Rocking Rio Carnival!

CARNIVAL!!! Four hours of flying from Santiago to Rio de Janeiro and we arrive in the city ready to meet up with four friends from London, Pablo, Julia, Sophie and Danny. We arrive in the evening, check in to our hotel and immediately head out to hit the town as the city is heaving with party goers. It was much busier and crazier than we had expected, as we weaved our way through the crowds to find a restaurant in which to have dinner that night. After a bit of searching we found a lovely small restaurant that serves local food and we enjoy a meal with beers and caipirinhas. The time passed quickly and before I knew it, Joost and our friends were signing happy birthday to me as a waiter comes with a special birthday cocktail...and within seconds the entire restaurant is singing happy birthday to me! After saying thanks and blushing a bit, the singing begins again, this time in Portuguese! It was really something special.

The next day we head to Ipanema beach where luckily managed to find a spot on the sand, and we cooled down with a swim in the cold sea. The temperatures reached thirty odd degrees, but it was the humidity and the crowds that made us really feel the heat.

A couple of hours later as we wander down Ipanema beach to head back to the centre, we hit a bloco (street party) so we stay to watch and dance along to the music.

That evening we started off with a drink on the rooftop bar of our hotel and then headed to Porcao, a fantastic churrascaria that serves endless quality meats, accompanied by a big salad bar. Caipirinhas are made and served at the table and we thoroughly enjoyed the food experience.

This set us up well for our night at the Sambadrome to watch the first evening of the samba parade. Joost and I got tickets to a separate section, so we split up from our friends and headed to the Sambadrome in a taxi. As we pulled up, the lights, music and atmosphere were electric! We got a spot in our section where we could see all the way up and down the parade route and the dancers and floats were so close by. We were right opposite the judges box so we got the benefit of the dancers really giving it their all for the judges. Everyone around us was dancing and we promptly joined in and didn't stop until we left some 5 hours later. What a brilliant experience and what an amazing way to spend your birthday!

We finally got back to our hotel around 5am and after a short sleep were ready to start the next day. We met up with our friends again, had some breakfast/lunch and headed to the Christ the Redeemer site. We probably should have expected this, but the queues were really long and we spent the best part of the afternoon trying to see the attraction.

That evening we decided we would try to get tickets to the Sambadrome again, and thanks to a nice taxi driver that was working hard for his tip, we managed to get tickets to the end section of the Sambadrome where the dancers finish the parade so we could see a very different perspective of the parade that evening. The atmosphere of the crowd around us was just as good and it was great to spend another night enjoying the music and entertainment, this time altogether with our friends. As this section allowed us to see the end of the parade route, we still saw all the dances and floats, but the dancers were so enthusiastic at the end of their session that they would come by to get the crowd dancing, which was lovely. Another fantastic evening at Rio Carnival!

Our last day in the city and we decide to see more sights so we took the cable car up Sugarloaf mountain. The views were stunning and there was plenty of space up the mountain that it didn't feel too crowded. Joost, Pablo, Danny and Sophie decided to take a spontaneous 6 minute helicopter ride over the city, which was an amazing experience.

For our last night, we decided to have a traditional meal of Feijado, which is basically the meal locals eat at the weekend, like a Sunday roast, made up of black beans and meat. We spent the evening eating, drinking and chatting to round off a truly excellent trip to Rio de Janeiro!