Samba Parade

On Saturday, March 8th, two lovely staff members from OLM took us to the 2014 Samba Champions Parade at The Sambodromo. The first competition tool place the weekend of Carnaval on March 2nd and 3rd. The parade consisted of many samba schools that competed against each other for a place in the champions parade. A samba school is like a club or dancing school made up of thousands of people that devote their time to learning samba, rehearsing together, and designing their elaborate floats. They are typically associated with a specific neighborhood within the city. Seven places are chosen based on their percussion, harmony, flow and spirit, theme, floats, costumes, etc. The Champion parade started at 9:30pm on Saturday and lasted until 6am Sunday! We actually saw the sun coming up as we got home on Sunday to sleep. It poured down rain for the first couple of hours but we barely even cared with all of the excitement.

Words can't describe how amazing the parade was. Imagination was completely uninhibited and unrestrained. There were floats with a human Foosball table, a giant fountain, a racetrack with an actual moving car, a moving carousel with people riding roosters instead of horses, somebody got shot out of a cannon into a net, one float was a movie theatre with an enormous working television, another was decorated as a pinball machine, ballerinas and cirque du soleil performers balanced and danced at amazing heights, a woman levitated on top of a float, and the famous soccer player, Zico, stood atop a gigantic spinning crown. The people dressed up as birds, rubix cubes, animals, pirates, bugs, plants, nutcrackers, warriors, lego men, dolls, cartoon characters, storm troopers, and Woodys and Buzzs from Toy Story. During one school, there were people walking as they formed a live game of Pacman. Some things I can't even begin to describe what they were supposed to be! Overall, I would describe the parade as one of the most spectacularly beautiful and colorful things I've ever seen.