Ryan and booked our flight from Quito to São Paulo months ago… without consideration of when the Olympics would be taking place. As it turned out, the men’s hockey gold metal game was taking place right as we were embarking on our journey to Brazil. While we were up at the ungodly hour of 4am to catch our flight, my friends and family back home were awake to cheer on team Canada in our quest for gold. Based on how much fun my friends and I had during the 2010 gold metal game, I felt pretty homesick missing another epic Canadian event. Nevertheless, life could be worse; I was off to Brazil!
We arrived in Lima for our layover just as the gold metal game would have been coming to a close. Without any TV’s showing the Olympics, and no free wifi, Ryan and I were left to wonder how the game had played out for the next 7 hours. Everything went smoothly with our flights, and we landed in São Paulo at around 7pm local time. We waited patiently for our bags, and after mine came, we continued to wait for Ryan’s. Both of us began to silently panic that LAN had once again lost Ryan’s bag, and he, once again, only had hiking boots on for footwear. Fortunately, his bag finally arrived, and both heaved a sigh of relief. Everything went smoothly at customs, and we simply needed to find our way to our hostel. The directions from Hostelworld seemed a bit complicated via bus and subway, so we opted for the standardized cabbing system. As it turned out this cost us $130 reals, or approximately $60 CDN. My jaw nearly dropped when I saw the price, and the girl who rang it in simply smiled, saying “yes, it is expensive, but you are going 30 km.” Great, $2 CDN per km.
Although the cab was expensive, it was a nice, new vehicle with working seatbelts. This is definitely a win for Latin America. On top of that, the roads were nicely paved, with marked lines, and road laws that people appeared to be obeying. I almost felt as though I was back home. We arrived safely at Hostel Aquarela in the Vila Mariana area, and after changing out of our warm clothes, we set out to find some dinner. The change in temperature was welcomed, after the somewhat cool nature of Quito. São Paulo was warm enough at night to walk around in a t-shirt and shorts, and arriving at night made me feel kind of like I was in Mexico, due to the warm weather, humidity, tropical air, and palm trees.
My body felt the 2 hour time change over to Brazil, and I slept well past 10am, which I haven’t done in ages. After a lazy start to the morning, Ryan and I set out to explore the city. Let me begin by clarifying what type of city São Paulo is. With a population of 19 million people, São Paulo is massive, and easily the largest city I’ve ever traveled to. It is a huge business hub in Brazil, as well as around the world, making it the 10th most expensive city in the world (according to Wikitravel). We set out to explore Sao Paulo’s famous Avenue Paulista. I had assumed this would be sort of like a 17th Avenue in Calgary, and instead found a bigger, louder, more business-y version of Macleod Trail. We dodged into a restaurant in hopes of finding breakfast, only to find that the menu was well out of our price limit (a trend for us in São Paulo). We ended up getting a suco or a smoothie (another trend for us in São Paulo), and splitting an omelette. On top of being overwhelmed by a bit of jet lag and the insane prices of São Paulo, Ryan and I were also struggling with the Portugese. I remember floundering my way through Spain and Portugal, but I don’t remember it being as difficult as Brazil has been so far. For those of you who have not heard Portugese, it is not that similar to spanish. There are a few words that are the same, many that are similar but pronounced different, but the majority are completely different. Portugese is a unique language in that sentences flow together as one, instead of words being entities of their own. Ryan describes Portugese as a wave of language, which is a near perfect description, as everything just flows together as one, making it nearly impossible for the untrained ear to understand. On top of that, some of the words sounds German, some sound French, and others sound Japanese or Mandarin. To be honest, it is quite absurd sounding. After growing accustomed to spanish, it has been difficult to make a transition to a language where I know so few words that I could count them using both hands.
Continuing on, we made our way from Avenue Paulista to the old city center, a few metro stops away. The metro in São Paulo reminded me a little of the London or NYC metros; a little grungy, but mostly safe and definitely reliable. It was easy enough to navigate, and we made it downtown with no problems. We stepped out of the metro to see the beautiful Catherdal Se; I am convinced that with every big city there is a beautiful church hidden somewhere in the depths of the concrete, and I am happy we found Sao Paulo’s. We wondered from there to Patio do Collegio, where we found a giant pedestrian street, similar to Las Ramblas in Barcelona. There were literally people everywhere! Restaurants in São Paulo appear to be busy at all hours of the day, and the streets are packed with both pedestrians and honking cars. We continued to wind our way through the busy streets of São Paulo, stopping for what possibly may be the tiniest coffee I have ever had in my life (did the trick!), until we made it to the historic, colonial looking Municipal Theater. Beside the Municipal Theater was a shopping mall, which we went in to escape the heat. We found boutique clothing stores, shoe stores, and a food court – nothing out of the ordinary for your typical mall. Being in a city surrounded by shops and nicely dressed people made me want to shop! With Carnival right around the corner, I withheld the urge. After exploring the city center, we headed back to Vila Mariana to do some grocery shopping. We concluded that it would be much more economical to cook our own meals, and as an added bonus, our hostel had a really nice kitchen. We spent the evening relaxing and watching Netflix… it’s a tough life down here.
The following day, we headed to Parque do Ibirapuera. On the map it appeared close to our hostel, and although it was only 25 minute walk away, we had to dodge across some pretty big roads to get there. The park is a massive green space with a lake, an Afro Brasil Museum, and a Planetarium, and multiple walking trails and playgrounds. We dodged inside the museum just in time for the skies to open up to a heavy downfall. Luckily, it didn’t last long (we didn’t have jackets), and the fresh air was a nice break from the heat. We sipped acai smoothies (fun fact: acai is Brazilian) and wandered around the park for a few hours, before venturing back to our hostel. Later that evening, we set out to go to a yoga class at a nearby studio that I had found online. After searching for nearly 15 minutes, walking up and down the street that the studio was apparently on, we concluded that it wasn’t going to happen. Just then, I peered into a basement suite and found what looked like a yoga studio. Although it wasn’t the place we had been looking for, it was a small studio owned by a lovely Portugese woman who spoke perfect English, AND she had a class starting in 20 minutes. It was awesome, and we both felt that we were pretty lucky to have stumbled upon that. Doing yoga in Portugese wasn’t as difficult as I had expected, and I think I may have even learned a word or two!
We finally got up at a normal hour on Wednesday, making our way to Placa do Republica for a free walking tour. After waiting for 25 minutes for the tour to start in the blazing heat, we were both drenched with sweat and ready to get going. The tour guide began by telling us a history of São Paulo, and I couldn’t focus I was so hot. We dragged ourselves around for over an hour, learning about the various historic buildings in the city. Upon reaching the Municipal Theater, we realized we had seen the other parts of the tour, so we dodged off into the air conditioned mall, where we killed a few hours fully cooling off. We exited the mall and were hit with a wave of heat (I’m seriously not complaining), and after making our way back to Vila Mariana, stopped off at an air conditioned coffee shop for a tiny coffee. Later that evening, we went back to the same yoga studio, and had another wonderful yoga class. After doing a few yoga classes in another language, I have noticed that it is definitely more difficult to meditate on the instructors words when you cannot fully comprehend them.
The rest of the night was spent packing in anticipation of our flight to Rio tomorrow! 48 hours until Carnival!!