São Paulo
BRAZIL
Twenty Million and Counting
By LYNDI
Saturday, October 9, 2010
In theory, nightbuses are a great deal. You get to cover a lot of ground while you sleep and it’s like getting a full night’s accommodation included for free! However, in practice I’ve found that it isn’t all good news. We always take a nightbus from Foz to Curitiba (pronounced “Koor-it-chee-ba”), but sometimes those 10 hours on a bus are either frigidly cold due to an overpowered air conditioner or stuffy and suffocating due to lack thereof and sleep is unattainable. Then, once you get in to Curitiba it’s only 7am or so and it’s pretty much a guarantee that your rooms at the hotel will not be ready – when all every single passenger wants is a shower and a bed – not necessarily in that order. But seeing as how we’d already survived The Potholed Deathroad from Santa Cruz to Puerto Suarez (see earlier blog), anything on a paved road would be a dream come true.
But of course, when we got in after a pleasant bus ride, no rooms were ready and we all went on an orientation walk of the city for about half an hour and then hung out in the lobby until rooms became available one by one. Naturally, Aaron and I were the last ones to get our room (around 9:30am) so we passed out pretty quick.
There are not many things that can get me off my drool-stained pillow after a tucking in for a much needed nap – and luckily Curitiba offered it . Cereal. Yes – breakfast cereal. Our hotels were almost like little suites because they had one or two bedrooms, a bathroom and a little kitchenette with a refrigerator and microwave – and bowls and spoons! So I hopped up, ran to the little supermarket, bought my Honey Nut O’s and some skim milk and ate it until I felt sick. By this time Aaron had roused, so I left him with some cherished cereal and ran some errands in Brazil’s “Most Liveable City”. Curitiba earned this honor a few years ago due to the numerous parks, museums, clean streets and social projects that their citizens enjoy. Unfortunately, we had scattered showers, so I did my work for Tucan and then Aaron and I wandered through a street fair until it was time to head back to our little apartment, pop some popcorn and watch a downloaded episode of House. Best night in a long time. Hey – it’s the simple things.
After one night in this wonderful, liveable city, we were off to Brazil’s most polluted and overpopulated city – the infamous São Paulo. We were lucky to arrive on a Sunday, because the part of town we stay in is the gay district, so after an amazing meal at a churrascaria (where the men come by with endless amounts of meat to carve on your plate) we sat outside our hotel and imbibed in beverages from Drinkcart Man (exactly what it sounds like – he sells all sorts of alcoholic concoctions out of a shopping cart. With his liquor license, I’m sure…) and watched the endless parade of transvestites hit up the gay bars’ biggest night. Luke was lucky enough to be hit on by innumerous amounts of men(?) and even got a kiss on the cheek from one. Transvestite-watching-sidewalk-drinking nights have to be the cheapest and most entertaining nights that São Paulo has to offer.
Unfortunately, arriving on a Sunday meant that our free day in this city of nearly 20 million people is a Monday – when all the museums and historic monuments are closed. So our options were a bit limited. The one thing I really wanted to do was to take Aaron to the Banespa building in the city center. From the top of this Empire State Building replica you can look out as far as the smog will let you see and view countless buildings rising up through the haze. In the early 1980s, São Paulo’s population grew uncontrollably – so many people from the northeast of the country were struck by poverty so they moved to a large city to try to make their living. As a result, the city grew with no boundaries, no zoning, and no end in sight.
São Paulo is also known as the Manhattan of the Southern Hemisphere and has tons of a) people, b) companies, and c) tall buildings. In fact, next to New York and Tokyo, São Paulo has the highest number of skyscrapers. They also have a nearly infinite number of helicopter landing pads – just about every skyscraper has one. Apparently back in the 80s when crime was a huge problem, the wealthy elite wouldn’t risk taking a car from Point A to Point B – they flew. Most of the horror stories you hear about the city’s high crime rates date from these times, but since the year 2000, the crime rates have dropped 67% – so the city officials are clearly making some headway.
Despite the dramatic drop off in crime, I still always warn passengers to take extra caution in the city. They won’t be stabbed or mugged – but their watch may accidentally end up in someone else’s hands, or their purses may be slashed unknowingly. Anyways – my point (and I do have one) is that we went to this Banespa building to get this amazing free view of the city – only to find that the bank building was on strike and no one could go up. So there went our big plans for the day. So instead Aaron went off to buy plane tickets for our later travels and I was off to buy bus tickets for the following day – yes, very exciting.
Luke and Keryn found the Hawaiana Concept Store and had about 12 pairs of these overpriced and overrated sandals personally made for them while Kim and Steff went to a little amusement park on the riverside. But we all gathered again that evening for the long-anticipated sushi night!!! Sao Paulo has one of the highest Japanese populations in the world due to a huge immigration rush a couple of decades ago, and although the Japanese have integrated seamlessly into the Brazilian society, they have maintained the highest standards of sushi I’ve ever tasted. It is heaven.
So we were off to Kare Ya in the Japanese Liberdade district. Even the streets in this part of town have little red lamps hanging all over the place with sushi restaurants, karaoke clubs and Asian food markets galore. On weeknights Kare Ya offers all-you-can-eat sushi for R$30 (about $20) – and boy is that a mistake!!! Aaron can easily put away two or three sushi boats single-handedly and although I can’t quite find room for that much – I can do some major damage. I’ve been to this restaurant with nearly every group I’ve taken through São Paulo and always had an excellent meal, but this time our service was pretty horrible – making us wait nearly an hour between sushi boats. And we all know that we can’t have those brain cells registering that our stomachs are full! Time is of the essence!!! But we were all stubborn enough that we waited around to get our deserved fill and then headed out to some karaoke madness! We spent the next few hours in a private booth while Kim, Aaron and Luke serenaded us with some Bryan Adams and we returned the favor with just about anything from Dirty Dancing.
With hoarse throats and newly formed sushi babies in our guts we headed back to the hotel and met up with our dear friend Drinking Cart Man before saying our goodnights. In a city as enormous and consuming as São Paulo you need much more than a day and a half to fully appreciate it. But the beach beckoned and we had to answer it’s call.
