Bloco da Lama: Brazilian Town Celebrates Carnival with Mad, Muddy Street Party Jenny Barchfield - The Associated Press
go to original March 2, 2014

Bloco da Lama | Carnaval (Prefeitura Paraty)

PARATY, Brazil — Extravagant costumes need not apply at the "Bloco da Lama" Carnival street party, where revelers dispense with pirate, princess and devil disguises in favor of thick, head-to-toe layers of black mud.

Thousands of revelers, their bikinis and shorts invisible beneath the black coating and their hair frozen into mud Mohawks, danced, drank and flung mud balls as sound trucks blasted bone-jarring rhythms in this colonial Brazilian town.

Saturday's fun was contagious and just about everyone got into it, from sculptured gym bunnies rubbing down their impeccable abs, to fuller figured people smearing handfuls of the stuff over spare tires, to old ladies and children giddy with disbelief that the whole thing was actually happening. Even a Belgian Shepherd named Thunder rolled in the mud, his fuzzy auburn fur temporarily as slick and black as an otter's.

Gangs of mud-covered revelers called out to the clean, "want a hug" and tried to catch unsullied passers-by in muddy group embraces. Everyone struggled to snap selfies with smartphones that were getting dirtier by the second.

Read the rest at StarTribune

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