Many months have passed since the actual event, but at long last I’m posting the photos of day 3 of our Carnaval for 2009! This was the one we were waiting for, because our favorite bloco for the past few years was set to parade in the morning. It’s called the Cordão Umbilical do Boitatá (“The umbilical cord of the Boitatá”), which is a play on words from the bloco Cordão do Boitatá (“Cordão”, or “big cord”, is a traditional designation for blocos). The “umbilical cord” is a version they do especially for kids.

The Cordão Umbilical is great for us not only because they’re kid-friendly (they start out the parade with an “ala”, or contingent, of babies in strollers), but because all of our old friends go there. It’s a pretty small gathering (only a few hundred people, as opposed to the tens of thousands that show up at the real Cordão do Boitatá), so it *almost* feels like a private party. As far as G-rated Carnaval goes, it doesn’t get much better than this!

The bloco marches on up the hill to a hospital. When we get there, everyone starts to sing and play in a whisper so as not to disturb the hospital patients (it’s part of the annual ritual). Then we turn a corner and immediately start making mind-bogglingly loud noise again as if, by virtue of not facing right at them, they won’t be able to hear us.  The bloco proceeds back down the hill on a separate street to end up where we started.

We headed back home, got ourselves cleaned up, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool (sorry, no pictures). And that was pretty much it for our Carnaval: Dada had to spend day 4 doing a shift at the hospital, and I joined her there for an emergency ecocardiogram (long story, nothing to worry about). The rest of the week was spent visiting Dada’s cousin down in Campinas, São Paulo. Hopefully I can get around to showing you that some day… or any of the other 2500 photos we’ve taken since Carnaval.