We are about to leave Rio de Janeiro—the home of Carnaval. Before we went to the Carnaval festivities though…we visited both Sugar Loaf mountain and Corcovado mountain. We got to Sugar Loaf by means of a cable car that went almost straight up the mountainside.

When we got to Sugar Loaf we could look over most of the city and its beaches. Some of the beaches were empty because the water was polluted by the oil of the boats anchored nearby. The other beaches were packed—including Copacabana beach.

   

To get to Corcovado mountain which is opposite Sugar Loaf, we took a 20 minute open air train ride up the side of the mountain. Corcovado mountain has the iconic Christ the Redeemer monument that overlooks the city. 

We could make our way (kind of) around Sugar Loaf Mountain, and get some spectacular views of the city.  But Corcovado mountain was teeming with people and it was impossible to get around. (After all, this is the height of the tourist season.) Not to mention that some not insignificant portion of the tourists / visitors acted like Instagram “influencers”. And it seemed like they all had selfie sticks. 

Anyway, then it was on to the culmination of the  Carnaval competition in the Sambadrome. The various Samba schools apparently spend all year making floats and practicing for this annual competition. 

Carnaval lasts for  about 4 days. The “unofficial” block parties start pretty much every night around 10:00 PM and lasted until 7:00 AM the following morning. And it seemed that everyone in the city got dressed up—or perhaps undressed—for the occasion. 

We left for the Sambadrome the final night and got there around 9:00 PM, where we had seats in a VIP section that was stocked with food and booze. It was like a sky box at a baseball game or the Super Bowl. And it had additional places at ground level, where most of the Crystal crowd stayed. 

The competition began around 10:00 PM and the sound of the bass and drums was deafening. Each group of competitors (there were 3 that night) had 80 minutes to perform their routines. We, along with about a third of the Crystal crowd watched the first group and then left around midnight. But we know some people who stayed until 4:00 in the morning and didn’t get back to the ship until 5:00 AM. 

I couldn’t help but think that the Carnaval participants would be way better off spending more time taking geometry classes and less time building floats, but such is life. Anyway we will have a few more days in Brazil and then we will cross the Atlantic, headed for Europe. 

JFB