São Paulo – Concrete Jungle

Where better to start our adventure than Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo. Unfazed by blogs discussing the intimidating size of the city, often using words such as ‘confusing’ and ‘overwhelming’, I was naively optimistic. I had studiously researched the top attractions and ‘must do’ activities and even found several highly rated eateries and restaurant-lined streets to appease Aiden. I was smugly confident with my unambitious 5-day itinerary. Hidden in this busy concrete jungle were some of Brazil’s most intriguing cultural hotspots, and we were going to see the best of them.

And for the most part, I’m confident Aiden would agree, we achieved this. Picture us, casually exploring the vibrant street art of Batman Alley, eating our way down the famous multicultural Paulista Avenue, cycling through Ibirapuera Park, sun in our faces, wind in our hair, empanadas and caipirinhas in our backpacks. Lovely image isn’t it? Well, this was *mostly* the case but our experience was a little less dreamy and a little more soggy from what I had envisioned, partially due to several teenie-tiny planning oversights.

The first oversight being the unreliability of the weather. I had read and trusted that it almost never rains in Brazil in October. This is a lie, and one that continues to plague me even now. The second and more problematic oversight, was not thinking to double check the location and, more importantly, the walking distance to each destination. Honestly, the pins in Google Maps are just one street away… one 1.7 mile street away.

Waking up to our first full day in São Paulo, well rested and ready to explore, the storm which had caused our plane to divert the previous night, had almost blown itself out. Looking out of our hotel room window at the panoramic view of skyscrapers and rain clouds, I checked the weather and was disheartened by the rather English sounding forecast, 22°C and rain. But the rest of the week looked promising. After heading to our hostel, where I ‘unpacked’, the room had just one small shelf and a bedside table, and Aiden’s bag had yet to materialise, we headed out in search of food and an ATM. Several hours later, well fed and surprisingly exhausted, we rearranged our week’s itinerary to account for this lost day and attempted to learn some useful Portuguese words, before admitting defeat and falling asleep to the sounds of the hostels’ refrigerators and the rain on the conservatory roof.

The next morning, cloudy and foggy, but thankfully dry, we headed out on our first proper adventure. To make up for lost time, we really threw ourselves in the deep end, strolling up Paulista Avenue. We saw Kobra’s mural of Oscar Niemeyer, once the largest mural in the world. Brunched at the SESC rooftop cafe overlooking Paulista Avenue. Attempted to appreciate some art and educate ourselves on Brazil’s colourful histories at the MASP. Explored ‘one of the country’s largest bookstores’, which though quite lovely and atmospheric, especially the giant wooden dragon, is in my opinion actually disappointingly small. And lastly, we stumbled upon something utterly surreal. Adjacent to the bustling road and crowded sidewalk, we found ourselves standing in a hot, humid, tropical oasis. We were surrounded by birdsong, lush emerald vegetation, butterflies of the most vibrant colours, and of course, a yoga class. The park was small, but at that moment we completely forgot how parched the now muggy 26°C had made us, how much our feet were throbbing, and the fact that we still had an hour and a half walk back to our hostel along a dirty and uninspiring main road. Having walked over 10 miles, we pretty much fell into bed that evening, sore all over, with some very large blisters (that somehow all only ended up on my feet) but very happy regardless.

Over the following two and a half days we explored the lively bohemian neighbourhood of Vila Madalena, the architecturally beautiful, historic Downtown neighbourhood and Ibirapuera Park including the beautiful botanical garden where we saw our first wild monkeys! We also went on two very interesting walking tours which brought us to the point of sheer cultural saturation. As with all good adventures, we ate some delicious local food, got a tad sunburnt, got rained on and got lost on more than one occasion. I cannot express the relief an international SIM and thus GoogleMaps has given us.

All things considered, we’ve had an exciting, albeit busy first stop. We loved the vibrant cultural scene, the history, the trendy bars, coffee shops and restaurants but it’s time to move on to our next stop, Florianopolis. As I sit here on a 13-hour overnight bus journey, I had hoped to sleep, but the slumbering gentleman behind me is auditioning for the world’s loudest human trumpet and has other ideas. I would daydream about the next 4 days sipping cocktails on the tropical lined golden beaches of Floripa, and hiking through the lush jungles, but I made the mistake of checking the weather just before we left. More rain. Honestly though, given how busy we’ve been, if we spend the next stopover simply relaxing in our treehouse hostel, yes we’re staying in a treehouse, I’ll be happy.

Oh and in case you’re still wondering, Aiden’s backpack did eventually find its way to him. Success!