Carnaval

First off, sorry for the lack of updates! I kept meaning to update once I had some pictures, but given that we leave Rio in about an hour, I don´t know if that´s going to happen. So I´ll just throw up some text. Wow...a lot has happened, we´ve been to two soccer games, the giant jesus statue, a lot of days on the beach and of course Carnaval. The soccer games were amazing, and most of us have become loyal Botafogo fans, willing to give up anything for the good of our team in their struggle against the hated Flamengo bastards. We left both games thinking how lame Canucks games are and trying to figure out some way to transport these lunatics up north to spice up a few playoff games. Our free time has been spent lying around on the beach, gambling with one another and trying to get the Poy´s to clean up their McDonald´s garbage. We also managed to find an Olympics only channel, and from there were able to keep track of how much ass we were kicking over in Italy. Carnaval itself is hard to put into words. The people just don´t stop partying. Random trucks and cars will pull up to street corners with speakers and thus ensues some kind of celebration. Within seconds the SKOL (local beer) sellers will flood the area and voila, you have entertainment. The actual Samba parade was insane. I honestly think that Brazil could be the next superpower if it didn´t blow all its money on these parades every year. Each one consists of roughly 5000 people, all dressed in crazy costumes. If any one of these costumes showed up at some Vancouver halloween party, it would win the best costume hands down. Everything is so intricate, with tiny little details everywhere that you can´t even notice unless you´re sitting beside one of them. The floats have everything from fire breathing dragons to giant Bruce Lee heads and are each about the size of a house, leaving us to wonder what the hell they do with these things after Carnaval is over. Topless models hang off of every float as well as walking beside them (and along every beach for that matter), making for an absolutely disgusting scene....yes...disgusting, can´t stress that enough. Having stayed up until the next morning more nights than I care to count, Carnaval has definitely taken its toll on all of us. Somehow the locals don´t seem affected by this lack of sleep and yesterday held another celebration as they unveiled the clock that kept the time until next Carnaval. It´ll be good to get out of Rio for a while, which is exactly what Ry and I are doing today. We´re still not sure where we´re headed, and won´t know until we get to the bus station. All we know is we want a beach to sleep on and ...actually thats about it. We´ll swing back into Rio on the 6th or 7th to pick up Mr. Wilson, then it´s off towards Argentina/Uruguay!

Pictures! Given that I have nothing else to put up, I´ll put up this little guy for anyone who doesn´t know our route. Although popular theory suggests that our route will probably look nothing like that once it´s done!