As you drive through Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, you may see a spectacular roadside view: an abandoned group of Santa Clauses surrounded by palm trees and grass.
If you look closely you will find that this group of Christmas Santa Clauses are not alone. A seemingly sad and ruined sleigh of deer can also be seen nearby. Nearby you will spot colorful candies and old slides and a scary house.
On the board you will see: Welcome to Albanoel Park in Itagua, Brazil - an abandoned Christmas-themed park. The park was the brainchild of politician Antonio Albano Reese, known as "Santa Quinto" because he symbolically wore Santa Claus clothes every year on Christmas Day.The park was supposed to be a fun and entertaining place with an area of more than 30 million square meters, but only the Santa Claus area in this park was completed. After Reese's death in a car accident in 2004, Albanoel Park was closed and turned into a ruin. A few years later, Christopher Jones, an English schoolteacher, and a group of friends were driving from Rio to Parati when they spotted scary Santa Clauses.
An avid photographer, Jones captured a stunning collection of photographs of the park, showing the park's sad atmosphere. He jumped out of the car and got closer to these giant statues, Jones and his friends were shocked by what they saw."This huge complex opens completely to the road. "At first I think it was a very small wall, about a foot or two feet high, and it was completely abandoned." Jones said. "Exploring this park was very strange thanks to the correlation between many associations with Christmas, joy, new life, celebration and this horrible, sinister environment."
"Christmas is designed to be fun, isn't it?" He continue, "In fact, behind the actual location of the park was a steep valley with a beautiful waterfall in the background, because it was so far away that it is difficult to show the whole area in one photo."
The other elements of the park were perfectly recognizable. "These types of Santa Claus statues in the park, almost like a burned-out helicopter, were particularly strange," Jones recalls.
Albanoel Park appeared to be completely deserted. "If you look at some of the buildings and look through the open doors or windows, there are some Christmas statues and broken objects inside them, which are particularly scary," Jones said."It seems that they did not remove anything from the place and some parts were crushed and only thrown into the building." Jones' team was cautious about exploring the park and did not know what they might find.
"We didn't want to go too far into the park, just as a precaution," Jones said. "Actually, we lived in the suburbs, but who knows what else there is?"
After returning to the UK, Jones edited photos taken from the park and uploaded them to Flickr. He dimmed the photos and added red to emphasize the park's strangeness. Internationally, the park is not as popular as other abandoned places around the world, and the information available on the Internet is limited enough.As a result, most of Jones' images are displayed on social media. The photos were shared on Twitter by popular personalities, including Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro. "I think this is a place that a lot of people don't really know exist," Del toro commented.
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*share the beauties.
Of course, Corona had forced this on us