Sports and Leisure in Brazil

 

Football, volleyball and kite surfing

When we talk about sport in Brazil, one thinks of course football, the rank of popular religion by all Brazilians and practiced in all towns and villages. The number and size of football stadiums in Brazilian cities is testimony to the popularity of this sport, the most famous being the Maracana in Rio and Sao Paulo Morumbi. Every major city has at least two teams, so two stages, a team supported by the working class and another supported by the bourgeois class.

To experience the atmosphere vibrant games and plunge into all this madness in Brazil, you can go to the stadium, usually on Wednesdays and Sundays. For large meetings, everything stops.

After football, volleyball and beach volleyball, practiced on the beaches of the coast, are very popular and appreciated by men and women. Like basketball, which saw the birth of the top players. The middle class particularly enjoys tennis. Not to mention the formula 1, popularized by the legendary motor racing driver, Nelson Piquet Rubens Barichello or Ayrton Senna.

On the coast of the Northeast, from August to September, the kite was on a roll! The small town of Paracuru, a hundred kilometers north of Fortaleza, has become in recent years, one of the spots in the world of the sport, like Jericoacoara or Barra Grande.

Otherwise, there is little known in Europe but activity practiced by a majority of Brazilians, walking tonic (!). This activity requires very specific conditions in these regions because it is performed preferably in an idyllic setting along the coastal beaches such as Copacabana, to name only the most famous...

Early morning or late afternoon, a crowd uniform, wearing a tight-fitting shorts, sneakers and futuristic usually equipped with a walkman, with an energetic pacing the few miles along the vast sandy beaches. Democratic activity, practiced alone or with others, from 7 to 77 years, which sometimes offers an unusual sight on the beaches of Rio, the Espírito Santo and Bahia.

Capoeira

Practiced in many Brazilian cities, in the afternoon or evening in the square by the sea or the sound of African songs and three musical instruments, amazing dancers, often dressed in white, two rival two in the middle of a circle formed by the participants. The pace particular, the vibration of the steel cord of berimbaus the choir clearly truculent and profane at the same time chanting, this can attract your attention. And tricks of the "dancer-combatants", usually men, will make you think it could be a ballet-like tragic and murderous.

Hidden within this amazing dance, it is one of the most formidable combat sports that are borrowed from the martial techniques of various African nations. Capoeira is now practiced throughout Brazil, with championships and a sports federation (which are obviously the best academies in Bahia). It serves as a flag to the various cultural movements of black consciousness.

The "game animals"

On popular games, you can see many blocks from the downtown of men sitting on chairs, pen and notebook in hand, waiting for customers for the jogo do bicho. The "game animals" is parallel in paris (and illegal) is being done on animals, on the same principle as the National Lottery. It was invented in the 1870s to raise funds to redevelop the city zoo. The idea was taken illegally.

It is an institution in Brazil, the police do not seek to prohibit. Indeed, the rich people at the head of the Paris underground grease the highest political police and paws. In addition, they largely fund the carnival, and that's sacred!