3 nights in Sao Paulo, Brasil

We´d found an extra friend on the bus, a girl called Katya from Mexico, who had overheard us talking English and approached us. She kind of latched onto us, but her being a single young girl, C & I felt a little responsible for her in the big bad dangerous Sao Paulo (well, Lonely Planet said it was), so we took her under our wing and told her to stick with us.

Sao Paulo is the 3rd biggest city in the world. And with over 20 million inhabitants, twice the size of London. All the books warned caution.

By sheer amazing miracle upon miracle, despite us not giving him an exact ETA and our bus turning up an hour later than expected, Stéphane (my old teaching colleague Ali´s friend), had turned up to meet us and found me about to log onto my internet account to get his number.

He informed us he´d also booked us into a hotel for the night, near where he lived in the area of Paulista (quite a bohemian and arty area)...Katya looked a little worried we´d abandon her, but in the end, we managed to get a room with an extra bed in it and let her share with us, bless her.

It was a SWANKY hotel, all marble and chrome reception, with glossy designer internet terminals and big screen music tv above minimalist leather and chrome sofas. Stéph´d got us a really cheap rate, but I think it´s because it´s not quite finished yet - they were still laying carpet on the stairs up from our floor, I noticed.

Still, what an angel - we´d never even asked him to do this for us! We extended our booking for the next night too, dumped our bags and all headed out for what turned out to be a fantastic meal; meat or fish of choice with more colourful and tasty vegetables than I´d eaten in two months in Posadas (I gorged a little), and headed on for a few drinks.

Whilst looking for some bars closer to our hotel to end the evening, we noticed a lot of pretty boys in twos and a few butch lady-pairs too. Ah! We were staying in the gay part of town! I felt instantly safer, and smiled to myself as I watched C & Stéphane walking ahead of Katya and me, C oblivious to the fact that he was being checked out by quite a lot of the local talent.

We eventually stumbled across some gorgeous little bars in the arty area of town, Paulista (having nearly been guided into a titty bar the other side of town when we were looking for a club called Vegas...I think we got taken to the wrong Vegas...!), so we found one and sat in it talking away for the rest of the evening..

Not an awful lot more to say about the first night, except C & I were glad we´d got two people who had a rudimentary grasp of Portuguese. Katya in fact put us all to shame - early 20s and she speaks fluent Spanish, English, French (she lived there for a while) and gets by in Portuguese. She took the opportunity to speak to Stéphane in his native French (he´s out here for 6 months, just bumming and learning Portuguese, living with two Brazilian brothers), which I did too for a bit, but realised it was making C feel left out, so we mainly stuck to English.

A little embarassing, isn´t it, that everyone defaults to English so us Brits can keep up?!
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Next day we all met up, Katya wanted, for some reason to buy a hooky footy shirt for a mate so there ensued a wild-goose chase which took us all over the city (it was a nice day, so we were walking), but this did mean time was ticking on and C & I were getting bored with not getting anything we´d planned to do, done.

Still, added to the C outside footy stadium collection (2 of a series of 2 now), Estadium Municipal, and failing to find the deep fried cheese-filled pastry pockets an appetising lunch choice at the nearby market, I picked some nectarines, strawberries and cherries out instead. I was so shocked when the man said it was 25 Real (about 6-7 quid, that´s fancy Borough-bleedin´-market prices!!!) that I simply handed the money over. Of course I should have bargained, walked away, whatever, but I was in shock. Plus, it being Portuguese I wasn´t exactly sure he´d said what he did. I consoled myself that they were, at least, tasty as hell and I´d bought enough for a yummy breakfast for C & I the next day.

Wandered round another craft market more centrally in town, bought a few presents for back home, then parted company with Katya and Stéphane as they were still on the hooky top trail.

We opted for a bit of culture, but not before I stopped to eat a very weird street snack, I will call Hot Cheese on a Stick!

We headed to the Oriental quarter and spent a few hours there watching the celebrations; 100 years of the Oriental community settling in Sao Paulo.

I did think it quite funny we´d come to South America to watch a load of Chinese/Japanese celebrations, but there you go, aint the world just a big old meltin´ pot...

Later that night (much later, annoyingly, they were like 1.5 hours late...and I was starving), Katya, Stéph and his flatmate Gabriel, a lawyer, came to pick us up and go to Gabriel´s favourite restaurant which served food typical of the only part of Brazil that doesn´t have a river or sea. Something started to niggle me about that.

I was right; they did no fish dishes! Or any vegetarian ones. So now I was hungry, we were really late (it was nearly 11), I´d not eaten all the yummy food at the Chinese fest as we were going to this great restaurant, and I was stuck with...soup and salad. Whilst the rest of them tucked into a huge fat meat feast. I felt like I was coming down with something too, so I was feeling a bit emotional already and hunger just makes it worse. I tried hard not to cry. My last night in Sao Paulo and this?!?! I glugged at my Capirinha, sipped at my soup and nibbled on a salad, that I then couldn´t finish, when C sneezed on it by mistake. Great.

We wandered round for a bit trying to find a promised Samba club, but in the end, I was feeling a bit ropey, so C & I headed back - we had to be on a bus back to Posadas the next day anyway to get the next bus out of Cordoba and we had not been able to get the swanky hotel to help with bookings (they were a bit rubbish on reception), so we´d have to go early.
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Next day, we found out we couldn´t actually leave Sao Paulo that day, so we´d have to get an 11am the next day. We´d just checked out and paid the hotel 15 Real to look after our luggage! And we couldn´t book a ticket till 2.30 as they were on siesta or something, so we had to hang around the bus station. Tried to go online to blog, but the "24 hour" internet café was inexplicably shut, so took a pic of C next to an amusing chemist´s sign instead (Farto) and had a tiny hot chocolate as I tried to drown out the tuneless tinkly-plonk of a drunken tramp on a piano in the café´s courtyard.

Eventually we managed to purchase our tickets out of town and headed off to find a bit of culture...found a samba band playing tunes on recycled drums, pots and pans...think it was a "Green Week" or something...ended up finding a fascinating Antiques market on the way to the Art gallery, so much so, we didn´t get round to doing the gallery either as we were then too hungry so went for something to eat. We really are crap at being tourists!

That evening, we kept it low key, checked back into the hotel, had a nap, and went out about 11pm to get something for C to eat. I just had a hot chocolate. I really wasn´t feeling great...eventually I think, hanging out with "Sicknote" has finally got to my immune system...oh oh...