Mud madness: Samba dancers and mud slinging at Brazil Carnival 2014

Extravagant costumes need not apply at the "Bloco da Lama" Carnival street party in the coastal town of Paraty, in Rio de Janeiro State, where revellers dispensed with pirate, princess and devil disguises in favour of thick, head-to-toe layers of black mud. Thousands of revellers, their bikinis and shorts invisible beneath the black coating and their hair frozen into mud Mohawks, danced, drank and flung mud balls as sound trucks blasted bone-jarring rhythms in the colonial Brazilian town on Saturday. Fans of the "Bloco da Lama," which literally translates as "mud street party," insist the event is among the most democratic of the thousands of booze-filled parties that take over Brazil's streets throughout Carnival. The "Bloco da Lama" was founded in 1986 by two local teens who became local Carnival sensations after they appeared in the city's historic centre covered in mud following a crab hunting expedition in a nearby mangrove forest, according to Rodrigues, who was hired by Paraty's City Hall to explain the history of the "bloco" to foreigners, who now come from as far afield as Italy and the Netherlands. Brazil's Carnival runs till Ash Wednesday. euronews: the most watched news channel in Europe Subscribe! http://eurone.ws/10ZCK4a euronews is available in 14 languages: http://eurone.ws/17moBCU In English: Website: http://www.euronews.com/news Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/euronews Twitter: http://twitter.com/euronews Google+: http://google.com/+euronews VKontakte: http://vk.com/en.euronews