Lapa, Rio de Janeiro – Life is a carnival 365 days per year
I learned about Lapa district from Rio de Janeiro when I got off the tram. A single yellow tram car, which they call Bondinho (it means “cart”) stops here and a little resemblance to any tram that we saw earlier.
Lapa, the starting point, I had to see the same evening that is actually composed of an infinity of points. Depends on where you live, where you look, how much you drink caipirinha (where infinity is multiplied, usually by a two factor), and the stamina, mental and moral. It was November when I arrived in Rio. Carnival in February is great, but I found that actually does never stop.
Apparently, Lapa is the place, where every evening is a party, the streets and pubs running a race without a break merry dancers accompanied by ad hoc groups giving voice to frenetic samba, a lot shivering among the vendors of cigarettes, sweets and salted almonds, stalls cachasa and caipirinha (after sugar cane brandy and second cocktail prepared by adding crushed ice, lime and more sugar).
Brazil lives by and for the show. Arriving there, you know what carnival is emblematic of Brazilian culture. Bus drivers drive fast, women and men are hot, vegetation celebrate their life in full color. The life is a carnival, and participants shall enjoy the full scale vibration of color. From my subjective and incomplete observations, Brazilians, you have to do, sing. He quickly manufactured percussion tools, in a bowl, an empty box of paint, a trash can, a bowl, any, provided to sound out, and let them flow rate through the hands.
I arrived in Lapa on the evening with Alberto, who came from Spain and a very white and very blond nambian. There was a lot of drinking. Sweet caipirinha. Not until your muscles and coordination test driving the rhythms of samba. Besides, a cariocas (cariocas = inhabitant of Rio de Janeiro) with heavy duty batteries teach me about swimming lessons, essential movements of the samba.
Alberto, shy, is trying in vain to keep an observer of the scene became open street paved with stone vibrating in one hundred cubic feet happy. The modest premises that gave the street, people can hold tens willingly, is random and ephemeral divided into groups of singers and accompaniment groups. No emphasis in the air, people, places, only samba.