The Samba Parade, Part 3: The Spectacular.

On Sunday afternoon Ben and I were walking around Rio De Janeiro’s city center and saw that night’s Samba Parade floats still under construction! What… procrastination station! As we walked around taking picture, we joked that they had some major work to do…

Yup that float is mooning us for sure.

It looks like they pulled it off…

Butt statue has been successfully attached.

To out stage one another, Samba parade floats often have some kind of mechanical moving part. In some cases a little menacing mechanical shark that emerges out of a pool to eat a Samba dancer will do.  Oh no!  Oh yes.

Jaws!

Or maybe what a float really needs is a mechanical horse that gallops around a cottage? Of course this is Brazil so the rider must be topless!  I think Ben must of took this picture.

Bare back riding, bare chested.

Some floats would spray bursts of glitter or colorful strings, but to really out do the competition you need a fountain flowing with water or some gorillas swinging from trees.

Gorillas swing from floats.

Of course there were scores of celebrities, none of which I heard of because most of them were Brazilian. But there was one name that was familiar to me…Gisele Buendchen.  She’s the one in gold in the front middle. I looked for Tom Brady after that in the stands with no luck.

Gisele Buendchen in the front and in color.

The only thing that is more fantastic then the floats are the samba dancers. Each school’s best Samba dancers can be easily spotted even from the top of the Grandstands. They are scantly clad; not wearing more then strategically placed sequences, a tong, a feathered headdress and wings.  They are either leading legends of samba dancers or perched on tall pedestals atop giant float. Their feet moving at warp speed in 6-inch heels.  But you don’t have to be a samba dancing beauty to get and keep the crowds on their feet.  A street cleaner that broke into a samba while sweeping the streets during intermission received the loudest cheers of all.