Carnaval 2009 – Nova Friburgo

I know you must be Carnaval(ed) out but I wanted to share my photos – maybe you will feel you were there.

I have been to the BIG parade in Rio, Carnival Revival.   I even marched in 2004. I have also been to several Blocos or street parties in Rio, but I had never seen the parade in Nova Friburgo. This year I wanted to go Sunday night to the opening parade of the samba schools in Nova Friburgo. Sunday night’s parade had three separate Samba Schools marching.

I have to admit my expectations were not very high. Friburgo is a relatively small town of about 250K residents and it does not appear to be affluent, so I expected a ‘home grown’ quality and I was wrong.   I arrived in Centro by taxi at 9pm and arrived home at 2:30 am. Each Samba School took close to an hour to complete their part of the show and there was about 35 minutes between each one. The time between was the hardest for me but the Brazilians are great about taking delays in stride. The children got out in the street, played soccer with plastic bottles, practiced their samba steps and generally acted like children left with no adult supervision.

The first samba school sang and danced with enthusiasm, pulling the crowd into their samba music, pleasing the children. Their floats were made of simple materials, had great imagination. It was ‘nice’ and after the first show I was ready to go home….. Thank goodness I waited around. My feet hurt, my ears hurt, it was past my bedtime but I waited.

Nova Friburgo's 2009 Carnaval VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

With each Samba School it just got better and better. Before the third one, Tatiana and Paulista begged me to wait – the third one was a group of people they knew and they didn’t want to miss the show. The third samba school was fantastic!  (See part 2)

[I have had almost 12 hours trying to download this blog – I decided to break it into pieces…. stay connected for part two]