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Under construction

Today was just a travel day. Came from Paraty on a bus before 10am, got to Sao Paulo at 3.30. Unfortunately had to say a hasty goodbye to John because his bus was late leaving for Florianapolis and I needed to change bus terminal to get to Campo Grande for the Pantanal. So I braved the Sao Paulo metro system for a surprisingly short time and got to the Barra Funda bus station about half an hour before departure. Excellent, settled down on the bus for the 15 hour journey and slept for 7 hours.

After leaving Buenos Aires, my crew and i flew to Sao Paulo to do another leg of our drug investigator meetings for J&J. We were put up at the lovely Hilton Sao Paulo. My feelings about Sao Paulo are mixed to say the least. For one, I should say that I barely got to see anything of the city. Aside from the fact that it is one of the largest cities in the world, I also only had a few days here. However, one of the reasons I did not enjoy Sao Paulo is that it was not a safe city. Our hotel was isolated mostly because of safety. There were guards everywhere. We were warned repeatedly not to go out at night or wander into areas without guides or knowledge of where we wanted to go. In my travels, there is nothing I can't stand more than being afraid of the place I am trying to enjoy and explore. Why would I want to go here when i can go to Prague or Rome and wander aimlessly, completely lost through streets and alleys and never once fear for my health and property? This will explain why I have very limited photos. I should also include that I was tremendously ill at this point in the journey and was desperate to get better before Georges and I went to Machu Picchu. This all being said, at the same time though, I could tell there was a fun South American cosmopolity to the city that was waiting to be explored. Needless to say, you need a local contact to help you navigate this monster of a city.

My crew and I did some fun things, but mostly we stayed close at the really hideously priced, but hip and taste bar/restaurant in the hotel. We did however make a trip out with 10 of us to a classic Brazilian Bar B Q, which was stellar. Everyone was stuffed.

This stop was really just a bridge between Buenos Aires and Machu Picchu for me, but fun nevertheless.

Land in Sao Paulo on Varig 7361, leaving 10:45 am, arriving 1:05 pm.

Don't like the location... quite far away and the streets seem to be not too safe...

If someone is planning to write a guide for Sao Paulo's nightlife, there will be a chapter just to talk about D-Edge. D-Edge is a breakthrough nightclub. The sound system and the lights there are reference and ispiration for every other (good) nightclub in Brazil. Once you get in there you feel like you're not on earth. It is, basically, a black box with lights on the walls, ceiling and floor - red, green, yellow, purple, orange, blue (my favourite one - they only put the blue in special ocasions, when people are going crazy with the exellent song playing). The sound penetrates into your ears and when you notice, you're in the middle of the dancefloor dancing like no one is watching you. It is 5 years old and every year it's on the top 5 nightclubs from DJ Mag magazine (the most important international DJs voting). It is open everyday, except tuesdays, all nights the music playing is electronic, but each night has a specific name and a specific kind of e-music playing. There's On The Rocks, on mondays, with electro-punk. Cio, on wednesdays, playing electro and 80's stuff. Freak Chic, fridays, with house and similars, Saturday is Mothership, playing minimal and on Sunday mornigs Paradise, an after-hours that stars around 5am and goes to 1pm. I'm really thankful to this place because everytime that I go there I have a great time. The bathroom is the best place to meet people (hahaha). Weird, uhn? But it is! But while people stand on the line to do what they have to do, you see the most bizarre, funny and unpredictable stuff going on. When I first star to go to Sao Paulo a lot I didn't know anyone I went out at night alone. Guess where I met almost all my (great) friends in Sao Paulo? Haha. Sometimes the cover to get in is absurd, but if you know someone or put your name on the list (check the website), you'll pay less then that. Drinks are kind of expensive, but it's the avarage prices for Sao Paulo. BRL 6 a beer, BRL 5 a soda, BRL 12 for a vodka or rum. And to get there you don't have to spend a lot with taxi. There's a subway station about 150m away from the club (Barra Funda Starion), and it's really easy to find because it's behind Memorial da Maérica Latina. Have fun!!!

Formule 1 is one of the Accor Hotels. There are 5 different F1 in Sao Paulo, in different locations (of course!) and a price for each depending on the location and how busy it is. By location I'd say that F1 Paulista and F1 Jardins are the best one. It has a different concept of the other Accor hotels. It is fast and really easy to book, to checki-n and pay, to stay, to check-out. 3 persons can stay in a room (check out their website to see the prices of each location), and it is confy and clean. Not much to talk about it. As I said: fast and easy! Recommended!

Usually when I go to Sao Paulo I stay at some friend's place, but this time I tried this hotel. The location is it's best feature. 5 minutes walking from Paulista Avanue (a magic place! I love it), 5 minutes walking from 3 subway stations, around a lot of bars, restaurants, stores and nightclubs and 30 steps away from A Loca, one of my favorite nighclubs in town (I'll write a review about clubbing in Sao Paulo). Anyway, the hotel has some tiny little rooms for 2 persons and it is cheap for Sao Paulo: R$ 88 (brazilian reais) if you pay in cash, R$ 98 in credit or debit cards. I recommend it!

Great, hotel, for a good price, near the international airport. With a kitchen. Clean bathroom, clean rooms. Great breakfast. Kids can stay on a pull out bed.

14 August:
Our 9th wedding anniversary today.  We didn´t end up doing very much as the day was overcast and wet, and didn´t fine up much as the day progressed.  We wandered around a nearby shopping centre, and watched an Airedale Terrier getting his hair done at the pet shop across from Starbucks - kept us amused for half an hour, and the dog was certainly enjoying it!  Kept walking around the block, then back to the hotel to do some internetting and general relaxing (yay for cable tv).  Had dinner at a nice cafe near the hotel, huge meals that couldn´t be finished, so much food goes to waste here because the portions are just so enormous.  Bought ourselves a Tom Jobim CD, seems to be one of his greatest hits compilations so hopefully it will be OK.  Melissa wore her new earrings to dinner for the first time!

15 August:
Travel day today.  After checking out of the hotel, we caught the metro to the Tiete bus station for our 12.15pm bus to Paraty - the metro is so easy to use and fairly cheap.  The bus ride to Paraty was one of our better ones - very scenic, the bus driver was friendly (and careful!) and we got to watch ´Chicken Run´when we weren´t watching the scenery.  Arrived at our hotel in Paraty about 7pm and walked into town for dinner.  Found out that there is a ´pinga´festival on this weekend - pinga is the local cane liquor - and Paraty is one of the main centres.  There was music playing in the town square, so we settled down at a drink stall and worked our way through their menu - will go back tomorrow night to try the ones we missed out on!

Lots of history and culture today!  Started at the Pinacoteca near the Luz Metro Station to see a collection of mostly Brazilian art and sculpture (apart from several Rodin bronzes, not some of his best).  There was a special exhibition of Brazilian art deco and another on the work of French painter NIcholas-Antoine Tournay from his time spent in this country.  Anyone with an interest in art should definitely come here to get a perspective on the history of Brazilian art.  There are 3 levels to the museum, although very little on the basement floor and the building itself is also fascinating - heavily restored, but a great space.  We then walked a couple of blocks up the road to the Museum of Sacred Art, housed in an old monastery.  The displays are laid out really well, and there were plenty of English explanations.  There were some lovely old painted altars from farm chapels, not as ornate as in the bigger churches but in our view more pleasing because of that!  There is also an impressive collection of silver chandeliers which are hung in a small room and have been lit electrically, so looks amazing.  In a separate section of the museum, we saw a diorama of a village perched on a hill, on which there is a nativity scene - all a bit unrelated to the other, but very detailed and well done nonetheless.  This museum is reputed to have one of the best collections of sacred art in South America, and we would certainly agree (bearing in mind the pieces are only Brazilian).
Jumped back on the metro (and then walked quite a way) to visit the Museo Paulista in the Parque Ipiranga.  The park is beautiful, laid out in the French classical style and immaculately maintained.  The museum itself is full of fascinating artefacts relating to everyday life, the development of Sao Paulo and Brazilian history.  There are several paintings here which are apparently quite famous, but we couldn´t get near them for the millions of school children swarming over the place (mind you, it is their history so we can´t complain!).  Well worth a visit, Melissa particularly liked the special display in the room devoted to old irons (the ones for pressing clothes!).

A beautiful place to stay in São Paulo.

Beautiful day today, lots of sun, but  not too hot to walk around.  We walked down to the Parque Ibirapuera again to visit the museums within its grounds.  Started at the African-Brasilian Museum, with an incredible array of exhibits relating to the African-Brasilian history of this country.  You could spend all day here, but if we´d found the English translation booklet in the gift shop BEFORE we went in, that would have been helpful!  Would recommend everyone to visit the gift shop first and spend R5 on the booklet to get the most out of the museum.  It also had an interesting photographic exhibition on the Camino del Santiago, the pilgrims walk across northern Spain, which we would like to do at least part of one day.  The museum has a good collection of art by African Brasilians, along with religious items, carnaval costumes and slavery relics.
Also in the park is the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) which is currently featuring a Marcel Duchamp exhibition.  This was very well organised and allowed us to see replicas of many of his most famous pieces such as the moustachioed Mona Lisa, The Fountain (the urinal) and The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors) etc..  Duchamp produced replicas of the original ready-mades as the originals had all been broken or destroyed and no longer existed.
The Bienal building next door had an exhibition of 50 Years of Bossanova, which would be fascinating for Brazilians, but a little difficult to follow for non-Portuguese speakers.  We listed to lots of music and enjoyed that anyway.  Up above on the 3rd floor of this huge building is the Musuem of Contemporary Art (MAC), which only had a couple of temporary exhibitions, neither particularly good although the photographic collection of `modern life`was interesting.
We then caught a bus back up to the MASP, which fortuitously was free on Tuesday, so saved us R30.  The top floor has an internation collection of art from the pre-Renaissance to the present including good quality works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Constable and El Greco, amongst others.  The middle floor has a temporary exhibition of contemporary Italian art, which was not so good, but some interesting pieces.  The actual quality of the works in this museum are world-class and explain why Sao Paulo is known as the ´cultural capital of Brasil´.  Last stop was an early dinner then home to rest our weary feet!

Woke up to perfect blue skies today, and had our last brekky with Tim this morning - we´ll miss him after being with him for two weeks now.  We took the metro over to Tiete Bus Station to get our tickets for Paraty, the man very kindly told us the good seats to see the coastal view as we travel towards the sea.  Then headed back into the centre to see the Sao Bento Basilica - they were having a multi-denominational service in honour of the Day of the Lawyer, so very apt for Melissa!  We then went to the Edificio Arantes, now the headquarters of the Santander Bank, and went up the tower to get a view over the city.  The building opened in 1947 and is a rough copy of the Empire State Building.  The viewing platform is at 161m and there is a 13m, 1.5 ton crystal chandelier in the lobby.  You have to present photo ID to go up the tower, so make sure you take something if you want to check out the view - which is pretty stunning.  Sao Paulo is the biggest metropolis in South America, with a profusion of heli-pads on the top of the numerous high-rise buildings.  People here apparently use helicopters like taxis, so they´re always buzzing about overhead.  Sao Paulo is a city of great contrasts - incredible and obvious wealth, and also very obvious poverty with beggars and homeless people in the streets.
Walked over to the Central Market, which is laid out very nicely in sections of neat and colourful stalls of every type of foodstuff.  We had lunch at a little cafe, and watched Australia beat Brazil in womens basketball at the Olympics - luckily the owners were pretty friendly!  Went back over to the Praça Se to see the Zero Mile Marker, from where distances in Sao Paulo are measured (we didn´t notice it the other day).  Also some excitement in the Praça with a big crowd gathering around police arresting someone, and another crowd watching a faith healer ´heal´someone from the crowd.  Went home on the metro after a cooling sugarcane drink - the system here is very easy and safe to use and can get you almost anywhere.