Sao Paulo, Brazil

The 15 hour night bus arrived more or less on time at the Sao Paulo bus terminal. Without ever having exited the bus I could tell the city was enormous (one of the biggest in the world) and that the city would have an overwhelming impact on me. For two hours the bus had been crawling through the crowded streets past an endless sea of houses and streets. Thanks to the help of my friend Luciana I located a nice and friendly hostel in a (relatively) safe neighborhood. The rest of the day passed quickly amidst a tour of Avenia Paulista (Sao Paulo’s most famous street and home to upscale homes, stores and offices), making preparations for my sister’s arrival the following day and having some caipirinhas (certainly not the last ones). The night was short because I had to leave the hostel at 5am to be at the airport for Julia’s 7am arrival. Slipping through light traffic, things worked smoothly and before I knew it I held Julia in my arms, for the fist time in almost on year. From then on time seemed to fly by because we had a thousand things to catch up on. It did not matter that the way back almost took 3 hours during rush hour traffic.

We spent another 2 days in Sao Paulo exploring the city center and its tourist highlights as well as enjoying the nightlife with some new made friends. Initial attempts to plan our month together in Brazil were somewhat inconclusive so we decided to take things slow and head northward up the coast while contemplating how to spend the remainder of our time. After only having planed at the most one day in advance for the past year, planning a whole month at once must have been a bit too much.

Similar to prior visits to locations that supposedly were very dangerous (e.g. Nicaragua and Colombia), Sao Paulo struck me as much safer than I had expected and certainly than it was made out to be. Without any suspicious encounter we were able to navigate via trains, buses, walk the squares and streets and enjoy the nightlife: an auspicious start to a new country.