playing on the radio for months and everyone eveywhere sings along. The same melody done with slight differences for the whole "desfile" - showing.

 
  It is the purest and highest grade of eye candy. 

From the sparkling colors, towering structures, swaying nude bodies, heart pounding drumming and trance-like samba rythms. 

After a while, whether you want to or not, you're samba dancing and jumping, with or without your conciousness. It's something special.

 
It's all so addictive. When you think you can't watch anymore, you've overdosed on spectacule, you hear the fireworks go off signalling another school has launched. You drink another cup of espresso, get up from your seat, your feet start moving to the Samba and you stare at everything and everyone that comes down that boulevard. Before you know  it, the sun starts emerging from the horizon and you realize you have been partying aaaallllllll night.
 
You can't help saying, "...beautiful, did you see that, look over there, WOW -  look at her, what's he doing, can you believe those drums...." - until dawn, when it finally ends.... well until until next week when the champions return to celebrate winning by doing it all again in one 10 hour night. 
 

*
Itinerary | Homepage