Carnival Bacchanal Starts In Rio De Janeiro, City Celebrates!

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Revelers are packing streets and dancing to samba beats in this seaside city's Carnival celebration – a bacchanal of music, booze and flesh that officially opens Friday when King Momo, the mythical figure ruling over the chaos, is handed the keys to the city, the Huffington Post Reports.

The rotund King Momo embodies Carnival, a raucous free-for-all where excesses are encouraged and the natural order of things is turned upside down – men dress as women, the poor parade as kings, rules are bent and everyone escapes their drab daily existence for a few days of catharsis.

This year the celebration is expected to draw about 756,000 visitors, both foreign and Brazilian, who will pack hotels to nearly 100 percent capacity and spend about $559 million, according to Rio state's tourism department.

While pre-Carnival parties have stoked the wild atmosphere in Rio for a few weeks, several tragedies have already struck revelers. A fire burned through warehouses containing more than 8,000 samba group costumes on Feb. 7, forcing the organizations to scramble for weeks to make up what they lost before the parades on Sunday and Monday. A police investigation concluded Thursday the fire was accidental, and not arson.