By DAVID BILLER and MAURI­CIO SAVARESE-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Col­or­ful floats and flam­boy­ant dancers are de­light­ing tens of thou­sands jammed in­to Rio de Janeiro’s icon­ic Sam­badrome, putting on a de­layed Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion af­ter the pan­dem­ic halt­ed the daz­zling dis­plays.

Rio de Janeiro’s top sam­ba schools be­gan strut­ting their stuff late Fri­day, which was the first evening of the two-night spec­ta­cle.

Ke­tu­la Me­lo, 38, a muse in the Im­per­a­triz Leopoldinense school dressed as the Ie­man­ja de­ity of Afro-Brazil­ian re­li­gions, was thrilled to be back at the Sam­badrome.

“These two years were hor­ri­ble. Now we can be hap­py again,” Me­lo said as she was about to en­ter Fri­day night wear­ing a black and white cos­tume made of shells that bare­ly cov­ered her body.

Rio’s Sam­badrome has been home to the pa­rade since the 1980s, and is a sym­bol of Brazil’s Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, it was a shel­ter for more than 400 home­less peo­ple and al­so served as a vac­ci­na­tion sta­tion.

Brazil con­firmed its first cas­es of the coro­n­avirus in mid-March 2020, just af­ter that year’s Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties came to an end. The 2021 edi­tion was swift­ly can­celled due to the rise of the delta vari­ant. More than 663,000 peo­ple have died from COVID-19 in Brazil, the sec­ond high­est of any coun­try in the world, ac­cord­ing to Our World in Da­ta, an on­line re­search site.

En­tire com­mu­ni­ties ral­ly around the com­pet­ing sam­ba schools, whose shows are not on­ly a source of pride but al­so em­ploy­ment since prepa­ra­tions re­quire count­less seam­stress­es, welders, cos­tume de­sign­ers and more. There are months of re­hearsals for dancers and drum­mers, so par­tic­i­pants can learn the tune and the lyrics for their school’s song. The pan­dem­ic up­end­ed these sam­ba schools’ way of life for two years.

Sao Paulo al­so kicked off its Car­ni­val pa­rade Fri­day evening. Both cities’ pa­rades usu­al­ly take place in Feb­ru­ary or March, but their may­ors in Jan­u­ary joint­ly an­nounced they were post­pon­ing Car­ni­val by two months due to con­cerns about the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the omi­cron vari­ant.

The num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es and deaths has plunged since then, and more than three-quar­ters of Brazil­ians are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, ac­cord­ing to the coun­try’s health min­istry. Lo­cal au­thor­i­ties have al­lowed soc­cer match­es with full at­ten­dance since March.

Rio au­thor­i­ties said ear­li­er this week those at­tend­ing the pa­rade would have to show proof of vac­ci­na­tion, but me­dia re­ports showed that at­ten­dees had no trou­ble get­ting tick­ets or en­ter­ing the Sam­badrome with­out show­ing the re­quired doc­u­ments.

A seat in the bleach­ers cost about $50, and the most ex­pen­sive seats can cost more than $1,260. Go­ing out in one of the sam­ba schools costs a lot for tourists, but it is of­ten free for peo­ple who are in­volved with the pa­rade all year round, like 66-year-old Ju­cia­ra do Nasci­men­to San­tos. She was among the rev­el­ers start­ing this year’s pa­rade with the Im­per­a­triz Leopoldinense sam­ba school.

“We had to take care of our­selves dur­ing this time so we could be here to­day cel­e­brat­ing life,” said San­tos, who has pa­rad­ed with Im­per­a­triz Leopoldinense since 1984. This time she was in the sec­tion of the ba­ianas, of­ten re­served for the old­est women of each sam­ba school. Many of these sam­ba schools re­port­ed they lost many of their ba­ianas to the virus.

For those un­will­ing to shell out for the price of ad­mis­sion, there were street par­ties across Rio — de­spite City Hall deny­ing au­tho­riza­tion for them to take place, cit­ing in­suf­fi­cient time to pre­pare. Some or­ga­niz­ers couldn’t care less, ar­gu­ing that cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val wasn’t con­tin­gent on au­thor­i­ties’ con­sent, and partiers hit the streets in force.