Rio Day 8 - February 28th

Since we got home at 7am, most of the day was spent sleeping. I've never slept until 2 in the afternoon before. Both Boy and Nancy snirked at this, both apparently quite practiced at sleeping half the day away. We didn't do much all day. Boy and I went for a walk while Nancy and AJ took a nap (yeah...they got up at 2 then went down for a nap at 4). We figured we'd conserve energy for all the Shrove Tuesday celebrations. Yee-ha! At about 7 we started asking around about parties going on and where to find them. As it turns out, parties start early on Fat Tuesday and end by about 9. You would think one of our 5 or 6 guide books would have mentioned this slight deviation from the rest of the week. But no.

So off we went in search of a party. We found one in Ipanema that was just starting to peter out. Stayed there for a while, then caught the metro to Lapa, where we had been told there was an amazing party every night. The metro is open 24 hours during carnival - but when we got on at 1045pm, we were told it would close in 15min. This did not bode well as a 'hey the whole city parties all night' outlook. When we got to Lapa, we called to ask where to head for a party. We were told to just look around. Se we aimed for a club that we were told of, then we heard music. So...we followed the music. After half an hour of following a faint beat through a sketchy area of town, asking for directions in an hourly 'hotel', and telling AJ for the billionth time that it's not a great idea to wander away from us without warning us first...we found the source of the music. A rave going on on the other side of a lake. With a gated and locked path between us and said rave. Sigh.

On the bus-ride home, Nancy spotted what appeared to be a street party. Off the bus we hopped and headed over. It turned out to in fact be a Transvestite/Transgendered Beauty Pageant. We stuck around for about an hour, lots of fun...and lots of rhinestone G-strings. Towards the end, I guess they needed some filler, as this was airing live nationally and they had 30sec with no contestants. Nancy and I were stading right up front so as to get a better view when we were spotted by the production staff. The Carmen-Mirana-esque MC dragged us into the spotlight to teach us the samba on national TV.

No street parties, but we did end up dancing the samba with a Trannie Carmen Miranda on Brazillian National TV.