Just woke up after getting home at 7am - the parade in the Sambadrome went all night. I´ve never seen such costumes and so many people dancing in the parade. There were 6 samba schools and each one had literally thousands and thousands of people in the most amazing costumes and floats. Each school had 1 hour 20 min to perform, so they just kept coming! It was amazing - I don´t think the pics do it justice, but here they are!
Belinda and I had cause to really celebrate during the show - we had a near death experience on the way to the parade. We got a cab and got dropped off at one of the walkways - during the rest of the year the Sambadrome is just your basic street - with the grandstands kind of atop buildings. The street is 800m long and when the school is performing they take up the whole stretch (that´s a lot of people dancig at once, like I said!!). So, you have to kind of go up and over to get to where you need to be. And, we got caught in a crush on this footbridge. It was two people wide, had about 5000 people on it, and we couldn´t even breathe. Couldn´t go back, couldn´t go forward, were 30m off the ground (and a stenchful channel of sewerage) and the whole thing started to rock and sway and I was thinking jump or wait for it to collapse? aim for the concrete or the sewerage? People were lifting little kids up over their heads to get them out of the crush and I was worried that they´d drop them. Kids were screaming, Belinda and I were the only white people and some black dude picked a fight with some other black dude and things got nasty - we just clung to each other and tried to push our way through, and I was praying to a God that I don´t even believe exists. We were stuck there for an hour - like that. It was not an experience I want to repeat. We shotgunned a can of beer each the minute we could and held hands all the way to our seats as soon as we were down from the bridge. Mother of God. Not fun. I cannot believe I came out the experience with - my camera, my money (in full!), my ticket to the show and my own person completely intact. Neither can Belinda - it was a great opportunity for some robbery! Nice things happened though - we got separated and a nice lady behind me grabbed my hand and grabbed Belinda´s hand behind her and brought us together.... Love how underdeveloped countries stage the world´s biggest events with not much organisation....
The guys from Perth were complaining about waiting for a cab home - compared to Christmas in Melbourne (and our bridge ordeal) that part of the evening was a breeze!!
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