Brazilian Carnival happens on the first full weekend in Feb. The festivities start long before this though. Where you can have chances to visit samba schools to see them reherse what they will be doing for the parades. The carnival parades itself starts on the Friday night. While the 'holiday' usually lasts till the wednesday morning after. LONG party eh!
The parades themselves are an extravaganza of costumes, dancing, anything typically brazilian. There are a wide range of stuffs though as what is Brazilian is so many different things depending on the region they are from. From food, to their looks, their dance, their language even.
Rio of course is the most crazy. However the other cities are not far behind like Salvador, Sao Paulo.
The Brazilian Carnival (Portuguese: Carnaval) is an annual festival in Brazil held 40 days before Easter and marks the beginning of Lent. During Lent, Roman Catholics are supposed to abstain from all bodily pleasures, including the consumption of meat. The carnival, celebrated as a profane event and believed to have its origins in the pagan Saturnalia, can thus be considered an act of farewell to the pleasures of the flesh.
Brazilian citizens used to riot until the Carnival was accepted by the government as an expression of culture. That was because the Brazilian carnival had its origin in a Portuguese festivity called "entrudo".
The modern Brazilian Carnival finds its roots in Rio de Janeiro in the 1845, when the city's bourgeoisie imported the practice of holding balls and masquerade parties.
Briel and I spent Carnival in Brazil in the end. After so much pressure from our friends "When will we spend Carnival again in Brazil" - this being true we decided to stay longer. However we didn't spend it in crazy Rio (phew) we watched this on TV and Briel and I would have found it difficult with all the thousands and thousands of people everywhere - plus all the craziness that goes with it. (The stories are NOT exaggerated).
We instead spent it in Tabatinga where there was smaller parties in the hotels, but mostly we spent our days drinking up a storm on the beach. Yummy!
