Samba in Sampa

---

---

The best part of travelling around is meeting other travellers. The even better part is when they find out that you will be visiting their city and offer you free accommodation. This was the case for São Paulo. We met Sarah while trekking the Inca Trail, and she was more than happy to have us stay with her for a few days.

After convincing the guy at the gate that we were Sarah´s amigos from Australia and realising that he has been saying Asarah or something like that and we agreed that we were talking about the same person, he let us in to terrorise the apartment building. First act, press every single floor button after getting out of the elevator, that had to return to ground floor to pick up John and Megan.

Being the awesome host that Sarah was she even had the fridge stocked full of beers for us to imbide. Since we had arrived late afternoon it wasn´t long and it was time for dinner. So we headed to a churrascaria (good old fashion brasilian bbq that is usually includes a buffet as well,) lucky for us this was a fancy place so the food and service was of excellent quality. Once we had consumed so much meat that we could barely get up from the table, I was informed by Renata (our local for the rest of the trip in Brasil) that there is a medicine that Brasilians have exactly for this reason. Epiclare I think it is called and the tv ad for it goes something like this. There is a family sitting around a table that is jam packed full of food and the family is singing something to the effect of ´we can eat whatever we want...´ which is pretty much what we did, minus the epiclare.

We really only had one day to explore São Paulo before heading off to Salvador. So we chose to do a walking tour of the city centre. We also inadvertadly did a walking tour of the surrounding suburbs of Sarah´s apartment in our quest for the metro that would deliver us smack bang in the middle of the city.

So we got off pulled out our map and our walking tour began. I had´t really heard anything about São Paulo was I wasn´t sure what to expect, but there is a fair amount of history to be read up on and exploring to do if you know where to go and have the time. Our tour focused mainly on the city centre where we got to see the founding site of the city, a few cathedrals, lots of old colonial buildings and the Edifício Itália. The Edifício Itália is one of the tallest builidngs in the city, a whole 43 stories!!! It has an observation deck on top that gives an awesome 360° view of the city and the thousands of skyscrapers that are in it. Sadly our view was marred by a slight drizzle, which almost prevented us from being able to go outside. One of the more exciting parts of the day was walking through one of the many squares playing ´spot the hooker.´

For our last night in São Paulo we headed to the Rosas de Ouro (Golden Roses) Samba School. It was absolutely crazy. First you have to buy tickets to get in because it´s pretty much just a party with those in the actual parade rehearsing. We arrived later in the evening so we missed out on the dance rehearsal but we got to see and hear (my ears will never forget) the band. It was insane. The band is made largely up of drums and stuff that makes lots of noise (probably other instruments) but right infront of us and I mean right infront, were the drums. We were so close that I was worried I would have another case of brain swelling if I got hit with a drum stick. I guess they have to train for Carnival because these guys did not stop for at least 2 hours. After a few hours we headed back and played the game of how many adults can you cram into a 5 seater and drive 40 minutes. It took an hour just to get the feeling back in my toes.

It was straight to bed because we had to be up early to get to the airport to catch a bus to another airport to catch a flight to Salvador. There are 3 airports in Salvador and the one not far from us was the site of TAM plane crash last year in which 200 people died. We drove past the spot were the plane ran out of runway. What I didn´t realise (because you can´t tell from the aerial pictures) is that the end of the runway is buit up and the plane slid down a bank at least 10ms high to crash into the TAM petrol stores. At least we weren´t flying from this airport.

---

Comments

[Jose]

Elevators
You know I do that same thing in my work elevator every few days. It is soo slow too. he he he.