Carnival Happens

Carnival Music Truck at a bloco.

It has been a busy few weeks here in Rio. And this is the first time in the last two weeks I have had a chance to sit and write up a blog. You may be wondering what happened? Carnival happened. While it officially lasts for only 5 days it's pretty much a week and a half long affair. A lot of my time leading into Carnival was spent training or welcoming a ton of new guests to CR. When Carnival did start I did make it to a few blocos on Barra beach, and spent some time celebrating with friends For those who don't know Carnival blocos are the staple of Rio Carnival. They are large street parties/ slow moving parades that are scattered throughout the city and at various times. They can vary in size and theme. Some are smaller traditional blocos for the family and others are huge and crazy. How crazy? Real crazy (some blocos attract 50-100 THOUSAND people). Most have live music of various kinds and lots of dancing. Another common theme for blocos are dressing up. This year was my second go around for Carnival, last year in 2013 I was less than impressed with Brazilian standard for costumes; it was pretty much cheap version of halloween. The girls mainly dressed as cats and the guys in drag. This year though the Brazilians really redeemed themselves. I saw Mario and Luigi's, blind futbol refs, indians, a beach singer (with his girlfriend who was dressed as a campfire), doctors, and smurfs. That was just the guys. For the women's costumes there were belly dancers, snow whites, police, angry birds and less than inventive girls just in their bikinis.

At the beginning of a bloco in Barra

The blocos I went to were smaller, about 5-10 thousand people. I didn't stay the whole time but both lasted about six hours, with the huge buses with live bands playing music slowly making their way along parade route. Both of the blocos I went to were along the beach so at any point during the day I could just duck out of the crowd and jump into the ocean to cool off. While I had a lot more fun this year at Carnival there are definitely a few downsides. One major downside is that training can be limited to downright non-existent during the 5 days. Most training sessions will be open mats and you aren't guaranteed to have a lot of people there to train. But that's where being here at Connection Rio helps. Even with the city being on a 24/7 party schedule for Carnival there were guys in the house who either wanted to drill or roll here on the mats. While most of the academies were closed at least 3-4 days of Carnival most guys only took one day off the mats. Don't get me wrong though there was plenty of time for guys to go out and have some pretty hilarious stories in the morning. Including someone who paid their bar tab in a club by giving them a sock full of money. We got this story (and a whole lot of other ones) after he showed up the next afternoon when he came staggering through the door with only one sock. The moral of his story is if you tell everyone at the club you're a millionaire be prepared for a millionaire’s bar tab.

After training at Bope HQ

Another major downside to Carnival is the traffic. Because there are blocos throughout the city a ton of the streets were closed off. This left the bus routes messed up and trying to get form point A to point B in a vehicle a very time consuming. For example on Saturday I met up with Antoine and Dennis to go train at BOPE HQ. The trip itself should have taken about an hour but because of having to change routes because of blocos took close to two hours. The trip took longer than expected but it was definitely worth it. While at BOPE we trained with the CO and a couple of his guys. The training was relaxed but competitive. We rolled several rounds of submission grappling starting both from the knees and from standing. There were several tough luta livre and BJJ blackbelts there so the rolling was top notch. After grappling we did a couple of rounds of boxing and MMA sparring. The focus was more on movement and technique than hard sparring, which was good to get timing down and to try new things. I have to say it's a pretty unique feeling to be training and look over and have about 10 guys in full tactical gear and assault rifles watching and nodding. After about an hour and a half the training wrapped up and we slowly headed back to Barra trying to weave our way around the blocos.

Overall I had a lot more fun at this years Carnival. I knew what to expect and how to navigate the city better and I think that is one of the reason why I enjoyed it so much more this year than last. I had my fun in the sun, relaxed at the beach, and got in some great training. This is what being in Rio, embracing the BJJ lifestyle is all about.