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Copyright © 1999 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

Feb 13 - 17, 1999

When a Whole Country Falls for a Woman

Carnival in Rio is Sizzling

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, Barra da Tijuca, Botafogo, Santa Teresa, Tiazinha, Baile de Metropolitan, Baile de Scala, Corcovado, Sambadrome, Pao de Acucar, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

It is hot outside, the sun is shining brightly. My eyes nearly hurt and have to get used to it for a while. Inside the cab it is cold, the air conditioning is running at full speed. The driver is rushing us from the airport to Barra da Tijuca. My first time in Rio. I love first times. Looking out the window, swallowing up new sights, new impressions, collection new feeling and building new memories.

Now that I am here I am quite relaxed. Formalities in Peru disallowed us to get on the plane as we didn't have a valid yellow fever vaccination card. But $15 turned my photocopy into a legal document, I just had to change the date by erasing a digit to backdate it by 10 days and - voila - I had a more or less legal document to get on the plane and enter Brazil. I wasn't alone in the situation. Two friends from Lima where in the same boat and at the health department office at the airport we met another two Brazilians with the same dilemma. A good way to make friends. We arranged to get seats next to them and by the time the plane landed in Rio they had invited us three to stay at their place. Quite an offer, especially since at carnival time every hotel is booked out. The cab brought us to their place.

While the offer to stay in an apartment with private swimming pool on the n-th floor of a highrise - overlooking the beach on one side and a lake on the other - was hard, I did have previously arranged plans and couldn't wait to meet up with an old friend from Austria. A jealous look at the apartment tower and off I went towards Botafogo, one of the many districts of the widespread city of Rio. As planned, I met my buddy at the youth hostel in Botafogo. A warm welcome hug and the day could really start. $250 buys you 4 nights on a mattress in a room with 5 other people. The prices soar during carnival time.

The first impressions that run through my mind are: hills, tropical environment, beaches, palm trees, humidity, richness. Brazil and Rio in particular are rich. Definitely a class above Peru. Everything is a class better, the infrastructure, the roads, the cars and busses, even the slums. The slums in Lima have no electricity and no running water. Here the slums, called favelas, have cable TV and I assume also running water. For the average person in Rio the difference to Europe is small. Europe lacks the extreme poverty and hopelessness of the favelas, but for middle-class or rich people there is little difference in lifestyle.

The scenery of the city is great. It is impossible not to love it. It is unique, it is beautiful, it is Rio. The steep hills that cut the city into many small visually isolated bowls divide the metropolis into manageable junks. The hills are remarkable through their steepness and form. Nothing grows on them at the bottom, because it is too steep, but on the top is lush greenery, not far from a rain forest. The color of the hills is a deep and calming brown. The hills also cut the waterfront into many bays with all these famous names: Botafogo, Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon and many more. While the beaches near the city center offer only sun, sand and beautiful women, the beach more outside, for example to the west offer palm trees and a bit of shade in addition. The water is wonderfully warm, but visibly not clean. Seeing the sewage pipe run into the ocean does not give one this warm and cozy feeling. It is known that some of the beaches are polluted. A sign of the time.

What better place to start sightseeing than at the beaches? We went down to Ipanema. It is carnival time and each neighborhood has its own street carnivals. A banda gathered, maybe 20 men with the drummers being the key guys. As soon as the drums started the bodies started to move. Many drag queens mixed in the crowd. With the music the action started. We mingled with the crowd. It was jam- packed, loud and after half a street block we were sweating. Everybody was moving to the rhythm and singing. Looks like the songs played by the banda were all well known and standard songs, so to speak. Over the next days we should many more of these street carnivals. There are at least 2 or 3 a day in different places.

We danced in the afternoon, but dancing can never be too much for us. So, for night entertainment we decided to go out to a dance in one of the two best known event centers. "Baile da Cidade Maravilhosca" in the Scala was the main event of the night. Like in Peru nightlife starts late. At 10 everything is empty and at midnight things start to warm up. The place was full; about to burst. We squeezed through the masses. It was accordingly hot, comparable to a Turkish bath. Most of the time I was just standing there waving air at my face to cool myself down. The samba started and it never stopped, not even for a heartbeat. It kept on pounding and pounding without the faint of a slowed down. That turns into brainwashing or meditation after a while. The samba and the rhythm are always there and always push you. For Rio this is an official and formal dance event. But "formal" here means that shorts and tee-shirt are okay. Some guys even show up solely in shorts and sneakers, others again dress up in suit and tie. I feel sorry for them. Everything just sticks to your body and pearls of sweat are constantly on your forehead. In such a situation I gladly avoid the use of a tie. T-shirts and shorts are my cup of tea anyway.

The music kept on going and with it the women got more and more into dancing. Brazil has this great variety of races and looks. Being such a huge country I could find anything here. Very dark black women from Bahia, chocolate brownish, light milk chocolate brown, white, Indios, and any possible mix thereof. It has been a while since I have seen such a melting pot of races, skin colors, and facial forms in one place. And the nice thing is they are all Brazilians. The extra dark, nearly black women had that extra charm. Big hips seemed to be a trademark of quite a few of the women here. And like everywhere else the ones with a big chest got the most attention.

Quite a few of the women came in a black outfit consisting of slip, bra, Zoro- like mask and a whip. I had no clue what that meant. My friend had to fill me in. For weeks Globo and other TV stations had broadcast carnival spots, constantly showing a scantly clad woman named "Tiazinha" and her whip. Tiazinha means nothing more than "little aunt". She is not a woman, she is a phenomenon in Brazil. Maybe, by now she "was" a phenomenon. These things are known to be rather short-lived. Whatever. For she is and will be a phenomenon. TV must have brainwashed the people. Tia fan-clubs exist and Tia lookalikes are seen in every street carnival. She shows up everywhere. She originally got famous through a TV show where she spanks young men with her whip and by pulling some of their leg hair out with a female hair removal kit. The TV show has a little contest with questions. I forgot, but she spanks them either if they fail to know the answer to a question or if they happen to know the answer to the question. I don't think it matters much. From there she started, then she made it onto the cover of the Playboy magazine, she is rumored to have Romero - the famous soccer player - as a boyfriend, and and and. I should see a lot more of her over the next days as you will find out.

Now that my friend who is also a Tiazinha fan had explained that to me, I could see the world with different eyes. As the samba beat went on, the Tiazinha lookalikes were putting on their own little dance shows and the men were drooling. While the women were dancing on the tables the men packed densely around them. Whenever their touching got too much, they got whacked by the whip which I am sure was just another turn-on for them. It was a good show, best of all it was not a show, it was just casual spontaneous dancing Brazilian style. The people in the audience are the actors. It doesn't need much as input, just two ingredients: people and music. Eventually the first bras started to fall to the delight of many men. There was this one woman. I remember her well. She wasn't that pretty, but she had the absolute minimum of clothing and huge breasts. Instead of a slip she wore this sort-of brace so that she had nothing on the side. First time I saw such a thing up close. When she took her bra off, the rest of her body was covered with no more than 2 square inches of that brace. The TV crew that had come at 2 a.m. thought that this was the best thing since sliced bread. The camera team rushed to her - through the crowd - like fire fighters, put the spot-lights on her and filmed her from all angles. The cameras couldn't get enough. As we know, once there is a TV camera actors and actresses are born. Plenty of people to put on an extra show for the camera. It was good fun.

I have been to formal balls and dances in Austria; let me tell you, there is no comparison. They are two different things. It was a good first night and a good start into the extraordinary weekend vacation. By now I knew this would not be the usual or typical Manfred-vacation. Being with my friend has changed everything. It would just be the opposite from my normal explorations.

I just love the weather. 37 degrees at daytime, 30 degrees at midnight, and still 27 degrees at 6 a.m. in the morning just before the sun rises. Can one ask for more? Bananas and papayas for breakfast, before we go back to bed to catch a few more hours of sleep.

What is a good way to quench that thirst that arises at these temperatures? Guarana, the local Brazilian drink. Supposedly it sells better than Coke here and Brazil uses up all of its production of the plant seed that is used to make the drink; hence there is no Guarana exported, at least not in large quantities. Guarana is a tropical plant. The name stands for "eyes looking at you" in an Brazilian indigenous tongue because the dark seeds come in pairs and are surrounded by some white elements of the plant giving it the appearance as if two eyes are staring at you. It is a potent plant and only some tiny percentage of it is found in the drink (maybe 1 percent). I expected the drink to be kind of a juice but it is a soda. It has a unique flavor and I like it.

On Sunday, my day number 2, we did the tourist things. Pao de Acucar, Sugar Loaf Mountain to us Westerners. The books say "God's gift to the postcard industry". Not far from the truth. The air temperature is above the body temperature and helicopters are buzzing overhead. The main sights of Rio are all connected by helicopter. Sugar Loaf to Corcovado is just a couple of minutes. It takes two rides to get to the top. The heliport is next to the station in the middle. The hill is very steep. Parts are close to vertical. The second and last hill has a pair of ropes hanging off it and people rope climb on them. Looked like fun to me. I was tempted but neither prepared, nor do I think can it be done commercially. On top and at the middle lush green garden offered pleasant shade and an idyllic hide-away for a few minutes.

From the tourist center, we went to the other extreme, downtown. A rather ugly place. Nothing really worth seeing. The bus was so full we couldn't move an inch and were pressed against the back door. Not that I minded, it was just funny. As we got off everyone yelled at us because we, naturally, got off the back door; but normally one must use the front door to get off. The center had a few old colonial style buildings, churches or palaces. We didn't look too carefully. The modern church in the center - made of concrete - that looks like a very dirty pyramid from the 21-st century is about the only building I kept in memory. With a tramway we slowly moved towards Santa Teresa, one of the favelas. The rule here is, if you sit down you have to pay the fare, if you hang on onto the side you don't have to pay a ticket. The tram that was open on both sides was half full and another half dozen people were hanging off the sides. There wasn't actually too much to see in the favelas and I didn't want to progress far into the neighborhood. No need to push my luck, I had heard enough bad stories. Just a few weeks ago the friend of a friend of weekend companion was shot. He was shopping with his wife and kids. Afterwards, at the door of the shopping mall he said, "Wait a second, I'll fetch the car, I'll be back in a few seconds." He never came back. Both he and his car disappeared. A couple of weeks later, the cop rang the doorbell of the woman and informed her that the body of her husband was found somewhere at a suburb.

No doubt, there is poverty, there are drugs and that is a deadly mix. I am not paranoid and my friend and I did nearly all of our trips by bus, even at midnight or in the wee hours of the morning. I always felt quiet safe in the bus. The worst I felt in downtown. The street empty, only few people hanging around, most building looking rather dirty and the shops all barricaded with wood panels. I am not sure if this is just for the carnival or if this is like this every weekend. On a few of the major roads in downtown preparations were under way for another street carnival. Big floats lined one avenue being prepared for a future event. As we returned from Santa Teresa another street carnival was on its way. As I said there are several per day. This one didn't seem too special.

The sunset we enjoyed from Corcovado, the famous hill and landmark with the open-armed statue of Christ. People make fun of it, claiming Rio is not so welcoming to new arrivers, Jesus should close his arms. The little tramway that runs up the hill takes 20 minutes and it climbs through a forest. No traffic, away from the crowds, a good moment. On top the view was of course marvelous. Basically everything is visible from here: Pao de Acucar, the various beaches like Copacabana and Leblon, downtown, the city airport, the ocean, the surrounding hills, ... Slowly the sun was setting, throwing only a slight touch of red over the city, soon the city lights took over. The beach boulevards along Copacabana and Ipanema were brightly lit. The lakes and hills remained as dark spots in the night. The best-lit spot of town was the Sambadrome. It could not be missed from up here. 1000s and 1000s of watts turned the concrete channel into a bright pool of light. We soaked up the views until it was just plain dark. We hiked back on the street through the forest and a French guy who also spoke perfect German kindly gave us a lift.

Having seen Copacabana at daytime, now it was time to see it at night. I had a major headache and felt generally terrible. My friend wanted to see another "banda" and another street carnival, dance session. We separated, I lay down on the beach, closed my eyes and slept, or at least tried to sleep. My Austrian buddy was off to a bit more action and to check out the neighborhood.

Monday was the mother of all carnival days for us. The Olymp of all events was waiting: We had 2 reasonably good tickets for the Sambadrome. The Sambadrome ("Sambodromo") event takes place only on 2 days a year, Carnival Sunday and Carnival Monday. These were the hours we were waiting for. We were excited, make that very excited. The night of the nights started with sleeping most of the day. I would need that energy. Then I went shopping and bought 4 liters of mango soy juice and similar drinks. At 6 p.m. I was standing outside the youth hostel with my favorite small traveling backpack filled with the juices, a cake, some bread, headache tablets and a map. I was ready. My friend was even more hyped up than I. In Copacabana we picked up the tickets and a bus brought us to the Sambadrome. It was 7 p.m. when we sat down in our sector right across from the lodge of the judges. It was full already even though the first band wouldn't come for another hour.

80,000 carnival participants ("folioes") filled the stadium. The area for the samba dancers and floats is only 20 meters wide but nearly a kilometer long. Robotic cameras move up and down this kilometer long stretch. A Goodyear blimp is cruising overhead. Cranes provide additional angles and perspectives for the TV cameras. Most people are Brazilians. I was astonished. I expected to see a lot more foreigners, but most were visiting Brazilians from Sao Paulo and other places of this huge country. A Brazilian friend gave me the background on the Sambadrome, the history and how it works. We had 10 hours of uninterrupted samba in front of us. From 8 p.m. till 6 a.m. the music should not stop and 7 samba schools should march, well dance, by us. At the entrance we got some more brochures, advertisements and free condoms and headache pills.

I couldn't wait for the first school to start. A roar went through the stadium as they appeared at the entrance. Then we all, the 80,000 people, did the wave a few times for warm-up. I haven't realized that the wave is such an international thing; from U.S. football games, European soccer championships, to the Sambadrome.

Since there are 14 samba schools ("escolas de samba") in total, they are divided into 7 each night. 20 hours of samba might not be too much, but I would not want to stand in the sun at 37 degrees during daytime for 10 hours. 10 hours at night is plenty. Each year, each samba school picks a new theme ("enredo") for this event. Often the theme is a special place, city or area in Brazil, but it could be anything. The theme is then expressed through a song ("samba enredo"). This song is played live over and over at the Sambadrome as school dances by. The song expresses the theme in words, rhythm and emotion. A samba school consists of 3,000 to 4,000 people, more or less. These masses are grouped into sets ("alas") of maybe 100. Each set is then dressed in a common costume ("fantasia") following a variation of the overall theme. All sets are dressed differently, and within a set men and women normally wear different but coordinated dresses. It is clear that the beauty of the women has to be brought to full attention. A school also has a number of floats ("carro alegorico"), maybe around 10. There is a special opening set ("comissao de frente") and a set with old ladies in African costumes ("ala das Baianas"). The sets of dancers separate the floats. The school also has a few special roles or players. There are the float-leading- girls. Each float is usually proceeded by 3 especially beautiful woman that dance around rather freely and have some free space in front of them. There are the female flag bearers ("porta bandeira") who are escorted by the floor master ("mestre sala"). Then there are the queens and kings of the floats. Each float has a queen or a king, the big-cheese on the float. Mostly these kings and queens are celebrities from all walks of life. For example, a plastic beauty surgeon. I thought that was so typical Rio. Beauty is important here and the social status of a beauty surgeon is high. Another special task force in the school is the coordination team. The coordinators are not dressed up and are usually just men dressed in a plain suit. They make sure that the floats get pushed at the right speed, that nobody gets run over and killed by a float, that dancers stay in line, that the team looks good and more. They are the middle management of this enterprise. The soldiers of the enterprise are the dancers. Then there are a few honorary dancers with special costumes and more space to perform their own dances. These are like board members of the enterprise. Last but not least there is the band, usually 6 to 10 singers and 80 drummers pounding the samba beat. The whole thing is a highly tuned machine and with 1,000 people a samba school is not far away from the complexity of a mid-sized employer.

Our schedule informed us about the following schools:

The first school was just for warm up. Nothing special, just to loosen the muscles a bit, get the ears tuned in to the samba beat, and to get used to the environment and to figure out how it all works. The procession of each team along the 1 kilometer takes more or less an hour. You can see it is not a 100- meter dash. Things move slowly but steadily forward. There is plenty of time to see the dancers and the floats from the front, side and rear. There are plenty of opportunities to take photos. Each float seams special and worth a photo, each float-leading-girl or her costume seems worth a picture. If you give in to this desire to press the button, it would take 4 roles of film if you press the button only once per float and once per float-leading-girl group. Know you can figure out at what point in time you run out of film if you brought 5 roles and take 3 snapshots per float. It is a mega event.

There is plenty of time for chats in between, plenty of time to look at the audience. I was also always looking forward to the 15 minutes of break between the schools. That was the only time people would sit down, the rest of the time we were on our feet, not to miss any of the sights presented to us. We could tell that the schools got better as the evening progressed. Not to be missed was the woman that is everywhere and on every Brazilian’s mind. Tiazinha. She was the leader of one of the initial samba schools. I saw her in her usual dress (mask) but didn’t think much of it. Actually, I thought it is another look-alike or just a trendy thing to do. You can tell I am not a Tiazinha-ista (yet). I am sure though that every real Brazilian recognized her without the shadow of a doubt.

At 1 a.m. we had the first half behind us and the better half in front of us. Instead of people disappearing it got a bit more crowded now and I was amazed at the number of old people being here at that hour. There were old couples with white hair showing no sign of being tired. I was in good shape myself. The headache pills must have worked. In the audience were also a few participants and we could watch close up as they got ready for their part in this production. It was interesting to see the dresses from just a yard away and to see how they sweated underneath them. For about the same amount we paid for our tickets one can also buy oneself a ticket to become a participant.

Mangueira had a very classic and traditional show. Quality of everything was high but somehow the innovation was missing. It is clear that even though the coordinators were trying to get everything lined up perfectly most people were just out there to have a good time and didn’t care too much about getting a point more or less for accuracy. Individuality and having a good time took priority of rules and competitiveness. I got special amusement out of one scene. A guy, a participant, was dancing out of line and somehow he had crossed from one set to another. So, he was sticking out like a soar thumb. His costume didn’t match the costumes of the set he was dancing in. He should have been 50 meters behind in his set with the matching costumes. Sure enough just as they passed us, a coordinator spotted this. The coordinator whistled at one or two other coordinators. Jointly they went after him. They grabbed him and dragged him to the side. The dancer was acting innocently while the coordinators hit him multiple times and yelled at him. Then they tore off his costume and wanted to expel him from the Sambodromo. After some begging from the dancer, the coordinators gave in and let him continue (in the right set) but not after hitting him a few more time to be sure he wouldn’t do that again.

Next up was Mocidade. Their theme was "Villa-Lobos e a apoteose brasileira". Free translation of a person who has no clue of Portuguese is "Villa-Lobos is a (natural) pharmacy of Brazil". Their entrance act of a bunch of men dressed as green frogs jumping around in a choreographed manner must have taken the country by storm. It took my heart away. It was just fantastic, innovative, ingenuous, creative, pleasant to the eye and didn’t compare to anything else we had seen this night. It was just different, and different in a positive way, eye catching. I really loved the frogs. Besides that I also could identify myself with their theme the most. The message, besides being a bit of a cliche, was clear. Brazilian rainforest are valuable to us as a source of many good things including natural drugs. It’s a living pharmacy and we should appreciate it. I can subscribe to that. None of the other themes came even close to being of such personal interest. Okay, I admit it, after I saw the frogs I was hooked. Their floats were also by far the best so far. Waterfalls on the floats; lots of green, my favorite color when it comes to my surrounding. The theme song was - as you can image it - talking about fauna, flora, rivers and the ocean.

This act was followed by the best supported school, Beija-Flor. Their fans handed out supportive paper flags to the thousands during the 15 minute break. The colors of the Sambodromo was transformed. Now only the Beija-Flor colors existed. The theme was "Araxa - lugar alto onde primeiro se avista o Sol" and their show was good. Clever, good designs of the floats and with some kick. As the theme already says, it is about Araxa, a place in the highlands of Brazil. Their song was the best. One of the lines from the song "Araxa, Araxa, Oba, Oba, Paraiso Hospitaleiro" (freely translated into "Araxa, Hey, hospitable paradise") was addictive, to me anyway. For the next 2 days I couldn’t get this line out of my head. I would give them 100 points for their theme songs. It was captivating.

It was now 4:30 a.m. and the last school, Imperatriz Leopoldinense, came on. What a disaster, in comparison to the two previous ones this samba school was a class behind. Instead of ending in a highlight, the last school was a cool down.

What a night. Expensive, but worth it. I guess it belongs to the got-to-do-it- once things in my life. I was smiling on the inside as we went home by bus and the sun just threw the first rays on the ocean and the beaches were calm and empty. The ocean was like me. I had this calm and satisfied feeling in me. This was all I wanted, now I could go to bed happily.

The following day the judges convened and rated the school on a long list of criteria from originality to rhythm. The list of judges was long, the list of criteria was long and there were 14 school. All of it was live on TV. After a few minutes I realized I would have to watch for hours to finally see the end result. That was too much. It turned out that my favorite team (clearly by far the best schools of all) made the second place. The unbelievable part is that Imperatriz Leopoldinense won. How is that possible? I was yelling bribery, foul play and other nasty words when I found out. This is just not believable. How could the lovely frogs be beating by a lousy performance as given by Imperatriz Leopoldinense. Something is not quite right. And the same way I saw bribery, millions of Brazilians assume the same every year after the election if their favorite school doesn’t make it to the top.

For the rest of the day I slept as you can imagine. We got up just in time to go out again at night. The hot event of the night was in the second large event center where I haven’t been yet, the Metropolitan in Barra. Baile do Metropolitan. Getting there was a challenge. From 10 p.m. till 1:30 a.m. we try to get there on bus. We got several good laughs out of that situation as we were sitting and standing at various bus stops. First we were in Copacabana, but busses went everywhere but Barra. We knew a bus from Botafogo to Barra, so we changed our plan and went to Botafogo. There we were sitting lonely at the bus stop and, as always, different people would give us different advice (every person we asked would tell us a different bus number to take). I only remember that my friend and I were laughing that the tears came as we said that either no more busses would come at all or we would end up in some bus that would take us to some far away favelas. Besides all the joking we did make it to the Metropolitan. Getting there at 1:30 a.m. was just fine, this is when the night just starts to get hot here. Unlike the Scala, they had working air condition at this convention/event center and we both enjoyed the difference. They had a live band play typical Brazilian music, samba and then some more samba. Like in carnival half the people were masqueraded, half weren’t. I belonged to the "weren’t" part.

At 2:30 the first show event came on. The best known woman was to thrill us. You guessed it. Tiazinha. Live and close-up! The crowd went into a frenzy. Both my friend and I were well positioned and ended up in the very front right at the stage. People were about to squeeze the guts out of us as they all pushed forward to get closer to the star. Likely I can handle such situations and am not claustrophobic. Any claustrophobic person would have died by now. Tia went on the stage and the screaming started. I have no clue what they yelled, but something the rhymed with Tia. I didn’t know what they were yelling but I yelled with them, just for fun. Tia took a few pieces of clothing off. Not too much of course. Just to tease the crowd a bit. Eventually she had morphed into the typical Tiazinha as everyone knows her from TV and posters. Underwear plus mask plus black leather whip. But to be honest, I can’t even remember the color of her bra anymore. White, red, black?

The TV show game was repeated here. People, young good looking man with shorts and t-shirt, were pre-selected and put on a chair, one after the other. While Tia danced around them and teased them with a few gentle strokes of her whip, the guy was asked a question. Tia would put sticky hair removal paste on his leg and a transparent small sheet of plastic on top. While the guy was thinking and thinking the audience yelled the answer at him. But that didn’t help much. His ears were not quite functional at this moment. After the time was up, Tia yanked the sheet together with some body hair of the guy’s leg. A bit painful, but I am sure the guys would go through a lot more pain to be close to her. This little game was repeated three times with three different guys. Thereafter Tia danced some more and the pushing, shoving and yelling got accordingly excessive. It’s part of the game and I would not want to miss it. Under whistles Tia disappeared, most likely whisked away to the next party. But she is not gone forever. For those of you who have to see her know (I can’t blame you) she is smart enough to have a website: Tiazinha.

The live band was changed and the dancing continued to a young and modern band that played a mix of rock and samba. We got some more dancing in before the second show started. A group of go-go dancers filled the stage. They did what go-go dancers normally do. The audience had to rank them through volume of applause. The best part of the whole thing came at the end. All go-go dancers lined up again and in the center they had their manager, or whoever he was. The manager was a strange looking guy. He had a weird blond hairdo, high heeled shoes, lots of golden bracelets, tanned skin, a shirt that had at least the first 4 buttons from the top open to show plenty of his chest. The shirt had a long thin collar like from the 60s and his pants were matching the look: extreme bell-bottom pants. He looked like a mix of Elvis, hippie and playboy. Now the audience was asked again to vote for the best looking woman. The vocal response from the audience was "the guy in the middle". The guy was visibly flattered but the master of ceremony (MC) with the microphone did not expect that answer. So she asked again, she got the same answer just a little bit louder. She was confused and explained to the audience that they have to vote for a woman. It was obvious that that explanation had to fail. When she asked a third time, the answer was a uniform "the guy in the middle". He was smiling all over his face, and the MC took it very personal and couldn’t believe it. The chorus "the guy in the middle" was repeated in chants and the MC gave up. It was the best answer, this guy was just unique and deserved it. The women were beautiful but you can find many beautiful in Brazil (or elsewhere), but there is only one guy like him.

The night ended like the one before, sitting in the bus on the way home as the sun started to rise of the ocean. Not a bad way to end a day. What a weekend getaway altogether. So different, maybe even the opposite, from what I usually do. New people bring new ideas, and in this case all the thanks goes to my Austrian friend without whom I would have written a very different story.

Rio is sizzling. Hot. Hot. Hot. In any way. Hot, because of the women. Hot, because 300 people got killed only on this weekend. Hot, because 30 degrees C at midnight is not what one would call cold.

    

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