Rio de Janeiro - more than just carnival

Inside the Sambodrome

huge floats

Street carnival!


view from inside a favela

beautiful girl from favela

Copacabana Beach

Christo, the Redeemer looking over Rio

View from Christo over sugarloaf in the clouds


They call Rio de Janeiro the "cidade maravillosa" (marvellous city) and I can see why. It is a beautiful city, although many people have the impression it is very dangerous and you can´t walk the streets at night. Don´t believe what they hype up in the news! From our experience, the city is safer during carnival because there are always people on the street, even late at night. We took the tube (which is open 24hrs during carnival) and several buses and also walked a lot. Never had any problems, people were just in a party mood and generally all very smiley and helpful. Of course like in any big city, one has to take care and not flash the camera and lots of money around in the wrong places.

We even visited one of the oh-so dangerous favelas (with a guide, however) and were surprised that the image we had of a favela was completely shattered. Not everyone walks around with a gun (!), and not as soon as you walk in they are gonna rob you or sell you drugs. Only 5% of the people there are drug dealers and have guns. People who live in favelas are very poor but they are also clever and for example benefit from free internet access and electricity by zapping into the city´s cables. This is of course not legal but the government tolerates it. Favela basically means people building houses wherever they want without any authority and then building more houses on top of each other. The further down the hill you go, the worse the conditions get. A lot of rubbish around and a strong smell of sewage confirms that they do not have the basic amenities you would expect.
But they have schools there and some companies are trying to invest in community centres for the favelas. Apparently some of the money we paid for the tour goes towards supporting the community (I hope at least).

But then there´s the other side of Rio: beautiful (and not so beautiful) people on the many beaches, partying, carnival costumes and street parades, hot and sweaty bodies everywhere drinking beer and enjoying themselves, music on every street corner.

We went to the Sambodrome to see the official samba school´s parades which went on from 8pm til 5am.It was definitely worth seeing,even if the show was a bit long. It took 1.5 hours per samba school to walk from one end of the stadium to the other (it is massive!), so you can imagine how many people participated in the parade.

It was a great experience and would recommend to see Carnival in Rio at least once in your life.

more photos to follow soon!