Partying can be real dirty work
HUNDREDS of revellers wrestled, tackled each other and threw chunks of gunk while shaking it to samba and reggaeton Saturday at a Brazilian Carnival beach party where clothes were optional but the mud was not.
The annual “Bloco da Lama,” or “Mud Party,” in the coastal town of Paraty about a four-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro, got started when Alesandra Cristiana was the first person to jump into thick black mud in an area of mangroves the size of several soccer fields.
With the tropical sun blasting, dozens of onlookers then followed her lead, soon followed by a few hundred. The messy party hearkens back to 1986, when according to local lore a few teenagers hiking in a mangrove forest smeared themselves with mud to combat mosquitoes.
They then paraded through Paraty, a former Portuguese colonial town with picturesque white walls downtown. A tradition was born. These days, revellers no longer parade through town, a practice that angered shopkeepers who watched their white walls get sullied with flying soil.
Instead, the partygoers stick to the mangroves and adjoining beach.