Images: Faces and Places - Rio one Saturday Morning (click on images to enlarge)

One Saturday morning, we caught the subway to downtown Rio just to wander around check out the markets, buildings and just for a look.
As we walked towards the city center, the streets were all but empty. Carnival floats were parked lining the streets every where and people were working building these floats.
As time went buy and the more we walked we noticed the streets were starting to come alive with people and some type of event was going to happen.
The streets got that crowded and one could not move, so we located ourselves at the entry of some government building at the top of the stairs, to try and capture this event.
We wanted to find out what the event was about, but, not one person spoke English.
Later we found out (to our understanding) that the event was a battle of street bands held in different districts annually during carnival time and this was one of those events for the city area.

Empty streets

The subway station is under this building

Looks like rain

People dressed for some type of party

Repairing and making floats

Hello what's this people buying and wearing outfits with black dots

Yes we meet them all

Starting to get a little crowded

Band on top of a large vehicle

Really big vehicle with band playing and people partying

This man was shaking as badly as he tried to get through the crowd

Party Time

Party on top of a truck

Foam was spraying every where Yes we copped a face full also

Are they for real??

A crowd of millions

When the bands had passed us and the crowded started to thin we decided to make a move.

As I was pushing forward through the crowd with my camera secured to my wrist and Teresa

right behind me, I heard a scream from Teresa to turn around and find her holding a young man by his Tee shirt. I jumped over her and grabbed his shirt near the neck, I realized he had snatched a chain from around her neck. The crowd was so thick with people he could not get away I was also holding him by his shirt,

he bent forward to try and get away by slipping out of his shirt, but, that was a mistake as my Military training took effect. I got my arm around his neck I held him in a vice like head lock and took him down on a car hood, making his nose a little flatter as he went down. When Teresa had released her hold on his shirt she fell backward to the ground, (she was holding onto him with such force) I yelled are you Okay she was up in a flash and started to chop into this bloke with the edge of her hand at the same time she was pulling his pants down.(so he could not run away) Not one person in the crowd tried to help us or even help Teresa to her feet.

While we were dealing with him two police men arrived and took over.

We told the police by sign language what he had snatched and they were trying to find the gold chain and cross, when Teresa saw a little bit of the chain under the edge of his foot. without hesitation she booted the bloke in his ankle which in turn revealed the chain and cross.

I had never seen Teresa work some one over like this she even started to pull the Policemans baton from his belt just to give this young man a lesson.

We could not understand what the Police were saying to us but they carted the young man away

and we were happy that we had the chain and cross back.

It was about a hour later when we started to realize how shaken up we were and also how stupid of us to grab and hold him as he could have had a gun or a knife.

As we were leaving two young men came up asking where we were from when I told then Australia one put his fists up and said Yah Boxing Kangaroos

Yes we were Mugged in Rio!