My heart is breaking 03.08.11

My heart is breaking as I leave beautiful Rio. Will I ever see it again? As my departing bus rolls through the outskirts to the city, I see Sugarloaf Mountain perfectly framed by two lower mountains, watching over the beautiful city and her Carioca. I see Christo Redemptor with his arms outstretched, finally visible through the fog, blessing Rio and her Carioca. The ocean is grey and the skies have stripes of violet blue. The sun is reflected off the high clouds shining a silver light in the sky. The mountains, azure and green and verdant, protect and cradle the white city. Beautiful Rio.

My last four days in Rio will go down as one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Once you connect to the heart of a city, something in you changes. I remember feeling that the first time I visited San Francisco. We drove into the city through the Golden Gate and I remember seeing the city like a pearl in the sunlight and something in my heart sang. I knew then that I would live there, and I did.

Rio during Carnaval isn’t just Rio and the Carioca (natives of Rio), Rio during Carnaval is a representation of the energy of the people of Brazil. People come from all around the country to Rio to celebrate this holiday -- and celebrate it thoroughly. Blocas, or block parties that represent certain areas of each major neighborhood, happen in the week s leading up to the climax of Carnaval, as well as in the weeks following. In reality, Carnaval isn’t a week long affair, but a month-long celebration of the national energy, brother and sisterhood, and pride in Brazil and her culture.

When I try and think of where to start in describing my adventures, I have a hard time knowing where to begin , so for lack of a better idea, I’ll describe it chronologically, which is like a good thing as it might capture the flow of energy of Carnaval – each day building more on the last so that the energy climbs to an ecstatic pitch. Keep in mind I was only there for four days, so my description of the energy will be sorely incomplete as Carnaval (as I mentioned) is a month-long affair.

Friday, I arrived at my hostel. A sad and sorry place in the neighborhood of Catete (pronounced Cah-taych), grungy and dull. You could practically hear the bedbugs as they fluffed their nests in the mattresses. I shared a dorm with Natalie and Kaileigh, who were from Orange County and young and fresh and pretty and… you know, from Orange County. I settled in to my tiny, cramped dorm and set out to discover Ipanema, the neighborhood made famous by the song, “The Girl from Ipanema” which I now find to be completely accurate.

Ipanema is a bustling neighborhood with many shops along the main street and many cafes and bars along the side streets. I headed down to the beach to watch hundreds of hard bodies glistening in the sun. Ipanema beach is a very long stretch of sand that defines the borders of the neighborhood. Considering how many beautiful, scantily-clad people were there, it was surprisingly free of garbage. I think that can be attributed to the favelas (a name for the service class in Rio who live in shantytowns in the outskirts of the city and who are a considered a service class in the city) who regularly comb the beach in search of empty beer and soda cans and bottles that they can recycle for money.

I sat on the beach for a while just observing the whole scene. I imagined being in Southern California on muscle beach – it seemed very similar in that people were there to see and be seen. Not my scene, but pretty fun to look at. And yes, women do wear those bikini bottom bum flossers, regardless of size or shape or weight!

After a couple of hours there and as dusk set in, I found a lovely side-street restaurant and ordered my first caipirhinia in country while planning my travel route through Brazil. About three sips into my sugary-tart refreshment and I was feeling pretty fine… that cachaca is crazy strong! I planned my travel route through Brazil (at least for the time being) and also took a look at what nightlife might be worth checking out over the weekend. I decided that tonight, after Ipanema, I would head to Beco do Rato, a highly recommended live samba music club in the Lapa neighborhood. I had some time to burn before that club opened so I ventured into the streets of Ipanema. And that’s where the magic of the next four days started. People were out in the streets, in groups with their friends, sitting at open air cafes and bars drinking chopp (beer), laughing, talking, and dancing to music emanating from some of the bars. On certain streets, there were large crowds of people who simply took over the block, even though some cars tried to make their way through, here and there.

And then, drifting on the night air, I heard a bass drum. I traveled toward the sounds, which grew louder and fuller, and arrived to find a thousand people following a neighborhood samba parade comprised of about three head dancers, 50 drummers/percussionists of various types, and a truck with a large stage mounted on top of it with a group of 10 singers and their entourage balanced on top of that. The sound system projected the deep, gravely, hearty voices of the samba singers and the drums spoke for themselves, loud and clear. Two ropes reaching out from each side of the front bumper of the truck plus ten people guiding each rope created a cone-like space that surround the drummers and dancers so they wouldn’t get swallowed by the crowd. The samba beat and tune shouted out the philosophy of the neighborhood that it represented – it sang out to the night air and the people amassed around the truck, drummers, and dancers. The energy was so high! Everyone, these thousand people, were smiling and singing and dancing, celebrating the joy of Carnaval, celebrating the joy of being alive. As the impromptu parade traveled along the street, it picked up more people and dropped off others, and the energy kept coming on.

If you know me, you have to know that I jumped in immediately and danced with the parade for blocks and blocks. I didn’t want to let go. People turned to me, smiling and singing to me, a complete stranger. It was so full of love and magic, writing it even now makes me break out into a huge smile… I’m feeling so grateful for the experience.

After about an hour or so, I realized that it was getting later and it was time to head to Lapa and check out Beco do Rato.

I caught a cab in the rain and was dropped at a little side street, a pedestrian only street in what looked a little bit of a seedy part of town. Seedy, in this case, was a perfect indicator of exactly the kind of samba club where I should be. I paid my pittance of a cover charge and entered a small, packed, and broghtly lit beer hall where tables of people had buckets of ice cold beer, sweating in the warm night. The next small area was open-air and drenched from the rains. And beyond that, in the heart of the club, there was a space that was packed with people dancing to a live samba band on a tiny stage. So many kinds of people were there, back, white, mulatto, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. All just bumping to the samba beat. I got a beer and joined in, letting the energy flow through me and giving all my energy in return. There’s something about Samba music that is so joyful and celebratory, I can’t really describe it. A rolling beat, fast and full of life! I danced and watched people dancing – watched girls and their boys kissing to the samba beat – everyone just moving and bumping and there. Not thinking about work or their bills or their troubles. Just totally being there in the experience… in the moment.

As much as I wanted to stay late, I knew the next couple of days would also be big ones, so I grabbed a cab back to my little hostel and called in an early night – at 2:00am.

I slept the next day until 10am and then headed out to the rodoviaria (main bus station) to purchase my bus ticket to Saquerema, my next destination after Rio. Now, the not so great thing about being in Rio during Carnaval is that there are so many people and so many blocos that it can take much longer than normal to get around the city via public transportation. The buses are constantly delayed as they try and drive through main streets that have parades happening on them or that have a massive spillage of partiers from the blocos onto the main streets. And the public transportation is jam-packed with people – sweaty bodies, small hordes of guys in their teens or 20s, drunk and pounding on the bus ceiling while jumping up and down, shouting samba school songs. Combine that with my general lack of knowledge about the bus routes, and you have my Saturday, which was spent mostly riding the bus around the city trying to get from one place to another. But, the great thing about this was that I got to have a bus tour of the city! And I had the chance to experience Carnaval culture! On my magical mystery bus tour, I traveled through many neighborhoods, but one neighborhood in particular was quite, but really not much mentioned in my guidebook – Jardim Botanica (Botanical Garden).

After finally getting to the bus station and buying my ticket to Saquarema (a whopping US$9), I decided to forgo going back to Catete and instead, disembark at Jardim Botanica. There was a massive bloco there with a truck and band on top. I joined in the throng for a bit, then tried to break my way out of it to get to other parts of this beautiful neighborhood so I could do some exploring. I succeeded just a bit, enough to stop at a very nice café to have a piece of quiche and a salad, but I found that trying to fight my way through the crowded streets and the long bus trip had burned me out a bit, so I decided to try and come back to this lovely tree-lined neighborhood, filled with tree-lined streets, charm, and grace anther time (though not after meeting a nice group of Cariocas who wanted me to come along with them to their next party!). Sadly, I never made it back to Jardim Botanica before my departure from Rio, but I’ve decided I’ll table that visit for the next time I visit Rio.

Saturday night I decided to head to Copacabana since my Carnaval guide showed there were about 10 different blocos happening there during the day. I thought this was a good indicator that the evening would be equally lively there. I headed out and walked around Copa for an hour or more and couldn’t find any parties, just people drinking in bars. Enh! After a quick bout with disappointment, I let it go and decided to head back to Ipanema to try my luck there since the previous night was so fantastic. And OMG, it was going off! The area around the metro station was absolutely spilling over with people – packs of what looked like 12-year old boys clustered around the one boy in their group who dispensed vodka from their shared bottle, shirtless guys and scantily-clad women smiling and laughing. And then came the rain! It started pelting down and while some people headed for what cover they could find, many stayed out in the downpour and just kept partying and dancing, raising their faces and hands to the sky. I ducked under a tree a put up my umbrella and immediately, one of the clusters of 12-year old boys ran under the cover of my umbrella. All of them then tried, in their own drunken states, to pick me up. OK, being over the 40 year mark, it was pretty entertaining to watch these little guys try it. “Where you from? You are bee-oo-tee-ful! How old are you?” Four minutes of the same lines repeated over and over from this cluster of wee ones shouting vodka fumes in my face and staggering into me and I was done. I made my fast escape to the sad exclamations from the boys and decided that my next destination was home to Catete. The long bus trip, the Jardim Botanica bloco, Copa, Ipanema… I was tired and was ready to call it. But how to get home? The bus would be a nightmare and I knew a taxi ride home would be spendy. I wandered around, I’m sure looking like a lost, wet little sheep in the rain, asking passers-by if they spoke any English so I might enlist help in getting some information to get back to Catete. Enter Andre and Charlie. Andre knew some English and after the initial questions, my name, where I’m from, where I’m trying to go -- they convinced me that we needed to go to Lapa and have a beer. Onwards via the metro!

Everyone seemed to be trying to get somewhere so there was actually a massive line to even get inside the metro station. We joined the crush of people and finally made it to the metro to arrive at the Lapa station. Lapa was insane! As I tell these stories of Carnaval, each story seems more outrageous and more intense than the last. And that’s exactly how it was. Lapa was one massive bloco covering six or seven large square blocks. Maybe ten thousand people were coming in and out of the neighborhood where there were countless live samba clubs, all packed and spilling out into the streets and all going off. Partiers had taken over the streets completely!

We made our way to the Boomerang Club, where we met their friend Sabrina. The narrow club had four floors that opened to the tiny center stage where the band played and the dance floor. The area above the band was covered in fishing net so no beer bottles or debris could hit the band as they whipped the crowd into a Samba frenzy. People were singing, dancing, hopping up and down, kissing each other on each cheek (the Brazilian way); couples were kissing and dancing the samba seductively, it was going off!

Shouting above the band, I learned that Sabrina has a daughter, who she just took to Machu Picchu. Andre and Charlie work as security officers in a bank as they make their way through school studying business administration. But none of it really mattered all that much. We were all here to play and be alive, to live beyond our daily lives outside of this night.

At about 3am, they helped me find a cab (buses and the metro were just not an option at this point), and I made it back to Catete to fall into bed. I was still so wound up from the night it took me a good hour to relax and finally fall asleep. Another incredible night in Rio!

Sunday day was spent sleeping with a long attempt to take the bus into Ipanema to do some shopping. Not happening! The crush of people throughout the bus route made traffic come to griniding halts. Every ten minutes, we might move forward a few feet. I hopped off the bus to be swallowed by the crowd. I inched toward the grocery store in who-knows-what neighborhood and joined the throngs in line at the store who were buying racks and racks of beer, Smirnov Ice (which is huge here in Brazil), bottles of vodka, and red bulls (also huge here). I think I might have been the only person in any line who was buying food! After a long wait in two different chaotic “lines”, I paid and made my way back out into the crush. Somehow, I got back to Catete, just in time to get ready for my big night at the Sambodromo where the massive Carnaval parade for this particular night would happen.

Earlier in the day, before my dorm mates from the O.C. headed out, I asked them how the Sambodromo Carnaval parade was the night before, Saturday night (I heard them come in at about 5am). Both of them, normally pretty blasé and unimpressed though sweet, lit up like stars, their faces shined and huge smiles gave way to stuttering about how amazing it was.

As I got prepped for my Carnaval parade experience, I had butterflies flitting around in my belly. I had learned that the parade is none hours long, from 9pm until 6am! So I filled my pack with diet coke (to keep me awake!), some food, and water. I suited up in my makeshift costume – kitten ears, a tail, a bowtie and cat eyes and whiskers and started my adventure.

Oh, I bet you’d like to know what the Sambodromo is? In years past, the Carnaval parades, which are tremendously large and happen over the course of four nights within one full week, would take place on the streets of Rio. But ultimately, the city realized that this as an unsustainable model and commissioned an architect to build a type of stadium that was specifically configured and used only for the Carnaval parades – called the Sambodromo. I can’t help but translate this to the “Sambadrome” like something out of a Mad Max movie. And really, that’s what it is. A colossal space for the different Samba schools to bring it and kick the competition’s ass to become the ruling Samba school of Brazil – a tremendous win and a tremendous honor.

I disembarked from the metro and began to weave my way toward the Sambodromo. I guess that maybe one square mile surreounding the Sambodromo was covered with makeshift stalls selling drinks, food, t-shirts, postcards, and other, mass-produced tourist handicrafts. Again, words can’t describe the scale of this set up.

People were everywhere, flowing through the streets and as I started to approach the Sambodromo, I saw the Samba school dancers and drummers with their ornate costumes, wandering toward their staging areas. And then I saw some of the floats! Now, as much as I don’t want to, I can’t escape comparing our best floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parades to these. And the Macy’s floats are sad and sorry little things. The few Carnaval floats that I saw in the staging area were master works of art! Beautiful color schemes, massive, amazing sculptures of mermaids and fish, decorative gems encrusting the structures, running fountains...

I made my way through the turnstiles and through the “official” vendors ringing the stadium, past the throngs of people jockeying for space to watch the Carnaval, and found a space for myself that gave me a great view of the parade runway. Everyone’s energy was high – full of expectation and excitement. Guys carrying full storage crates full of ice and beer and soda climbed up and down the steps shouting “Cocacola! Cervezha!” then would squeeze through the rows of seats to sell a lucky person their drinks.

The Sambodromo is massive, constructed like a stadium, except that in place of the field there is a large runway that extends about four hundred yards long and 50 years wide and the seating is aligned against that on either side.

A rush came over the crowd, the parade was starting! First came the parade judges (I surmise) – the glitterati from around Brazil -- then lines small groups of various people who might have been security or just honored guests of the parade? Then another line of officials of some kind who represented the oncoming Samba school. Then... the music, the beat, and the first dancer! She looked about six feet tall in her platform glitter boots. Flambouyant and brilliant in a white sequined-encrusted bikini, a huge feather wing sculpture extended from her back, dazzling the crowd and announcing her school by prancing to and fro across the runway… dancing, beaming a smile so wide that everyone, even in the highest seats, could feel her radiance! The Samba school anthem rang out in the sultry night, people cheered and leapt to their feet to begin their dance -- singing along with the anthem. Outrageously ornate floats and troupes of dancers, each in their own ornately designed costumes moved to the samba beat and then spun wildly – all singing the philosophy of their samba school with ecstatic pride. A riot of colors, strobes, lights, textures, energies took the Sambodromo with force and passion; shining through the crowd and beyond to infuse heads, hearts, and souls.

After watching the parade for about 60 minutes – with legions of dancers and drummers and countless floats – I realized that this was just one samba school. There was still another 20 minutes for this samba school to show what it had, and it would be followed by another five samba schools, each with 80 minutes of its own song, legions of dancers, and countless floats!

My brain and body kicked into overdrive as this thought hit my brain – I wanted to surrender to the experience and drop my self so that I could just swim around in th, joy, celebration, pride, and energy.

I danced nonstop through every samba school. Only one other girl sitting in front of me could keep up (she outlasted me, actually!). But I felt unstoppable, just riding the waves of incredible energy. Even though none spoke English, I made friends with the people sitting around me. How could I not? A monumental collection of people all riding various ecstatic waves has a tendency to break down language barriers.

Beyond my description, the only thing that can possible describe the experience are my pictures. But ley me just describe one point of the parade that helps capture the incredible innovation and creativity that these schools put into their presentations. Typically, each school has a lead dancer of the kind that I described earlier – tall, sequined, flambouyant, gorgeous. That’s then followd by a lead float that expresses the overarching thme that the school is taking in their presentation – it could e something as grandiose as advances in medicine fom the dawn of time to something as simple as “hair.” This particular theme was about fear and how movies show us fear to amaze and excite us. The lead flost was soothing that, when I think of it, it still boggles my mind. It was quite simple really, in comparison to the other lead floats from others schools. It was a black float, square only, and with no sculptures or strobe lights or glitter. At the top of the black float was a stage with a small movie curtain toward the back. Out sprang a movie usher dressed in red – he was rushing being chased by what followed: 16 frightening figured, dressed in black cloaks with white ghost faces. The dance was really cleverly choreographed and perfectly executed, which is saying something considering the competition, which was fierce. But the amazing part was the magic that followed. At certain points in the dance, the ghost-faced ghouls removed their heads from their bodies in a perfectly executed move, which they repeated over and over. Now you might say, “Well, their costumes were just pulled up over their heads, like a bad headless horseman costume.” But no. Not only did it not look like that at all, but these heads had just one second before been singing the samba school anthem, not mechanically but slightly different from their other ghouls and like the slight imperfection that comes with being human. It was astounding and the crowd completely lost it! Anyone left sitting jumped to their feet and you could hear the crowd collectively drop their jaws in amazement and exclaim, “AHHHHHHH!” As the dance continued, not only did the ghouls drop their heads in tandem but then they removed their whole upper bodies from their lower bodies, their head still singing the samba school anthem! It was totally astounding and again, the crowd completely went wild, screaming and cheering and clapping. It really was magic! That’s just a small taste of only one float of countless that showcased the creative forces behind making the samba parades so stunning.

But I invite you to do a google image search on Rio Carnaval – you’ll get a little taste of the crazy beautiful, utterly delicious feast that was Carnaval.

After two days of staying out late and this night of dancing until my feet ached, I hit a wall at 4am, just before the last Samba school was going to hit the Sambodromo. With a sad but full heart, I tore myself away and headed home to Catete. Again, couldn’t sleep because my energy was so high, but managed to drop off at about 6am.

It was all too beautiful!

I think that, when I remember that night – and the other nights of Carnval – I’ll remember the total joy, the pure connection, of feeling part of something bigger than just my small self, of the beauty of what it means to be alive.