Street parties, favela parties, train station party´s, and July party´s. Lately, I have been going to some pretty unique party´s.
Every friday night in Rio, most of the young people will bus it to Lapa. Lapa can be described as the cheap ($1 beers) bohemian part of Rio. Thousands of people go and the streets are near impossible to navigate. Some people go into discotheque’s but most, and even us, just drink capirinhas and beer, eat meat on sticks, and dance, all in the streets.
This picture is particularly ironic. It shows a parked police car right outside of a love motel with the policemen chatting up the prostitutes.
The scene on friday night.
But even during the day you can find people drinking and dancing to live music. Even more odd, it can happen in the train/subway station!
The band!
But we decided to skip the train station part and instead head over to the July party.
We took a train into a favela
, the Brazilian equivalent of a shanty town. The July party is more of a traditional neighborhood block party. Everyone from the neighborhood goes to theirs, held in their neighborhood Samba school. They eat traditional food like Fejioa, drink capirinhas, and dance to live music.
Here we are at the party. I met these guys in my hostel and ended up traveling with them for about a week. They are from Canada and France.
Every sunday one of the favela´s host their party in a giant warehouse. To get there, we took a 45 minute cab into the favela. It was only $5 to get in the the party was great. They play Brazilian funk music which makes the atmosphere a bit different. There are also tons of tourists like ourselves there.
The party´s in Brazil are unique, but I think I prefer the nightlife in Colombia!