São Paulo

My first stop on my travels was supposed to be little more than an afterthought. The only reason I decided to spend a couple of nights there, instead of heading directly to Rio de Janeiro, was that all flights from Toronto into Brazil stop off in São Paulo for immigration and customs before flying on their final destinations. After spending a little less than forty-eight hours in São Paulo, I really wished I had a few more days to explore.

São Paulo is huge. The first thing you notice when flying in is the extent of the spawl. I hadn't done a lot of research into the city (as I said: afterthought!), but I wasn't surprised in the least to learn later that São Paulo; with more than eleven million residents in the city proper, and over twenty million in the greater metropolitan area; is the most populous city in the Southern Hemisphere.

I arrived at the LimeTime hostel around 2:00pm on Friday, which was a total wash for any sightseeing. I was exhausted from the trip, so all I did was grab lunch, nap in the hostel until 6:30pm, then socialised with fellow LimeTimers at the hostel bar until around midnight. I wimped out on the nightly outing later that night -- people really don't begin to party until well after midnight there and a group was heading out to an electronica club. I was just too tired.

The next day, I did some sightseeing with Daniel and Edward (both of whom had also wimped out on the previous evening's festivities), hitting the old Centro district around Sé station. We saw the cathedral, wandered through one of the street markets, then had a drink at the panoramic bar atop the Terraco Italia building (where the view really cemented how large the city is). After dropping Daniel off back at the hostel, Ed and I headed out to Liberdade, the Japanese district -- São Paulo has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.

The sightseeing was interesting, but the main impression I came away with was how run down the city is. Everything seemed to have a dirty concrete feel to it.

But, that evening, São Paulo showed its true colours.

Why go to São Paulo? The nightlife.

We arrived back at the hostel a little after sunset, to find that Alberto (the owner of the LimeTime) was organising an outing to the Italian festival just down the street from the hostel (Bela Vista is a largely Italian district). It was wall-to-wall people -- couples, families with kids, everybody out in search of cheap pasta, polenta bolognese, pizza, beer and wine. Italian opera was blaring from speakers along the sides of the street, and the lines at some of the food stalls was backed up for hundreds of metres. There were large periods of time when we just couldn't move because the crush of people was too great.

And that was just the early evening.

After getting back to the hostel around 9:00pm, we sat around socialising at the bar again. Another outing was planned for that night -- this time to a dance club that specialised in 80s / 90s music, and Brit rock. I was still exhausted and, with an early bus to Rio the next morning, I nearly wimped out again. I'm glad I didn't. The dance club was unreal: hundreds of people, pounding music, and partying just getting underway at 1:00am. I was there until about 4:00am (if you drank more than R$30-worth of alcohol, the R$15 entrance-charge was waived).

I was utterly wrecked the next day, but it was totally worth it.

I'm seriously considering spending a few nights there again, when I have to go through São Paulo again in late September / early October.

(Pictures in a few weeks when I'm able to get to a wireless internet connection)