Sao Paulo first time round

Flying out of Foz de Iguassu gave me a wonderful view of what is left of the rainforest. In this State there is only 3% left of the rainforest which is a rather depressing statistic. The dark dense patches faded out as the plane continued to the coast. And what a coast it was too. Even from the air I could see enormous stretches of wide sandy beach reaching north. The plane turned left back inland and over the Sao Paulo metropolis, depending what statistics you read it can be ranked as the 4th biggest city in the world (by population). It didn’t look that appealing by the air, tower blocks galore.

Brazil’s reputation precedes it, both positively and negatively. To me Brazil is the place to party (need I even mention the world famous Rio carnival?) and unfortunately it also has a reputation for crime, street crime. I’d spoken to many travellers on the road before arriving into the city and almost every one had a first-hand story to tell; pick pockets, bag snatching, lots of camera theft and theft even from passing bikes stealing electronics right out your hand. Great stuff.

I had a few days to kill in Sao Paulo before I set off for the even scarier Rio. For me there were very few sights to see in the city. I took the metro into the centre and was thoroughly underwhelmed. After seeing the Cathedral, Sé, there was little else to see. The whole city seemed to be covered in graffiti. It wasn’t the colourful street art that I’d seen in Valparaiso, here almost every building was literally covered with tags (a graffiti signature). The tags were not only at arm length up the side of buildings but covered the whole façade, several stories up. It looked oppressive to me. The graffiti had over shadowed any of the elegance the buildings ever had.

The city was full of the usual city centre shopping and the streets were full of homeless people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many before in my life. They slept during the day in doorways under cardboard covers. Some even slept in the middle of pedestrian precincts, the equivalent of sleeping on the ground in the middle of Argyll Street on a Saturday afternoon. People just stepped around them not batting an eyelid. My travels have taken me to many beautiful and interesting cities in the last few months and Sao Paulo just wasn’t cutting it for me. The one thing it is famous for is its night life though. On my last night in Sao Paulo I was invited to go along to a gig, to see The View (a Scottish group who have had the ‘same jeans on for four days now’). I went with the lovely folks from the hostel and had a great night out. Not quite a typical Brazilian night out but great fun all the same.

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