Carnival 2012

For those of you who are not familiar with it, Carnival is basically an enormous, week-long party. It officially occurs on the Friday-Tues proceeding Ash Wednesday (although festivities often begin up to a month earlier), and is celebrated in many Catholic countries, and with particular fervor in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, the height of the Carnival festivities is this absolutely fabulous parade of hundreds upon hundreds of samba dancers in incredibly elaborate costumes on enormous glittery floats, dancing to a percussion and brass band. 

One of the Carnaval parade floats

The parade is actually a competition between a number of different samba schools, all trying to outdo each other in glittery, whirling, booty-shaking, feathery, sequined splendor. In Rio, different samba schools perform every night for four nights in the Sambadrome, a giant stadium built for this express purpose. Watch some of the video below, and then imagine that continuing for 4 straight nights, 6 hours each time.

Unfortunately, the ticket prices were out of our budget so we didn't get to watch the parade from the Sambadrome firsthand, but we did catch quite a bit of it on TV, and we did get to see the floats up close. The floats are constructed on a main thoroughfare (closed to traffic during the holiday, of course) outside the Sambadrome, and on Sunday afternoon we went down to watch the floats being constructed. Here are some of our pictures of the floats up close:

Another great way that Carnival is celebrated in Rio is with blocos, a sort of street party. A group of people arrange a place and a time and pretty much throw a free public party. There is usually what I call a party truck, a huge double decker bus with a live brass and/or percussion band and enormous speakers, and a everyone in the neighborhood (or on the way to the beach or the supermarket) surrounds the truck and dances, sings, drinks, and has a generally good time. We went to a whole bunch of those. Staying in Copacabana made not finding a bloco every day much harder than the alternative.

Copacabana Bloco

Perhaps the largest party every night took place downtown (Centro), near the Arcos da Lapa. Lapa was packed to the gills with people partying- to the point of insanity. We visited once with some Brazilian friends we made coincidentally and while it was a lot of fun, it was a little intense for our group.

Partying at the Arcos da Lapa

There were also often free live concerts going on around the city, especially downtown and in Lapa area.  We went to an alternative/rock themed one downtown, where we enjoyed hearing green day played to samba drum beats, and listening to the lead singer mumble through most of the English lyrics of a whole bunch of famous songs. ("Can you hear, can you hear the thumbfer, yeah yeah!")

 o

Where's Waldo?

Concert at Centro

In many ways, Carnaval is sort of a mix between Purim, Halloween, and New Year's Eve, only hotter, with more sequins and Capirinhas. People wear all sorts of crazy costumes.

Some also had hilarious misspelled Hebrew tattoos, although we figured that might not be exclusively Carnaval related, so decided against pointing it out to our unfortunately tattooed friend here.

Some of them even dressed up their dogs.

One of the things I thought was most noticeable, and perhaps surprising about the festivities was that everyone took part in the party, including the very young, the very old, and even the disabled. Additionally, although there was quite a bit of drinking in the merrymaking (particularly in the younger crowds, like in Lapa), there were very few incidents of clear over-indulgence that I saw (or smelled) during or after the revelries. Compared to New York on New Years morning, the streets were positively vomit-free. Of course, we had already discovered that although the beer on tap (chopp) flows like water here, it mostly tastes of water too, so perhaps this contributed to it.

We also tried to go to the beach on one of the days of Carnaval. Bad idea - or very good idea, seeing how everyone else apparently had it too.

Those are people, not locust

All in all, had a rockin' good time. Getting on the bus to Florianopolis now, will post more later.

O, Rio!

Two things have become very clear to me since we arrived in Rio:
1) Carnaval absolutely lives up to its reputation as the largest party in the world
2) I really and truly do not speak Portuguese (and neither do Yishai and Aviva)

Those packs weigh 20 kg each

Rio de Janeiro is amazing. I can only assume that during other parts of the year people actually work here, but so far the impression I received is that the entire country is either partying or at the beach all the time. The locals are all unbelievably tan, and Aviva has wondered a few times if they ever do anything other than work out or work on their tan. I know that it is terrible to gloat, but at the moment I don't believe there is anything more wonderful than summer in February, after the cold miserable rainy and icy mess we left in New York only a week ago. It has been 80-95 degrees Fahrenheit (25-35 C for you metrics) and sunny every day so far.

We spent our first few days relaxing and acclimating, while becoming alternately incredibly frustrated and terribly proud of ourselves for completing everyday activities. Finding an ATM the first day took about an hour of wandering around until we finally found an HSBC and marked it on our map. (It turns out that most of the local banks will not accept foreign cards, including strangely enough Santander, while one of the few that will is the Banco do Brasil. Go figure.) At a trip to the grocery store we were stymied to discover that there was nothing that resembled milk in any of the refrigerators. When I tried asking an employee (using the three words I thought we might have in common- vaca, leite and refrigerado, and a complicated bunch of hand gestures) I was pointed towards the shelf of long-life milk, although he did show me which ones actually contain dairy. Apparently that's what they have here. The supermarket trip turned into a lovely (and economical) supper of bread and olive oil dip, cheese spread, olives, tomato salad and fruit.

Yum!

Another particularly memorable moment was at a restaurant one afternoon where we stopped to get lunch. Our waiter was unbelievably attentive. He wanted to remove the plates from the table to keep the food warm but we wouldn't let him. He insisted on serving us from the serving plate to our plates. We couldn't reach for another portion of rice without his hurrying over to serve us some. So you can only imagine my embarrassment when, in trying to express our gratitude and thanks for a delicious meal, I accidentally threw an offensive gesture his way. What we Americans recognize as the OK sign is in Brazil a very rude sign.

On the other hand, we were positively glowing with pride when we successfully navigated the bus system to get to the Corcovado (the hill with the enormous Christ the Redeemer statue) on our first day. The trip up to the Corcovado is made on a quaint little train that runs through some very lush greenery, and makes for a wonderful ride.

Tram ride up Corcovado

The statue itself was quite impressive and afforded some beautiful views of the city.

 And of course, we had to get the picture!

We also visited the Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) - via bus of course- just in time for a truly spectacular sunset. The Sugarloaf Mountain is two peaks jutting out over the water, visible from almost anywhere in southern Rio, which are accessible via two cable car rides.

Riding up

Sugarloaf cable car

The view from the top

While looking over this stunning panorama with the sun just sinking over the horizon I overhear the guy next to me say, in a thick Canadian accent, "Well, I guess this could give Vancouver a run for its money, eh?". I suppose that's one way of putting it.

Giving Vancouver a run for its money

Carnaval is out of this world, but unfortunately that will need to be next post, since it is way past my bedtime. I would love to hear some feedback, so leave a comment! Good night, Rio!!

The Grand Canyon

I know it's been a while, but we were in the Grand Canyon. And that really deserves a post.

There is just no other way to put it. The Grand Canyon is simply breathtaking. Even after seeing countless pictures, postcards, and videos, there's nothing quite like the feeling you get when standing on the edge of this spectacular precipice.

Ever So Grand

Yishai and I decided to try a moderate hiking trail which we could complete in a few hours, since we started the morning off in Flagstaff (1 1/2 hrs south of the South Rim), and planned on finishing up in Phoenix (about 4 1/2 hrs south of the South Rim).  We chose the Bright Angel Trail, and prudently heeded the warnings posted everywhere in the park to leave twice as much time coming up as going down. Since we only started at about 11:45 AM, we figured we would need to turn around by around 1:30 to reach the rim at around 5. All in all, by the end of the day, Yishai had driven 340 miles- and had completed a challenging 5 hour hike to boot!

Starting the trail

So we set off skipping (and slipping) down the slope. It was really cold (around 40 F) and there were a few inches of ice and snow on the ground the whole way down. On the way down we met many travelers on their way up, leading us to the conclusion that 1) we were the only hikers lazy enough to enter the canyon so late in the day, and 2) we really really should have brought cramp-ons and walking sticks. The incline combined with the icy trail made the descent quite unnerving, but luckily we made it down to the 3 mile rest stop with no incidents. 

Icy trails are nasty

Lunch was water, tuna fish, Chex trail mix and Trader Joe's trail mix. Clearly, I find it hard to resist the idea of trail mix on trails (hey, it's in the name!). Now it was time to turn around, and head back up.

I had scoffed repeatedly at all the large signs posted around the park to allot enough time to climb out of the canyon, not to attempt to climb down and up the trail in one day, and how climbing up would be harder than climbing down. I figured you had to be really dumb not to realize these things, and honestly, the way down hadn't seemed so hard. We made it in pretty good time, and I was barely out of breath. All in all, I was feeling pretty impressed with myself. 

Boy, did that change fast. The way up was like (what I imagine) trying to run a marathon with a small chimp strapped to your chest would feel like. Almost immediately after starting to climb I was out of breath. And I mean immediately. I may have taken 15 steps, but I that's probably a generous estimate. Of course it didn't help that we were 3 miles in, trying to climb back to an altitude of roughly 9,000 feet when I'd been living at sea level in NY for the past year and a half. 

Thinking I'll probably never make it to the top

So tired I can't keep my eyes open

We stopped to rest and take a drink probably every 7 minutes. We did finally reach the top, where we had an extremely disappointing lupper at the Bright Angel Lodge. I had the roasted red pepper soup which was a seriously nasty consistency, and the cheese lasagna tried hard to out-do it. Then it was back into the car, and finally back to the sunny end of Arizona.

After a very, very, very long drive, we made it to Tempe, where we may or may not have gone out with a certain unnamed cousin, and it may or may not have been lots of fun, but nothing can be proven.

The following day (Wednesday) was spent with Aunt Amy and Uncle Jay and the family, with delicious healthy food, a visit to Phoenix's fabulous Musical Instrument Museum, and a viewing of the Motorcycle Diaries.