The Carnival

Rio's samba schools are organised into six competitive leagues which compete over four days. The winning school of each league parades on the fifth day.

The biggest samba schools have up to 5,000 participants and take up to two hours to parade down the Sambodromo runway in Rio de Janeiro.

Each school is judged on a range of criteria from the school's central theme to the drumming section and, of course, the dancing, the floats and the costumes.

Carla is the "porta-bandeira" - flag bearer - of her local samba school, Vila Isabel, and worked all year round preparing for the parade, which kicked off the Carnival. She had to hold the school flag during an elaborate dance routine with her consort. The samba school followed on behind with an army of percussionists known as the "bateria". The school's theme for this year's parade was the work of Oscar Niemeyer, the famous architect of Brazil's capital city, Brasilia.

• CARLA'S CARNIVAL DIARY -Day 4- THE RESULTS
  
  There was a lot of confusion and, in the end, Vila Isabel came in third place. In the special group, Beija Flor came first, followed by Mangueira. In our group, São Clemente won.
  
  We did nothing wrong during the parade, the judges gave us good scores, but I think it was a fix. The Access Groups have a lot of dodgy stuff going on. Our president is new to the job and doesn't know half of what takes place behind the scenes. There's a lot of bad stuff, a lot of cheating.
  
  I'm not going to say that Vila is better than the rest, no. But the favourites, like Vila Isabel and Paraíso, who presented a beautiful parade honouring Portinari, didn't even get a look-in. It was a very surprising result.
  
  I'm not sad about it. Somebody had to win. There were a lot of people wanting to be champions but there's only one winner. The good thing about the Carnival is that you always have next year to try again.

Salvador