We caught a van from Alcantara into Rio Downtown where we were to catch the metro to Copacobana, unfortunately the metropass was not correct and special ones were needed to ride the metro on this special night... so we went out to the road and caught a bus. Even though Copacobana is not that far it took us an hour to get there because of all the traffic. The bus quickly got full and everyone was in a happy mood.
Under the light of a full moon on a golden sand beach complete with sound stages and huge speaker banks and approximately 2 million mostly white clothed revellers we counted down to zero and the fireworks started! Huge, 5 or 6 boats out on the ocean about 100 meters from the sand launching rockets skyward for about a quarter of an hour. The half a dozen cruise ships in the bay all dimmed their lights and everyone cheered as the display continued. We had found our couchsurfing group after about half a happy hour of wandering through the masses. Amazingly there was plenty of space and the beach at no time felt overcrowded. At midnight, as is traditional, many people jumped into the sea for a swim, not for us though, even though it was dark we still knew what colour it is. Really it was just like Rotorua at New Year on a grander scale - go Rotovegas! lol.
We wandered the streets after the event with everyone else for a couple of hours and felt quite safe, we finally got back to the apartment at 6am.
