48/50.- Rio de Janeiro, Carnival in Sambodrome

The first thing that will surprise you is the beauty of the dresses the members of the samba school wear. They are richly decorated. The second thing that will surprise you is the amount of people taking part in each parade. Up to 10,000 people! And each and every one of them properly dressed up. At a given moment the street will be completely flooded with dancers and party goers (and we are talking about a street that is more than 2 km long!)

In any other city having more than 10,000 people parading with such dresses would be enough to attract the attention of the world, but in Rio we have 12 of these bands taking part in the first division of the carnival competition! In total more than 70,000 people take part in the festival. Each of the costumes can cost more than 300 US dollars. With these figures you can get an idea of the magnitude of the event.

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