Carnaval in Brazil - an Ipanema bloco

The road beside the beach is heaving today. The giant bloco truck crawls like some snail dinosaur anxious not to crush the pullulating crowd lapping against it. Behind surge tribal devotees shuffling their feet and swaying their hips in ritual worship. The band and singer throned like priests atop the truck intone the over-amplified samba hymns but fail to tempt the elder congregation from the beach. The younger folk, though, push their smooth brown bodies past a thousand possible partners. There's every sort of garish fancy dress that Chinese plastics factories can imagine - girls in fru-fru skirts, with glittered cheeks and rainbow wigs, guys in fru-fru skirts flaunting their muscles steroid big, superhero costumes, masks, bow ties, feathered head-dresses and devil's horns, nurses, togas, Aztec gods, Hawaian skirts, girls in bridal white, in hope perhaps. The route is lined with mini-business men ( hopeful entrepreneurs from the favelas ? ) selling snacks of all sorts and, from polystyrene cases some the size of coffins, iced beers bought from local supermarkets, carried here on shoulders, towed on trolleys or pushed on carts. Their efforts certainly merit profit if only they don't over-supply. Now comes the brightest fancy dress of all : the council cleaner's hi-viz orange overall intent on sweeping up the drink detritus bottles, cans and plastic cups and close behind the servant rubbish truck. Without the need for any entrance fee and fancy dress not a necessity, this is a music festival for free. But what is celebrated here is not in fact the music, but rather,  time with friends for getting drunk as part of the biggest booze-up ever in pisstory.