Fun

We had nothing to do for New Year's Eve, 1999. All our plans fell through, all our friends had their own plans... So we thought, let's go to Rio! So, we did!

Rio had to be the most fun place on the planet for New Year's Eve, 1999. It's a big event there every year. On Reveillon, as they call it, Cariocas assemble on Copacabana beach, dressed in white, and cast lilies into the sea to honour the Virgin Mary, well, Iemanja, a West African sea goddess absorbed into the local strain of catholicism. On New Year's Eve 1999 the crowd was even bigger than usual - by midnight there were four or five million people, apparently, crammed onto the 4km long beach. At the stroke of midnight, installations placed every 500m along the beach sent co-ordinated and choreographed fireworks up into the sky for half an hour, the display was without a shadow of a doubt the most impressive I've ever seen.

The atmosphere was wonderful. All those people crammed into a relatively small area in one of the most violent cities on earth, and not a hint of trouble, just loads and loads of fun. The rain started at 1am but the party went on all night. We joined a bunch of hari krishnas and danced down to Ipanema, went back to our room and grabbed a bottle of champagne to see up the sun from Arpoador point. Well... it was still raining, but we drank it anyway, to see in the 21st century.

Details: Minolta compact 35mm camera, automatic exposure. 31 December 1999, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Placemark.