Teenagers playing with mud started the Bloco da Lama in 1986 and it has since become an annual event in the city of Paraty, Brazil. Hundreds of people wrestle, coat each other in mud and throw it around to the sound of samba and reggaeton at a carnival beach party on February 18, 2023. Clothes are optional, but mud is not. (Photo by Fabio Teixeira/SIPA Press/Profimedia)

A Cucumber and a Chuta Cholero hug during the traditional festival “Desentierro del Pepino” (unearthing the Cucumber) to mark the beginning of carnival on January 21, 2024 in La Paz, Bolivia. People dug up the cucumber from the cemetery and walk through the streets with two characters, the Ch'uta and the Chola. (Photo by Gaston Brito/Getty Images)

In this January 25, 2013 photo, snake handler Saintilus Resilus holds a snake in front of his lips as he trains the snake to recognize his smell as he prepares for his street performances during the pre-Lenten Carnival season, at his home in Petionville, Haiti. Resilus sees himself as something of a performance artist, showing off with snakes and other animals that Haitians don't see every day, earning tips from impromptu audiences. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo via Matt Dayhoff)

Spanish flamenco dancer Salome Ramirez performs in the show “Authentic Flamenco”, the show of the Teatro Real in Madrid, at the Sao Pedro theater in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 14 December 2022. After a successful tour in the United States and India, the show has arrived in the country of samba and carnivals, this time by the dancer Eduardo Guerrero and his work “Faro”. (Photo by Isaac Fontana/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

People paly with fireworks during Parrandas de Camajuani, Cuba on March 22, 2025. Two neighborhoods of the city, San Jose, represented by a toad, and Santa Teresa, represented by a goat, fight with carnival shows that involve the whole town in a party with bands, huge floats and fireworks. The Parrandas de Camajuani with more than 130 years, are recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2018. (Photo by Yamil Lage/AFP Photo)

Edinburgh mask maker Lorraine Pritchard on Sunday, January 28, 2024 alongside some of her Venetian masks which will be worn and displayed at the Venice Carnival, which starts on Saturday February 3. Lorraine studied model making at Glasgow College of Building and Printing and Venetian mask making in Florence, Italy. She travels to Venice each year to be a “mask” herself, wearing different masks she has designed as a live exhibit of her work. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

A boy jumps into a pool of mud during the traditional “Bloco da Lama” or “Mud Street” carnival party, in Paraty, Brazil, Saturday, February 25, 2017. Legend has it the “bloco” was born in 1986 after local teens hiking in a nearby mangrove forest smeared themselves with mud to discourage mosquitoes and then wandered through Paraty. The party grew year after year, but revelers eventually were banned from parading in the colonial downtown after shopkeepers complained pristine white walls were stained with the hard-to-remove mud. (Photo by Mauro Pimentel/AP Photo)

In this April 1, 2017 picture a man dressed as a “Harramacho” a traditional character from the Navalacruz carnival poses for a picture before a traditional Spanish mask gathering in the small village of Casavieja, Spain. Every spring they come from towns across central and northwestern Spain, clad in elaborate costumes – some as trees, others as bears, still others as monsters who could have emerged from some sort of fever dream. (Photo by Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP Photo)