Carnival in Brazil

The first video montage I was motivated to work on is the one on the Carnival. So I will start by writing about our experience even if I am not following the chronological order of events. I well get back to our arrival in Brasil in the next post. Note that to see the montage you will need two ingredients: Quicktime and a bit of patience since the download can take a bit of time. The web site is still: http://bidule.micro.org. We were told that the best way to spend the Carnival is to go in small towns because the Carnivals in Rio and Salvador are too much for tourists. Is that true? I have no idea since we couldn’t be in three places at once. We where in Jacaré marina and Francis, one of the owners, was nice enough to choose what he thought were the four best events in the region and organized transport for all the interested navigators to get to them. So we spent two evenings in Joa Pesso, one afternoon in Olinda and the closing night in Recife. These events were definatly not made for tourists since we seemed to be the only ones around. They are two basic options in the Carnival: either they have music and danse on a stage or they have marching bands on the street that spectators follow while dancing. In the later version, the spectator usually follow one band for a while, then they stay on the sides to watch some of them go by, then they follow another band at their leisure. However, we didn’t find that what made the Carnival were the shows. The costumes are extravagant but the music and dancing or not spectacular. On the other hand, the spectators give quite a show. They all dress up and take their part very seriously. They sing, they danse, they party, they pose for the cameras and some of them even have little shows of their own. There is action everywhere. Of course every site is surronded by booths were you can buy food and drink. Good opportunity to try local cuisine and drink a few Schins or Skolls (local beer). As you will by the pictures, not the place to go to if one is affraid of crowds.