LATIN AMERICA RIO CARNIVAL DESTINATIONS


colours Flying


Laura French heads to Brazil to experience ‘the greatest party on Earth’, aka Rio Carnival


@laurafrench121 T


he samba beat thumps, reverberating through


the stadium as the audience bops and bounces along, feet stamping, feathers waving, hands clapping. It’s hot, humid and deafeningly loud, but the atmosphere is electric: a sea of faces filling the 90,000-capacity Sambadrome that was built for this very purpose. I’m here on a carnival


package with Tucan Travel, and we’re about to watch Rio’s most-anticipated event of the year: Sunday night’s parades, when six of the city’s elite samba schools compete to be crowned champion. Soon the 700-metre runway


is a rainbow of colour, split into blocks of gold, green, silver, pink and blue, made up of twirling samba dancers in glittering costumes and extravagant floats the size of double-decker buses. Giant gold dragons, Cinderella- like carriages, a huge pink-and- gold Buddha and a turreted


castle are among the creations that snake their way through the first 90-minute parade, as feather-bedecked dancers dangle out the sides, foot movements so rapid my eyes can’t keep up. Afterwards the second school begins, then the third, then the fourth, and so it goes on for the following seven-plus hours – energy, sparkle and noise ramping up with each procession – until the festivities finally tail off at around 6am. At that point the remaining stragglers go out to enjoy an after-party. Welcome to Rio Carnival.


w CARNIVAL BALLS I may have been in Rio for only three days, but by this stage I’ve already got used to these rather extraordinary scenes. The previous night I’d found myself at the Belmond Copacabana Palace Ball, the most exclusive carnival event in Brazil, where more than a thousand South American celebrities, politicians and socialites gather to


26 April 2018 travelweekly.co.uk 61


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