Parachute into the carnival parade in Rio

[JRD]

As you probably know, carnival is the apex of summer in Brazil, especially in Rio where there is a huge 4 days parade. During the whole carnival, samba schools compete to see which one is the champion of the carnival. Yes, this is like a championship with a prime division and a second division with grades and a jury. Every year all schools try to outgun the others by bringing something new into the parade. Special effects, optic illusions, celebrities etc. One of the most traditional schools is called Portela and their symbol is an eagle.

This year they hired three professional sky divers to parachute right into the parade as the school start to march into the sambadrome. They had a GoPro attached to their helmets and the images have been released by a local news channel. I'm not into this samba thing that much and lately I choose to stay at home or go to some place without all the ruckus but I had my share of street partying in the past. The party is great if you are willing to enjoy it and the images are just great. The site is in Portuguese but the two videos at the beginning can be fun to watch in any language.  8)

http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/carnaval/2015/noticia/2015/02/paraquedistas-da-portela-surpreendem-na-sapucai.html

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting sight to parachute over a large city like that, usually they do it out in the fields so as not to land on something/someone. Pretty good skill I must say.

[mandru]

Pretty cool.  :)

Next year to up their game they'll need to have several sky divers in wingsuits emitting smoke and sparks crisscrossing over the parade route.  ;)

[PZ]

Yeah, it does always seem to be one-up-manship from one year to the next - the Olympic opening show and Super Bowl half-time show comes to mind

Cool event though - it is always interesting to see what is happening in the worlds or OWG members  :-X

[Binnatics]

Nice party indeed, and a cool entrance like that! Carnaval in Holland is mostly drinking yourself to death 5 days in a row altogether. I think they need to, because of the cold. We do have festivities with huge floats and people dressed up in weird suits, but the most important thing is that it's permitted to live life in complete reverse mode, so to speak.
It's not really my kind of party. Only in the South Carnaval really dominates. In the North people are protestant, so they don't participate. They just pretend to be normal and sober and everything.
In summertime we have our own summer-carnaval in Rotterdam. That is more like the South American parties with dancers and shows in the streets. I think I could enjoy that better 8)

[fragger]

Excellent :-X But for some reason I couldn't view the second vid. From my extremely tenuous (read virtually non-existent) grasp of Portuguese, it appears to be some kind of regional video issue. But the first one was quite a ride 8)

I would like to check out carnival time in Rio at least once before I shuffle off :-X

[JRD]

D_B They rehearsed the jump several times at night to ensure no one would get tangled on a power line. The whole jump was still a surprise though. Nobody knew they were going to pull this one off.

This is the parade carnival, what is shown on TV and is prepared by the samba schools throughout the year. There is another side of carnival though, the street parties. We had over 450 parties (called "blocos", which means literally "blocks" - a band playing at some point in the city with a small pre-determined path, usually a couple blocks around the neighborhood, where thousands of people wearing home made costumes are following the music). These "blocos" will pop all over Rio during carnival but can be present on weekends before the official festivities. As a matter of fact it all starts when summer starts, December 22nd, right before Christmas. It merges with new years party, then summer and school break with most parents also taking some time off to be with their kids, then carnival. We use to say that Brazil is closed for business until carnival is over so 2015 will actually start next week.  :D

fragger, nowadays there are so many parties, you will never get bored during carnival. We even have one bloco that plays only Beatles song as samba  ??? but you can find traditional samba, old school samba, folkloric rhythm, modern popular music (which sucks by the way) you name it. If you even comes to Brazil during carnival, make sure you give me a call.... I'll show you a great time in Rio (that goes to all OWG senior members, of course)  :-X  8)  >:D

[Dweller_Benthos]

So strange, we have almost nothing here in the way of parties at this time of year. Unless you live in New Orleans I guess. It's too cold and snowy here usually, and especially this year (about 15th consecutive day below freezing, and some of the time below zero F for a couple weeks now, not to mention the two feet of snow, and the cities on the coast have it worse lol) for any kind of outdoor festivities, except for the few winter carnivals around, which I guess qualify, but they usually involve snowmobiles and sledding and ice fishing lol. Especially not the scantily (or not even any) clad ladies (and gents) that I saw in those couple pictures on the side of that page (not that I clicked on them for any prurient reason, just for cultural exploration ahem) unless you count the various "polar bear" clubs of insane people who cut holes in the ice and go swimming at this time of year.

[fragger]

 :-D Dweller

Thanks for the kind offer JRD, I will indeed give you a shout should I ever find myself heading your way :) At least we're in the same hemisphere, so I won't have to worry about packing any different seasonal garb 8)