2007-03-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

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Soo, after this adventure in bonito, I immediately head out for the carnaval, for which I already am late... Because of this damn carnaval, I will skip the gorgeous foz de iguazu (iguazu waterfalls), and then return for them later on...

Oh this damn carnavallll... You will see =)... This is Umut, I am in Brazil, my fiesta country....

The first picture is for my father, me on the way to the carnaval... And after that we can start with the real deal =)... I start from Florianopolis in the day before carnaval, because it is also known for its beautiful carnavals in Brazil, it is one of the safest cities in brazil and it is gorgeous, and it is known for having the most beautiful girls in brazil =).. And it is also in the southmost of my brazil plan, because of which it is convenient to visit it first, but obviously this is only secondary reason =P...

And now some more pictures.. For the questions,, no I am not pinching her ass in the first picture, they are from argentina, no I dont remember their names, and no for all the other questions =).. In the last picture you can see some band action with these giant puppets.. And no I have no clue about what it signifies... Ok Please remember that before asking any questions, those pictures are all from the carnaval which technically means that I am to the hell drunk in all those pictures =))...

Comments for the other pictures... Party going on in the middle of the street with a walking speaker army, a cool guy in the middle of walking crowd, and the crowd without the cool guy =)...
And now the story not for my ma,, but it is OK anyway to tell this story now as the carnaval is over already=)... I know this will again fire her wild imagination about what is going on in brazil, but not everything is like how she imagines, what can I say... The story is necessary for development of the blog, because I need to explain why I left florianopolis after one day in the beaches and the carnaval. First reason the carnaval was not that much crazy as I expected. ( what do you expect, even though I am past my first quarter century, I am still a delikanli spirit inside =).. The second reason is about the action in florianopolis.. The first day I am there within the crowd, probably more or less around 50000 people jumping around, suddenly I hear some fire sound, and I say, maaaan this is cool they have fireworks here!!! =).. Suddenly everybody around me starts running around like crazy, and I just turn back to see the real fireworks in brazil.. I see some black kid running like crazy in the middle with a gun in his hand towards some other direction 5m. away from me, and the gun is shooting off, I can see the reds firing away from the gun towards someone, this is the first time in my life where I didnt feel like the photojournalist to take the pictures =)... I immediately start running to save my ass ,, and it is not a problem, since the guy is probably running after someone who already he had in mind.. Anyways, I return back, and I see the other guy, lying down there with newspapers on top of him and blood coming out of his body... Anyways,, the lesson is, maybe florianopolis is not as safe as I assumed... The same day there is another shooting there... And I say thats it, I don´t care how unsafe rio is... How unsafe can it be? I am going there to the hell of fun....
Another detail which will come back, I meet some israeli girls, and they introduce me to an italian and another japanese kid, i dont care that much... There are girls here and we are in the carnaval, why should I care???

And now we are headed for the carnaval, due to my arrogance I spent 20 hours in the autobus, effectively spending the first day of the carnaval in the autobus and arrived to rio in the second day of the carnaval without any reservations at all!!!!!!! =)
The first night we decide to spend in sambodrome, which is the famous place for its carnaval fiesta with samba schools making passes in front of the huge audience. The first picture is from that day, where the cars to pass in front of the crowd are prepared and parked. The second picture...
Meet Dario, the coolest italian I met in my trip so far... He is a philosopher, he used to hang out with a japanese kid... Yes he is the guy that the israeli girls made me meet... And apparently he was in the exact same bus with me going to the rio.. Talking to him, I realize that he is even cooler than his looks, he has been travelling for 8 months by now, he did the extended version of my trip doing all the meso-america countries as well as colombia, argentina and chile.. And even the cooler part, he bought a car in Mexico, and he drew from Mexico until Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he actually shipped the car back to mexico... He has this philosophical perspective which I personally agree in most of the topics he is talking about, similar views, similar hospitality and openness to new ideas. He tells me about his trip with his car, and how it effects the people he meets and how far he gets to know them, other details about the people he met with.. It costed him much more than it would cost him to go by bus, and much more time too, but he was able to have a much more different view than we had. I personally admire his courage, and knowing that the italians are not much more different than turkish i know that he is one of the rare italian people that travels like this. I am curious how he funded his trip, apparently he had an accident and he broke his leg in a car, and the insurance company paid him a good deal of money, and our philosopher decided to spend it travelling in south america.. I really enjoyed his company a lot, and he has the same blood with me with some more self judgement than I do. I know we will meet with him again after rio, and I hope I will meet him again after brazil too..

Anyways, back to our carnaval... We start with the fireworks (and after those pictures, I learned that my camera actually has a mood for fireworks =P )

Yes maaaaannn, this place is crazy... I listen to this crazy italian and just by the tickets for the cheapest place for 20 Reais knowing that at the worst case we will buy other tickets the other day... And apparently it doesnt matter. The whole group is far away enough and we are rarely able to see their feet anyways, and the main part is the spirit of the carnaval itself.. And in our seats there are much more brazilians than the other seats, this makes it much cooler with much more people making samba... We watch passing of samba nonstop from 10pm up to 5 am in the morning...!!!!!!! There are 5 samba schools that make a pass in 1 day... They start from one end of this sambodrome (huge structure which is long through one side of it in a rectangular shape with seatings on both sides) end walk until the other end.. A school should finish a walk in 80 minutes. So this means that for 80 minutes these guys will be walking!!!! After this walk each samba school is rated based on their walks, and after that there is a league, and the champion of the year and who will fall down the league etc. are decided!!!!!! Brazilians are as tough as they are on football on samba schools as well, there are all kinds of fanatics. The last years champion was Villa Isabel, it joined this year to the sambodrome with 8000 participants!!!!! This is simply a crazy amount of work going on there, and all of those people are getting prepared for this carnaval walk which lasts 80 minutes for more than a year!!!!!! (the worse schools allow tourists to get prepared for 1-2 months and then go ahead, but the better schools require better training!!)... My personal favorite was Viradorou from the group, which got good results, mangueira was the last years favorite who failed to become the champion.. Unfortunately this years champion Beija Flor, was not in my day for the sambodrome it was the day after, but who cares, everything I have seen already was more than perfect for me... These people are only just evaluating about the very professional itty bitty details as everything else is already perfect.

And now more details, the girl is swiss and no for every other questions... We start with another samba school whose name I can not remember right now =). The main philosophy in the samba schools is this, each samba school has a song for that year that is distributed to all the people in the audience, the samba school students dance and pass through the main gate while singing those songs with the tens of thousands of audience singing with them. For example one of the samba schools had an evolution theme, so there was a lot of monkeys jumping around, passages from reptiles, and etc. The same school also had some batman and superman stuff to if I remember it correctly.. (Maan I really can not remember a lot from those good old drunk days =). The pictures again speak for themselves here, I will only put some comments on if I feel like there is something I know better for any reason, or if I feel like making a bad joke you will have to read=)

And finally the carnaval starts with its all glory...

Yeah, I only have a vague (if not none) memory of those pictures =)

Of course the carnaval would never be the carnaval without the girls... Soo we hang out with the locals for the culture=)...

Sorry but I have no clue what the song was, soo I guess you can also eat your brains out to understand what that is....

Long live the titans... And as you can see, brazilians are creative!!!!

Zeus stuff =)

An examplary closer look... Me and dario giving cool poses as usual... And some indian air around..

The last two are one of my favorite passages, though it is sort of interesting to link chess with starwars... Anyways I didnt sense any distruption in the force though... Lesson,, Dont play with the force when you are drunk....

Some Jordan action. The queen of the samba school passing by. Me getting more and more drunk =)..

Theme of evolution with darwin, reptiles and much more similar stuff..

Yeah,, and the quick change from evolution to cyborgs and batman =). In the second picture, please notice that the crowd is reduced.. Because it is probably around 4:30 am and we have been watching this since 10 pm!!!!

Yeah, and this was very interesting to see miscalculations here.. You can see the wing of the angel that fell at his back because they didnt calculate the height of the platform on top properly...

And of course I will never sleep in rio carnaval before the daylight =)))

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My carnaval