Sao Paulo revisited

Sao Paulo is a huge and ugly place that I didnt really like in my first visit. However, the state of Sao Paulo is much more than the massive and dangerous metropoli. It includes hundreds of kms of beaches, some of them considered to be among the bests in the country. So the idea was to spend the minimum ammount of time in the city, wish the weather would not fuck up the plan as usual and get my ass to the Atlantic. Again, I had a friend living there, Luis ex Johannesburg ICEX, if you have been reading this from the beginning, you might remember him from the Paraty entry. Luisote has settled down pretty well in Sao Paulo. He works for a german company that pays him well enough to have nice apartment with swimming pool and, more important, his own car to move around. The guy hasnt been here for a long time but already speaks portuguesse as if he was born in Rio…

So I landed in Sao Paulo at 8am after a flight that happened really fast, probably cause it was sleeping right after I got into the seat and woke up right when it landed. Tam happened to be a great airline, in spite of been such a short flight, they give you stuff that other airlines wont give you even if you are crossing the ocean: blindfold for sleeping, earplugs, blanket, pillow and toothbrush. Not bad for an hour and a half flight.

From Gaurhulos, Sao Paulo airport, it took me another hour and a half to get to Luis´s place in the public transportation which, by the way, happened to be quite efficient. The metro has nothing to envy to any european one, modern and fast. Thanks to him I arrived just 30 minutes later to… work. That is the great thing about been working in IBM, they are quite flexible when it comes to work remotely. In fact, my real holidays only started at 6pm that day. Until then I was working with my laptop from Luis place.

At the same time we were planning the weekend. There was quite a few interesting spots more or less nearby. In the North of the state there are quite a few touristic areas with all sorts of beaches: isolated, party-type, for surfers, for families… In the end we opted for the closest spot, “Costa de los Alcatraces” and more in particular for a place called Camburi which seemed to offer enough things to do for a few days. No far from Camburi there is a supposedly paradisiac island with amazing beaches called Ilhabela. The only problem it has is the massive presence of moquitos, still, we decided to spend there the first day.

Just to make the trip a bit more social and less expensive, we posted in the Sao Paulo couchsurfing group, with the very unlikely hope of getting someone to join us in the last minute. Surprisingly this worked out and two people inmediately answered: a brazilian who didnt make it in the end and another girl who happened to be living next door to Luis so the plan fitted her perfectly. Man, that was quite a coincidence in a huge city like this. She would meet us next day for the trip.

Apparently traffic in Sao Paulo is a nightmare and it was not a good idea to depart that Friday afternoon so we decided to leave next Saturday very early in the morning. This meant not having a huge night, we just walked around in the city, ate a very tasty pizza and hanged around for a while in a very posh party happening in a very luxury house. They say Sao Paulo is the city where the society class you belong to becomes really important. Everybody has to show off as much as they can and hang aroun only in places with “nice” people like them. This party was a bit like that so nothing really remarkable.

However, I have to say that in this second and also really quick visit, the biggest city of Brazil convinced me a bit more. I liked Luis neibourghood and the small cheap places with tables on the streats that you can find all over the city. A sort of Spanish style. Besides, the Paulista avenue is quite cool, again a sort of brazilian version of Castellana in Madrid, very wide and surrounded by tall buildings. Paulistas are funny people and built their electricity towers in a way the look replicas of the Eiffel tower, with lights and everything. There was a couple of them in this area.

Tags: Sao Paulo