Rio's Carnival ends, street sweepers replace bands!

Cleanup crews replaced raucous street bands Wednesday and exhausted revelers took a break from dawn-to-dawn parties as Rio wrapped up one of its biggest Carnival celebrations with the choice of the Baija-Flor group as this year's samba champion.

The pre-Lent celebrations that began Friday attracted 250,000 more people than expected, bringing an estimated $500 million in revenue to the seaside city that will host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

First-time visitors to the never-ending revelry were exhausted.

"I didn't realize it would literally go on all the time," said Rosie Wigmore, a 19-year-old visitor from Brighton, England, who tried to veer off the Carnival path and visit an art gallery, only to be swept up in yet another street band's entourage.

"You would never have this in England," she said. "If you had this many people, and everyone drinking, you'd have fights."