Thousands of revellers and samba dancers took to the street for the opening night of the annual carnival celebrations in Brazilian city Sao Paulo.
The Sao Paulo carnival is one of the world’s biggest street parties with over 30,000 revellers taking part in the festivities which include dancers wearing body pain, feathers, and lots of glitter.
Local samba schools play a big part in this 5-day street festival which builds up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.
Brazil’s street carnivals are world renown and many town and villages hold carnivals, however, Sao Paulo and Rio hold the biggest carnivals. The country receives about 500,000 visitors attracted to these carnivals.
See our pick of the sexiest Brazilian samba dancers at this year’s carnival.
Enjoy!
A reveler of the Perola Negra samba school performs during the second night of carnival parade at the Sambadrome in Sao Paulo, Brazil on March 1, 2014 (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)The festival attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)Sao Paulo’s Sambadrome hosts a huge pageant with around 30,000 revellers (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)The Gavioes da Fiel samba school’s theme for this year’s carnival is an homage to Brazilian former football star Ronaldo (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)The festival leads up to Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)Lent is a time when Christians abstain from bodily pleasures (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)The wild excesses of Carnival are seen as a farewell to pleasures of the flesh before Lent (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)Carnival began on Friday and will continue until Shrove Tuesday – or ‘Fat Tuesday’ as it is called in Brazil (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)Carnival is celebrated in more than 400 towns and villages, but the festivities in Sao Paulo and Rio are famous for their scale (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)More than half a million foreign tourists visit Brazil for carnival every year (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)
